Review and support in one role: why that damages both.
In most firms, governance and leadership sit in the same role. One person holds strategy, coaching, performance review, oversight and decision power at the same time. Power stays invisible, feedback goes soft, and decisions get made in the corridor. FLAIMS separates the two functions and couples decision power to the weight of the decision.
What each function is for.
- Governance is cold and impersonal. It reviews the system on numbers, facts and patterns, challenges and signs off Core Jobs, handles signals, measures and steers. It does not coach. It leads nobody. It does not soften findings to protect a relationship.
- Leadership is personal and in conversation. It supports people: coaching, development, a protected space, conflict resolution, the whole path from recruiting to exit. It holds the relationship, never the oversight and never the assessment. What is said in coaching flows nowhere.
What happens when they come together in one role.
Whoever is coached cannot tell their reviewer the truth. Whoever reviews cannot stay neutral towards someone they coach. The performance review becomes a negotiation. Strategy follows who the leadership likes. Decisions that belong in a forum get made in private conversation. Over time the firm loses the ability to see itself clearly, because every observation is coloured by a relationship.
The Gravity Decision Model.
FLAIMS weights every decision: Feather (light, reversible), Stone (small but sticky), Boulder (weighty), Mountain (strategic). Feather is decided by everyone themselves. Stone is decided by whoever has the competence for it at Mastery level. Boulder and Mountain are shaped with those affected and recorded in the decision log. Trivial decisions do not wait for the CEO, and Mountain decisions are not made in the corridor. Authority hangs on the Core Job and on the weight, never on the person.
Governance reviews the system in cold terms. What it finds becomes a signal. Factual conflicts between jobs are decided by an HGD of those affected, S draws the consequences, and whoever needs support gets it in L, in the protected space. None of that flows back into the assessment. That way each function stays legible and serves the people it is meant for.
Multiple decision arenas, not one center.
Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize for showing that durable steering of complex systems works best with several clearly defined decision arenas at different levels. FLAIMS transfers that to the firm: decisions are made where the knowledge sits and the consequences are felt. The board of directors is one node, not the only one. How this fits the full FLAIMS framework.
Common questions
Governance is cold, data-based review of the system: numbers, facts, patterns, never the person. Leadership is the warm, human support: coaching, development, a protected space. Both are needed. Mixed in the same role, they damage each other.
When one role reviews, coaches, assesses and decides about the same people, the review loses its credibility and the coaching its honesty. Whoever is coached cannot tell their reviewer the truth, and whoever reviews cannot stay neutral towards someone they coach.
It weights every decision: Feather (light, reversible), Stone (small but sticky), Boulder (weighty), Mountain (strategic). Decision power hangs on the weight and on the competence, so that trivial decisions do not wait for the CEO and Mountain decisions are not made in the corridor.
The board of directors is one node in a polycentric governance, not the only one. Ostrom's research shows that durable steering of complex systems needs several clearly defined decision arenas. FLAIMS transfers this logic to firms; and if the CEO does not act on a finding from the governance review, the steward college has direct access to the board of directors.
Less than the alternative. Most hidden costs in firms come from unresolved decisions, from feedback nobody can voice, and from ambiguous authority. Separating governance and leadership removes those costs, because each function becomes clean and reviewable.