Logic, support, and integrity are the hallmarks of modern governance; the Post Office had none of these characteristics

Where other governance disasters have spawned from lax control, this has taken many steps further into the deliberately vindictive.  

Perhaps the biggest failure of governance is persistent denial when the problem stares you in the face. When governance professionals teach about that issue in the future, this is the example they will use.  

In this case, not only did Post Office leaders deny the most obvious of problems, but they allowed that failure to continue targeting innocent people for the best part of two decades. It’s corporate governance insanity.  

David W. Duffy, CEO, and co-founder of the Corporate Governance Institute, has highlighted two serious questions about the Post Office’s governing body: 

“First and foremost, where was the curiosity? It’s a board’s job to act on serious information such as employee malpractice or faulty systems. The fact that this case ran for so long means the board did not act, did not ask questions, or try to get to the bottom of the matter. This was even when alarms were raised.  

This leads to the next question: did the board have the right information? Were the CEO and other executives feeding it through? A board can’t govern if its executives don’t communicate properly, which raises more governance problems.  

No answer to the above questions is a good one. Whether the board knew and did nothing or didn’t know because of poor management only signals chaos at the top.”  

A simple question follows from Duffy: How could responsible professionals remain convinced that the people were to blame despite all this information? 

“It makes it worse when we remember that as these workers raised their concerns in their thousands, they were told – individually – that no one else was having the same problem. That’s not lax governance; that is deliberate, cut-throat manipulation of honest people – an international shame on business leaders.  

It suggests the Post Office was so obsessed with its brand integrity that it became the thing it publicly spoke out against. Caught in the crossfire were dedicated workers with neither the knowledge nor the finances to defend themselves.” 

They were individuals up against an employer boasting all the powers of a civil service giant with strong values, government backing and international recognition.  

While it’s difficult to understand how governance personnel could let this culture persist, it’s easy to see how ordinary workers would find it nearly impossible to fight against.  

Duffy concluded: “How many lives have been damaged has become abundantly clear. How will a well-known brand like the Post Office overcome this and rebuild trust? We don’t know. But we should expect it to take years, if not decades”.

ENDS

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