Experience, Wisdom, Vision & Leadership
Welcome to our new, simplified website with our new logo. We’ve done our best to briefly convey who we are and what we do. We also know that in addition to credibility and competence, ‘fit’ is a critical part of a valuable working relationship. So, after you’ve read a bit about us here, please email or call to learn more about the skilled, passionate and authentic people behind these words.
Simply put, we ‘get’ governance.
Decades of Experience
Established in 1994, tng is focused on supporting not-for-profit organizations to embrace and harness the value of good governance. Our decades of hands-on expertise, library of proven resources and engaging personal style allows us to quickly assess, tailor and implement solutions to virtually every imaginable scenario that involves groups of volunteer directors who are charged with stewarding and strategically leading their organizations.
We deeply appreciate that on the surface governance appears straight forward, yet somehow in practice, it seldom is. It is often complicated by the attitudes, expectations, level of competence, personalities and group dynamics that occur when purposefully diverse perspectives are assembled in the board room. Over the years our experienced team has ‘seen it all’ and have succeeded in helping our clients to navigate the twists and turns that can be expected as the composition of the board and their senior operational leaders change over time. If your board is experiencing some twists and turns of its own, or simply wants to ‘refresh’ its commitments to good governance, rest assured we’re here to help.
Our Core Services
Our team members have decades of experience serving, themselves, as CEO’s, Board Chairs, Directors and strategic advisors. Together, as a firm we are most called upon for one or more of these 10 core services:
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Comprehensive governance reviews
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Governance performance standards and assessments
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Director, chair and committee orientation, training, development and coaching
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Bylaw and policy development
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Board and member meeting planning and facilitation
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CEO performance management, evaluation and coaching
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Board and CEO succession planning
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Strategic planning and performance dashboards
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Member and stakeholder engagement
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Group facilitation
Recently through alliances with trusted experts we have begun integrating diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism principles and practices into all our core services. As society begins to reconcile the systemic harm and barriers created by colonialism, we ourselves, commit to doing our best and supporting our clients to do theirs, as well.
The Key Ingredients
Our understanding and approach to supporting good governance:
We’ve discovered that the key to good governance can be found in four interrelated ingredients. tng uses these ingredients as lenses through which we can quickly understand strengths and weakness and determine how to address any shortcomings in a way that brings the system back into balance.
The Right People as Directors
This ingredient describes the elements needed for assembling, engaging and maintaining a diverse group of well qualified and capable directors; individuals that possess the requisite skills, experience, capacity, independence and attitude to fulfill their fiduciary responsibilities.
Clear and Supportive Structures
This ingredient describes the hierarchical arrangement, lines of authority, communication, rights and duties; how roles, power and responsibilities are assigned, controlled and coordinated to achieve the organization and board objectives and strategy.
Reliable and Enabling Processes
This ingredient describes the series of actions or functions needed to ensure the ethical stewardship and strategic leadership of members’/stakeholders’ investments and interests as discharged through the group decision-making and monitoring functions of the board.
Healthy and Sustainable Culture
This ingredient describes the stated organizational intentions, behaviors, norms and rituals that compel directors to do their best to serve the organization's purpose; putting collective interests ahead of any one individual interest and ensuring sustainability over successive generations of directors.
The System of Governance
We appreciate that governance is more than a set of compliance activities, it is an integrated performance system. Over the years we’ve distilled the fundamentals of the system of governance into the following illustration. Here, we can better understand how the various roles, authorities, responsibilities and relationships interact with each other to provide a way of governing that increases accountability, transparency and trust, all necessary for good governance.
Quick Reference Guides
tng has assembled a quick reference guide that covers many of the fundamentals of good governance and the most common governance challenges. For a copy of this guide please contact us.
Also, let us know if there is other reference material you may need to help your organization. We love to talk governance!
Ready to Find Out More?
The written word can only express so much, and it seems that these days, people’s attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. Thanks a lot Twitter! If what you’ve read so far has made you curious, please just pick up the phone or drop us an email and we’ll make time to have a proper conversation.