Governance as a Cultural Norm: Trust in Motion

It is both an honor and a responsibility to speak about governance, a topic that sits at the heart of all institutional and societal progress.

In my experience, governance is too often treated as a technical code. A checklist to satisfy audits, a set of rules to apply. While this is necessary to an extent, it is also insufficient. If we confine governance to bureaucracy, we diminish its power and its purpose.

We must look at governance differently.

Governance should not be imposed externally; it must be lived internally. Just as we learn to be polite, kind, and courteous not through study guides but through the subtle teachings of culture, so too must we learn governance. It is a moral ethic embedded in our conduct.

I often describe governance as trust in motion. It is the collective movement of people and institutions aligning to shared ethical principles. It is a living framework, not a static code, and it provides the grounding upon which negotiations, collaborations, and even disagreements can occur with integrity.

This understanding of governance has profound implications for leaders.

When we foster a culture where governance is inherent, a norm rather than a rule, we create environments that are more resilient, more trustworthy, and better equipped to address complex challenges.

For CEOs, policymakers, and anyone entrusted with the care of an organization or community, this is our highest duty: to embed governance so profoundly that it no longer feels imposed, but simply understood.

I invite you to reflect on how you might nurture this culture of trust and ethics within your own sphere of influence. Governance, after all, is not the end of the conversation. It is the beginning.

Timecode:

00:00 Introduction to Governance

00:12 Cultural Beliefs in Governance

00:37 Governance as a Norm

01:00 Governance and Trust

01:16 Ethics and Consistency in Governance

01:25 Governance as a Foundation for Dialogue

Transcript:

For me, governance is not a two dimensional bureaucratic code that should be complied or applied. It should be an inherent cultural belief that we embed in us. It, uh, it needs to be in our behavior, similar to when we learn how to be polite. And kind and courteous. It's through cultural cues and not through a course where you study from Emmanuel.

Similarly, I think governance needs to be, um, embraced as part of an inherent embedded culture in us so that it is not applied as a code, but. As a norm for a society that already professes adherence to it. Um, so I believe governance is, is collaborations based on structures of trust in motion. It's a living cult.

Uh, it is a living. Um. Moral ethics by which we follow consistently. And it is the basis on which we can all agree. And I believe that governance is the starting point to any conversation because, um, from there we have a grounding on which we agree on common, uh, beliefs and any discussions, negotiations thereafter will always come back to those principles.