Governance theatre? How to see future reality and take action

Stephen Ram
Sep 29, 2025
4 min read

We’ve all seen it: a polished status pack, lots of green and amber, a tidy list of “immediate issues.” The end date never moves. Meanwhile, short-term deliverables slip a day at a time. Everyone nods, actions are noted, and we all leave… happy enough.

That’s governance theatre — and yes, it’s living in a false reality. Sometimes for “good” reasons (project data is thin, so people steer by gut). Sometimes for worse reasons (self-preservation and message-management). It doesn’t matter which: the programme is trending to failure — and that’s what the meeting should be about: how to fix it.

Most programmes track the easy, backward-looking stuff - cost, resourcing, time. Looking forward, even those numbers drift into guesswork. And the important, purpose-led measures — benefit, ROI, business outcomes, strategic realisation - are missing.

That means you can’t see strategic divergence - the growing gap between expectation and reality - which compounds over time. Catch it early and you can fix it. Leave it, and it quickly builds to a level where the change needed to get back on track is insurmountable.

The irony is that senior leaders are excellent at fixing problems - tough calls, trade-offs, action. But if you’re living in make-believe, there’s nothing real to fix. Often your instinct is “this is worse than the deck admits,” but if that truth isn’t on the table, you can’t fix it.

What you’d see (the symptoms)

Narrative over measurement. Status built on the story people want to tell, not data-led insights from systems of record; classic PMO rhythm: “What would you like in the status pack this week?”
Human optimism as default. People are optimistic about future capability and hugely underestimate how bad things are; no learned performance, no reality check.
Shoot-the-messenger culture. Bad news is labelled negativity; people feel stress raising it.
“Everyone knows, the slides don’t.” The team can feel it slipping; the deck stays green/amber with “a few issues we can work through,” only going red close to the end.
Reactive decision-making. Wait for a problem to hit, then act.
AI seen as a silver bullet. ChatGPT-style tools bolted onto a broken MI/governance setup, expected to “fix reporting,” producing eloquent summaries of partial or late data - or, as a colleague put it, “a stool rolled in glitter.”

Why it’s happening (the root causes)

Partial perspective. What’s easy gets measured - tasks, cost, resources, time - but purpose metrics (benefit, ROI, outcomes) are missing.
Poor/incomplete change data. Foundational project data isn’t decision-grade, so it’s easy to unpick.
Backward-looking MI. The past is tracked accurately; the future is predominantly gut feel.
No view to the end. Horizons look 3 months (maybe a year) rather than the full 2–3 year investment period, so no realistic end-to-end forecast and no landing visibility.
Learned velocity unknown/unused. No required vs actual throughput; feasibility is a story, not a number, and learned reality isn’t used to project the future.
Human nature. Optimism bias and conflict-avoidance mean we overestimate what can be done next month/quarter and underestimate how bad it is today - the gap is routinely ~100–200% - fueling strategic divergence while the pack stays calm.
Tool-first AI thinking. Adding yet another tool - including GenAI - to a broken system won’t fix steering; without foundations, AI just amplifies noise.

Impact — why this matters

If you can’t see reality, you can’t take corrective action while there’s still time.

That’s exactly how you end up in the McKinsey–Oxford pattern: big programmes landing ~45% over budget, ~7% over time, and delivering ~56% less value than planned.
58% of companies still rely mainly on gut/experience to make decisions.
Our own Cedus experience over 14 years echoes the human-factor problem: instinctive “it’s not that bad” calls are routinely 100–200% out.
The story is simple - gut feel is exactly how you end up with green–green–green–red.

To summarise: if your organisation is experiencing governance theatre, you are very likely to be in the ~70% failure rate of strategic change achieving its target objectives - i.e., trapped in a false reality.

What to do now (the solution) — in plain bullets

We’ve lived with governance theatre for too long — it’s not hard to fix. Close a small capability gap and do the following:

Ensure a summary-level dataset covering all components of change — strategy, target outcomes, £ benefits, scope, cost, resources, time, ROI - is in place and kept current.
Measure learned velocity weekly and adjust plans based on past performance (required vs actual throughput) so forecasts are realistic.
Prove data quality and provenance - measure completeness, timeliness, and accuracy so leaders can trust the numbers. This is also the foundation for AI; without it, AI simply amplifies rubbish.
Forecast realistically to investment end and make any strategic divergence visible.
Steer heavily data-led (not dogmatically) - blend judgement with evidence, but let the data lead the conversation and the decisions.
Encourage challenge; don’t shoot the messenger - reward early problem-raising; hiding issues is what gets frowned upon.
Tune the factory (horsepower) as a standing agenda item - spend ~50% of governance time on capacity so the engine room can deliver the required output.

Close

One last myth to kill: this isn’t difficult or expensive to fix. With a bit of thinking, and the desire to face into the truth it’s entirely doable.

If you’re happy living in a false reality, carry on with the theatre and the blindfold.

If you’re not, close the capability gap and use predictive analytics that show where you’re really headed - then take the action to succeed. Even better do that, and you’ll finally give AI something trustworthy and useful to work with.

Want a head start? I’m happy to share our recommended summary data template - the exact fields leaders need to steer this way. See it and you’ll understand how straightforward this can be. Just contact us for details.

Do you see it this way? What's the worst governance theatre you’ve encountered, or the best fix that actually changed the trajectory?