Ten years ago this month, an American Airlines Airbus took off too close behind a Japan Air Lines 747 at JFK in New York. The wake turbulence and crew responses caused the plane to shake so violently that the tail broke off, and 265 people were tragically killed.

Why is this significant?

That was the last time that a major North American airline experienced a fatal crash. Ten years. There have been commuter air, corporate and air taxi fatalities: a US Airways Express flight in Charlotte and a Comair flight in Lexington both failed to gain enough lift for takeoff, and most recently, a Continental Express Q400 iced up during a blizzard on final approach to Buffalo-Niagara.

While these fatalities are tragic and any loss of life significant, these ten years without a major airline fatality is singularly unprecedented. Airliners had been crashing in North America regularly every 18-24 months since the dawn of the jet age. The causes were varied and seemingly impenetrable.

What happened?

The entire air safety industry reformed its governance system, from top to bottom. Not in one dramatic move, but in dozens and dozens of small steps, over forty years, taken by thousands of men and women in air investigation and regulation, airplane design and construction, traffic control and ground maintenance, as well as air and ground crews and airport staff.

One at a time, they clarified and raised standards and narrowed tolerances; one at a time, they tightened up controls and monitoring. Quality and risk governance were ratcheted up one sigma at a time. They did it by following core governance principles: independence and transparency, empowerment and accountability, stewardship and learning.

They didn’t stop at embracing good governance structure and processes, though – just as importantly (actually more importantly), they embraced good governance culture and behaviour as well. Today, all manner of incidents, near hits, runway and apron mishaps, in-flight glitches, are systematically, openly and willingly reported. That way other people, independent other people, can review, poke, probe, question and test these, and we can all learn from them. A few years ago, the culture would have led to these being under-reported or even covered up, swept under the rug and kept out of view.

Together, they revolutionized our air safety governance system.

And you probably won’t hear a lot of people in the air safety industry blowing their own horns about this. There are so many intervening variables between governance reform and systemic, sustainable impact, people are unsure if they should credit governance. And there is superstition, a fear of jinxing the whole thing.

So if they won’t say it, I will: Air travel in North America is dramatically safer in the last ten years, and that is demonstrably because the air safety governance system has been completely revamped and reformed.

So when you consider the Wall Street banks and the financial derivatives industry, or any other corporate governance black hole that you experience, and you despair as to whether good governance can ever really make a difference, the answer is yes, it surely can.

It surely has.

If we have the will, the critical mass and the perseverance, it surely will.

Debra Brown, President and CEO of Brown Governance Inc. presents Garry Loewen, Chair of Assiniboine Credit Union’s Board of Directors with the inaugural Brown Governance Co-operative Award for Boardroom Culture.

ACU was recognized for its proactive approach to board governance in the face of a significant change in culture, resulting from its 2007 merger between not two but three credit unions with very different backgrounds. Garry Loewen, chair of ACU’s Board of Directors accepted the award on behalf of the board at CCA’s Institute of Co-operative Leadership in Toronto. “We’re honoured to be the first recipient of this award,” Loewen said. “It validates our hard work to build a new and positive culture post-merger. Boardroom culture goes beyond a board’s structure and considers how board members interact with one another and with management.

In presenting the award to ACU, Debra L. Brown, President and CEO of Brown Governance Inc. said “Culture can be an enabler of governance effectiveness, or a barrier to it. We decided to seek out and honour those brave souls who had invested the time and risk of identifying their boardroom culture, and then took active steps to make sure that this culture enables governance success, not blocks or detracts from it.”

David Brown answers the question: What do we do if our board gets stuck in the details?

In a step that will position corporations in Egypt and the Region as leaders in corporate governance and board capacity, Corde Management Consulting and Brown Governance Inc. have announced they are teaming up.

“This new partnership will empower the momentum of change in the emerging economies of Egypt and the Region,” says Dr. Alaa-Eldin M. Adris, Managing Director of Cairo-based Corde.

“Corporations in the private, health care, government and public sectors will immediately benefit from unparalleled access to corporate governance expertise,” says Debra Brown, President and CEO of Brown Governance Inc.

Previously underserved markets will gain value by combining the international experience and accumulated knowledge of Brown Governance with an understanding of the local environment, culture, regulations and laws offered by Corde.

Clients will be able to capitalize on the expertise of this partnership to achieve a highly demanded value proposition to an underserved market.

See the full press release here.

David Brown answers the questions: “what do we do if ….?”

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Conflict of Interest – What Do We Do?

New Zealand Cooperatives Association republishes Debra Brown’s article from Governance Matters.   Read about it here.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently released a very interesting document, “Corporate Governance Lessons from the Financial Crisis.”  This report concludes that:

“The financial crisis can be to an important extent attributed to failures and weaknesses in corporate governance arrangements. When they were put to a test, corporate governance routines did not serve their purpose to safeguard against excessive risk taking in a number of financial services companies. The risk management systems have failed in many cases due to corporate governance procedures rather than the inadequacy of computer models alone.”