Governance has gone mainstream. Now what?
There’s definitely a moment happening in higher education governance.
You don’t need a conference lanyard to see it. Read the coverage of the AdvanceHE Governance Conference. Scroll LinkedIn for five minutes. Dip into ministerial speeches or OfS commentary. The signals are all pointing the same way.
Governance isn’t the quiet, worthy thing happening politely in the background anymore.
It’s centre stage.
Baroness Jacqui Smith. Professor Edward Peck. The steady drumbeat of regulatory commentary. Paul Greatrix’sThe Governance Imperative blog. Advance HE’s recent paper, Shaping the future of HE governance, by Aaron Porter. Different platforms, similar message: governing bodies are being asked to step up at a time when the sector feels anything but stable.
Which raises a simple question.
"If governance is now more exposed, more demanding and more consequential … do we have the right tools to support it?"
Not just structurally. Not just legally. But culturally, communicatively and strategically.
The pressure is obvious. The enablers? Less so.
Look at the agenda currently sitting on governing body tables:
Financial fragility
Major change programmes
Franchise and third-party risk
Compliance complexity
Freedom of speech obligations
The delightful cumulative effect of all of the above landing at once
These are serious responsibilities. High stakes. No argument there.
But alongside the technical burden is something more subtle and arguably harder.
Governing bodies are being asked to:
Lead, not just assure
Challenge without collapsing into groupthink
Balance academic values with commercial realities
Act as credible ambassadors
Maintain trust when decisions are uncomfortable
That’s not just governance mechanics. That’s leadership psychology. And leadership psychology runs on clarity, alignment and shared meaning.
Which is where something interesting happens.
The word we avoid (but mean anyway)
Brand isn’t usually the first word uttered in a governance away day. In fact, it often makes people slightly twitchy. So instead, alternatives are used: Purpose. Identity. Mission. Values. The ever-popular North Star. All perfectly respectable.
But if you step back, they’re describing the same thing.
A shared understanding of:
Why we exist
What we’re here to become
What we will and won’t compromise on
How we want to be experienced in the world
Call it brand. Call it purpose. Call it institutional identity. It’s the context in which governance operates. Not a logo applied to governors. Not a messaging toolkit for board members. But the strategic and cultural framework they are there to steward, protect, test and nudge forward over time.
What’s striking in much of the current governance debate is this: it describes exactly why this shared framework matters without ever quite naming it.
Which is a bit baffling.
Opening up the “black box”
Paul Greatrix has described governance as something of a “black box” for many staff and students. Important, powerful … but opaque. That opacity might have been tolerable when governance sat comfortably in the background. It’s far less sustainable when governing bodies are being asked to take a more visible leadership role.
Interestingly, Advance HE argues that the story of governance is largely untold and that institutions should think more creatively about how they communicate what boards actually do. That includes moving beyond minutes and management papers to more accessible explanations of impact. In other words, governance needs a narrative, not just a record.
Pure 'brand' territory.
Legitimacy now depends not just on what is decided, but on whether people understand why. This is where brand, in the context of an institution, quietly earns its keep.
It gives context beyond committee papers and statutory duties. It helps people see that governors are:
Stress-testing decisions against a long-term vision
Holding the institution to its publicly stated values
Steering towards a destination already articulated
In that light, governance stops feeling like a remote control function and starts looking like stewardship. And stewardship is far easier to trust than control.
The governing body and brand stewardship – now there’s a thought.
A decision-making compass (when the weather turns)
Another recurring governance anxiety? Pace.
Universities are designed for deliberation. The outside world is not. When volatility increases, decision-making needs both speed and coherence. That’s uncomfortable territory for many governing bodies. A clearly articulated institutional brand (or purpose, or north star) acts as a compass.
It gives boards a way to pressure-test decisions quickly:
Does this move us closer to who we say we are?
Does it reinforce or dilute our distinctiveness?
Would we still make this choice if our values were truly non-negotiable?
I note that the Advance HE paper calls for boards to stress-test assumptions against a clear and distinctive strategy that is genuinely understood. That clarity isn’t accidental. It requires articulation, shared language and repeated reinforcement. Which is exactly where institutional brand plays a strategic role.
It doesn’t remove complexity.
But it does reduce drift.
The academic vs business tension (again)
Let’s be honest. The academic–commercial balancing act isn’t new. But it does feel sharper right now. Financial sustainability conversations can quickly feel transactional. Academic debates can feel principled but detached from reality. Governance sits in the middle.
A strong institutional narrative reframes that tension. It connects financial resilience to mission. It positions sustainability as stewardship. It anchors commercial decisions in long-term purpose rather than short-term survival. That shared narrative won’t eliminate disagreement. But it provides a common language, and in governance, like most human settings, language shapes behaviour.
From silent overseers to visible leaders
There’s also an emerging expectation that chairs and governors speak more confidently beyond the boardroom. In a more sceptical public climate, that’s no small ask.
A clear institutional brand equips governors with:
A coherent story about public value
Consistent language about impact
A confident articulation of why the institution matters
It connects what you say to what you do
It allows them to speak outwardly without freewheeling and to advocate without drifting from their core duty.
Codes matter. Culture matters more than we admit.
None of this replaces governance codes, regulatory frameworks or compliance rigour. Those are essential. But structure alone doesn’t create confidence. Or coherence. Or trust. As the sector refreshes codes and recalibrates oversight, there’s a risk of over-indexing on mechanics and under-investing in meaning.
Shaping the future of HE governancemakes this point directly: the single biggest differentiator between effective and less effective boards is culture. Structures can be redesigned. Committees can be reconfigured. But without the right culture, governance won’t improve. Brand is one of the cultural tools that could help make governance function in practice.
The paper also talks about re-imagining the relationship between governors and the Executive, moving beyond simply ‘marking the Executive’s work’ towards collaborative strategy development. This will work if both parties are operating within a shared frame of reference. Again, that’s brand territory, even if it isn’t recognised as such.
It connects oversight to purpose. Accountability to identity. Leadership to long-term direction.
So, if governance has genuinely gone mainstream, then the way we support it needs to mature, too.
Imagine how much simpler and more efficient it would be if institutions recognised the true value of brand as a leadership tool and adopted a more brand-literate approach.
Surely it’s time for brand to speak its name, be recognised for what it is and allow it to help shape a more holistic approach to the distinctiveness, cohesion and resilience of our institutions.
Three take-outs
Governance is no longer backstage. It needs tools that support visible leadership, not just procedural oversight.
The sector keeps describing the need for clarity, alignment and shared direction – which is essentially a conversation about brand.
Codes create compliance. Shared identity creates coherence. Right now, we need both.