governance

Intermediate 💼 Corporate / Business

Definition

The elaborate system of rules, processes, and committees that organizations create to ensure accountability, which paradoxically often makes it impossible to figure out who's actually responsible for anything. Good governance means having enough oversight to prevent chaos; too much governance means spending six months getting approval to order new staplers. It's the corporate equivalent of checks and balances, except the checks never clear and nobody can balance the budget.

Example Usage

Our new governance framework requires sign-off from five departments, which means this three-line email will take approximately forever to send.

Source: Common business terminology

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cover your ass (CYA)

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