Dont Fence me in…

Before You Remove the Fence

In our careers we always eneter organisations that are in the middle of change.

A restructure is underway ,governance is being rewritten ,a commercial strategy is being refreshed ,a capital project has been redesigned ,someone is looking at outsourcing a service and another team is trying to simplify decision-making.

The language is usually the same.

"We need to be leaner."

"We need to move faster."

"We need to modernise."

Sometimes they're absolutely right.

Sometimes they're about to make life much harder for themselves.

The question that rarely gets asked

There's an idea known as Chesterton's Fence.

It's beautifully simple.

If you come across a fence and you don't know why it was built, don't pull it down until you understand why someone put it there.

Only then can you decide whether it still needs to be there.

It sounds obvious ,yet organisations do the opposite every day.

We inherit a process that feels slow or a committee that seems pointless ,a policy that everyone complains about or the reporting line that makes little sense.

The temptation is to sweep it away.

Job done. Except it rarely is.

Every fence has a story

Nearly every piece of governance I've ever looked at exists because something happened.

Someone signed a contract they shouldn't have.

A project overspent.

A building failed.

Purpose was put at risk.

Health and safety was overlooked.

Trust between a board and executive broke down.

The process wasn't created because someone fancied another meeting on a Tuesday afternoon.

It was usually built to stop the same mistake happening twice.

The problem is that organisations are brilliant at keeping the process.

They're terrible at remembering the reason.

People retire ,teams move on.

Chief Executives come and go and trustees change.

A decade later, nobody remembers why the fence was built.

All they know is that it gets in the way.

Fresh eyes are valuable. Fresh certainty isn't.

I love seeing new leaders ask awkward questions.

They should.

Fresh eyes spot things the rest of us have become blind to.

They challenge assumptions.

They ask why and that's healthy.

The danger comes when curiosity disappears too quickly.

We have all watched organisations flatten structures before they understood how decisions were really made.

We have watched governance stripped back because it was labelled bureaucracy, only for risks to reappear six months later.

I've seen commercial models rewritten before anyone understood where the money was actually being made.

I've watched capital projects value engineered without anyone asking what the operational consequences would be ten years after practical completion.

You save £500,000 today.

You spend another £2 million operating around the compromise over the next twenty years.

That isn't value engineering -It's moving the bill.

Venues are no different

The cultural sector isn't immune from this.

If anything, it's more exposed.

Everyone agrees organisations need to become more commercial.

I agree ,but becoming more commercial isn't about copying what everyone else is doing.

It's about understanding your own business properly first.

Before you outsource catering...

Do you understand why it's underperforming?

Before you lease another building... Do you know the whole-life cost?

Before you merge departments... Have you mapped how work actually flows?

Before you remove a committee...Do you know what risk it was created to manage?

Those aren't barriers to change but they're the foundations of good change.

The most useful question you can ask

When you first enter an organisation I'm usually less interested in the answer than the story.

Why is this done this way?

What happened?

Who decided this?

What problem were they trying to solve?

Sometimes the answer is, "We've no idea."

Ironically, that's often the moment the real work begins.

Because if nobody understands why something exists, they can't make an informed decision about whether it should stay.

They can only guess. Leadership shouldn't be based on guesswork.

Don't preserve every fence

This isn't an argument for keeping everything.

Far from it ,Some fences absolutely need removing ,some governance is outdated.

Some processes belong to a different era and some organisations carry habits that have become anchors.

The answer isn't to preserve every fence.

The answer is to understand every fence before deciding what to do with it.

Repair it ,Move it,Replace it Or take it down.

But make it a conscious decision -Not an impatient one.

Change is easy. Understanding is harder.

The older I get, the less impressed I am by leaders who announce change on day one.

I'm far more interested in those who spend their first few months asking questions.

Listening ,Walking the building ,Talking to people.

Understanding the history before trying to write the future.

Because that's where the best decisions come from.

Not certainty but Understanding.

The next time you find yourself looking at a process, a committee, a governance structure or a capital scheme that feels frustrating, stop for a moment.

Ask yourself one question.

Do I know why this fence was built?

If the answer is no...

That conversation is probably more valuable than the restructure you're about to announce.

Here’s to a bright future rooted in our rich past 🧔🏻‍♂️

#Leadership #Governance #Operations #CommercialStrategy #Museums #Heritage #EvenKeel