The Accountability Gap.
Every year, boards across Africa make thousands of decisions. Strategic pivots, capital allocations, policy changes, executive appointments. These decisions carry enormous weight — they shape institutions, affect stakeholders, and determine whether organisations thrive or stagnate.
Yet a staggering number of these decisions never translate into action.
The problem is not that boards make bad decisions. The problem is what happens after the boardroom door closes. Minutes are drafted weeks later, often from imperfect memory. Action items are buried in dense documents. Owners are unclear. Deadlines drift. By the next meeting, the cycle repeats — and the previous quarter's decisions are quietly forgotten.
We call this the accountability gap: the space between a decision being made and evidence of its execution.
Why Traditional Tools Fail.
Board portals digitised the wrong thing. They made it easier to distribute documents, but they did nothing to track whether decisions actually led to outcomes. They are digital filing cabinets — organised, perhaps, but fundamentally passive.
Email follow-ups create another illusion of accountability. An email sent is not an action completed. A reminder sent is not evidence gathered. The tools most organisations rely on were never designed for decision lifecycle management.
The Decision Intelligence Approach.
Decision intelligence treats every board decision as the beginning of a trackable, measurable, accountable journey. It asks four questions at every stage:
1. Before the meeting: Is every decision-maker properly informed? (CLARIFY)
2. During the meeting: Is the decision captured with full context — rationale, dissent, conditions? (CAPTURE)
3. After the meeting: Are actions assigned, tracked, and escalated when overdue? (CHASE)
4. Between meetings: Can the organisation recall what was decided, why, and what happened? (REMEMBER)
This is the approach Governa was built around. Not another document repository. A system of record for how institutions decide, act, and learn.
What Changes.
When organisations adopt decision intelligence, the results are measurable:
- Decision clarity improves because every decision is recorded with structured context
- Execution rates increase because every action has an owner, a deadline, and evidence requirements
- Institutional memory strengthens because the decision graph connects related decisions across time and organisational levels
The boardroom becomes not just a place where decisions are made, but the starting point of a visible, traceable path to execution.
Getting Started.
The first step is acknowledging that your current tools were not designed for this. The second step is deciding to close the gap.
Governa offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card required. Start with a single workspace — perhaps your board or executive committee — and see what happens when decisions finally have somewhere to go.