Some of the boards of major companies have been criticised recently for being unaware of the extent of significant problems within their organisation. Whilst boards cannot be expected to know the minutiae of daily operations, a culture whereby bad news is kept from the board is dangerous.

This is especially dangerous if a legal offence has been committed and the organisation is either legally obliged to report it or an extra penalty is payable if the breach was not rectified.

What can be done to make sure that material information is passed on to the board? The starting point is explaining to staff the importance of information being reported on.

Do you have a compliance framework that can be quickly explained to staff ? I had a go at explaining a system visually and you can see my efforts in a video (6 mins 40 seconds). Let me know what you think.

Designing a compliance framework from David Jacobson on Vimeo.