Whether your group is informal or formal, incorporated or unincorporated, at its core are people. Each person has their own roles and responsibilities, and relationships with one another. In this topic, we introduce the key players in an organisation, community or nation. These are your board, management, staff and community members.

Governance is a bit like footy

You can compare the way governance works in your organisation, community or nation to the way a footy team works. A footy team is a set of relationships, roles and responsibilities between a group of people who want to play and win the footy game together. A footy team doesn’t operate alone. They have their community, fans and club members. These are the people who barrack for their team to win, and who the players look to for moral support when they play. Sometimes, whole families have been loyal members of a footy club for many generations.

A footy match depends on all the players, captain and coach. Everyone needs to understand their role and perform it to the best of their ability – for their members, the public and their sponsors. The same is true for governing a group.

For example, when a footy team goes onto the field to play, all the players must know their position and role in the team’s game plan. Each player brings their different skills and they play together as a team.

The captain leads the players on the field. The captain encourages and guides the players, and helps them use the tactics they have practised. The coach sets the strategies and tactics for the game. They stand back and watch the players play. At quarter time, the coach assesses how the game is going, and gives any new instructions to the captain. It’s then the captain’s job to guide any strategy changes on the field.

How effective would your football team be if there was no coach? Or if the players did not know what position they were meant to play? Or the coach and captain argued about strategy on the sideline? Or if the team and club ignored their members or sponsors?

Your team has a better chance of winning a game (and the premiership) if:

• the coach and captain develop a strategic game plan
• communicate the plan to the players
• the players understand what they must do as individuals and as part of a team
• the players have the skills and resources they need to execute the plan.

It’s the same for any organisation, community or nation working together to achieve their goals.

Field of relationships

Your group’s players

The table below compares the role of ‘key players’ within an organisation, community or nation with key players in a Marngrook team. Marngrook means ‘game ball’ – now known as Australian Rules football.

If you’re not sure who the equivalent key players are in your group, check your constitution or rule book.

Remember that roles sometimes have different names. These names can be different for different groups. Incorporated and unincorporated organisations may also use different names, for example, unincorporated organisations might not have a board. We’ve included some alternatives, but there may be more. All groups are different. If you think something or someone is missing – add them in!

Your people and your organisations

Because many nations, communities and groups today exercise their self-governance through incorporated or unincorporated organisations, we focus this section on the key people who take on governing roles and responsibilities in such organisations, and their relationships with each other.

The governance of organisations is different to the cultural governance of a First Nation, clan, tribe or extended family group. However, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations operate within a wider environment of these influential cultural networks, as well as their allies, partners, and external stakeholders.

The cultural legitimacy and mandate of an organisation to govern comes not only from the legislative frameworks under which they were created, but from their members and cultural ways of governing. Organisations work at a cultural interface where they have to balance often competing expectations from these.

We can think of organisational governance as being the system of formally structured decision-making authority, direction, control and accountability exercised by particular people to accomplish the overall vision of an organisation. The management and staff put such systems into operation. In an organisational context, management involves the process of administration, coordinating and using resources (including human) in line with the board’s policies and strategic direction to achieve its objectives.

The nation and community members who are represented and served by your organisations sit at the top of self-governance. Within an organisational structure there is commonly a board or governing body of some kind, a set of managers and executives, and a range of staff. We can peel back the governing work of these different people, just like the way a footy team plays the game.