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Our recent event, Effective Corporate Governance, was held at Lexis House on 4th February 2020. Hosted by Radius Law and Sewells, the event provided a great opportunity for in-house lawyers to come together and take in a fresh and effective approach to Corporate Governance. 

Iain Larkins, Director at Radius Law and previously General Counsel & Chief Compliance Officer at Mercedes-Benz UK Group, introduced the session by emphasising the importance of effective corporate governance as opposed to just corporate governance. Iain offered a detailed overview of the current compliance issues businesses face, including staying on top of the relevant laws, the rules of Directorship and personal responsibilities accepted by General Counsels. He also discussed what ‘good looks like’ and the consequences of getting it wrong. 

Ian’s discussion covered the following Keys to effective governance:

• Training

He concluded by highlighting that unless the right culture is embedded in an organisation, implementing effective governance is pointless... This view was echoed and developed by Dr. William Holden in his interactive workshop on the importance of organisation culture. He explored ‘What makes people tick?’ and ‘How can leaders engage and motivate teams to willingly do the right thing (compliantly)?  

Dr. Holden emphasised that compliance is more to do with the CULTURE in an organisation than processes, systems, and resources. He explained that “leaders need to make sure ethics and compliance are part of everyone’s job. They need to be driven and role modelled from the top!” He discussed the importance of having the right attitude (negative vs positive) and looking at the bigger picture. 

Delving deeper on the importance of culture and leading from the top, he ran an interactive session that saw the room become excited and competitive as they took part in a video ‘basketball counting challenge’.  The results shocked most participants and highlighted his point on culture and the risk of focusing your mind on one particular thing. 

Following on from Dr. Holden and introducing the third and final presentation of the day was ������Ƶ’ Darius Lewington, Lexis PSL Corporate. Darius covered the recent and forthcoming developments in corporate governance and what can be done to effectively implement these. He closed by providing an insight to the importance of workforce and employee engagement for corporate governance. 

The event proved to be a success with 98% of attendees confirming they enjoyed the event, 95% would return and 99% would recommend it to a colleague.

If you’d like details on our forthcoming corporate governance events or would like access to the slides covered in this workshop, simply email us here.