Governance Health Check
An assessment of an organisation's governance infrastructure maturity — measuring authority clarity, constraint coverage, escalation efficiency, and institutional memory depth.
A governance health check evaluates how well an organisation's governance infrastructure is functioning. It goes beyond compliance checklists (which measure whether rules are documented) to assess whether governance actually works — whether boundaries are clear, authority is unambiguous, and the institution can govern itself.
Key dimensions assessed include: - Authority Clarity: Do people know who can decide what? - Constraint Coverage: Are the organisation's commitments structurally enforced? - Escalation Efficiency: When exceptions occur, are they resolved quickly and consistently? - Documentation Proportionality: Is documentation a byproduct of governance or a burden? - Institutional Memory: Is knowledge retained in the institution or lost when people leave?
A governance health check is not an audit (which looks backwards at compliance). It is a diagnostic (which looks at current structural health).
How Constellation handles this
Constellation offers a free governance health check at constellation.foundation/governance-health-check. It assesses an organisation's governance readiness and identifies where governance debt is accumulating.