GOVERNANCE AROMATAWAI

The strength of any organisation starts with the quality of its governance.

Governance can be complex – and your board may have different views on what to focus on, or be distracted by operational matters, irrelevant details or political matters.

This Governance Aromatawai cuts through all that. It provides an unbiased view of how your governance is really doing, and recommendations to guide you on where how to best improve your governance, and elevate the mana and effectiveness of your board.

Handy tip: Funders love seeing that your board is in the habit of reviewing governance. Our dashboard is perfect for sharing with funders.

The Governance Aromatawai has six stages.

This process is generally completed over 4-6 weeks.

It will require roughly 2 hours of participant time in total:
= 40-60 mins for the diagnostic survey
= 20 mins for the personality profile
‍ = 60 mins for a 1-1 interview.

Once these datapoints are gathered from your board, our facilitation team then undertakes the data, draws out the trends and summarises them into a report and a debrief session.

We check for 32 governance governance documents, including:

• Foundation documents

• Policy-related documents

• Board meeting documents

• Strategy-related documents

• Continuity documents 

We also undertake a review of five key governance documents:

1. Trust Deed / Constitution

2. Board Charter / Governance Manual (of policies)

3. Recent board pack

4. Current Strategic Plan

5. Annual Budget

Note: Your organisation’s documents and data provided during the Governance Aromatawai will be kept secure and confidential within the Te Whare Hukahuka delivery team. 

Our Aromatawai process is a safe space where the mana and tapu of your kaupapa are respected. It is entirely confidential. We don’t share things that board members tell us in confidence.

We focus on the key themes that are reiterated by different board members – ensuring no one feels unsafe, no one is embarrassed, and no fingers are pointed.

Sensitive issues may surface, which is part of the value – as a safe space to explore them as opportunities to improve – with practical recommendations on how to address them.

Many boards tell us that having TWH (as an independent party) raise these issues makes it easier to have conversations that otherwise get avoided.

Ae mārika! For those with no access to the internet or to a device, we have three options:

1. They can meet up with another trustee/Manager and complete it on their device.

2. We can run through the survey and quiz with them over the phone.

3. We can courier them the documents on paper to fill in manually with a return envelope.

Note: We can also post out paper copies of the final dashboard report if requested.

Once the diagnostic survey and document reviews are completed, our facilitation team will be in touch regarding the 1-1 interviews. We will also send you individual questions prior to the interview.

Governance Reviews and Board Evaluations may differ based on what the board is directly wanting to evaluate.

Our Te Whare Hukahuka Governance Aromatawai reviews your board’s systems, enabling structures, strategic clarity, cohesion, culture, risk controls, board-Manager interface and external relationships.

We do not assess specific trustee capability, business viability, financial sustainability or legal compliance expectations – these are best undertaken by HR, legal and financial specialists.

Generally this involves a three step process:

1. Present the Aromatawai information/proposal to the board so they can make an informed decision.

2. Have the board agree by passing a resolution to initiate the project.

3. Contact our TWH team to begin the onboarding stages for the Aromatawai.

If you have any further questions about the Governance Aromatawai process, please give our team a call or drop us an email at kiaora@twh.co.nz — and we would be happy to help.