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Why does good governance often have a poor reputation while bad governance is highly memorable?

September 21, 2026 Beyond The Plan · Isabel Gray-Garraway

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Good governance is invisible because it works seamlessly—processes flow together, decisions are made, project teams feel supported, and it becomes business as usual. Bad governance is unforgettable because people remember negative experiences far longer than positive ones, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy where poor governance shapes organizational culture for years to come.

The Visibility Gap: Why Success Goes Unnoticed

When governance functions properly, no one talks about it. Teams receive clear decision-making authority, risk is managed transparently, and stakeholders know who decides what and when. The system becomes so routine that its effectiveness disappears into the background. This invisibility is actually governance working as intended—it enables delivery rather than impeding it.

In contrast, as Isabel Gray-Garraway explains in the episode, bad governance creates friction that people actively notice and discuss. Steering committees produce zero decisions. Project teams guess their way forward. Accountability vanishes. These experiences stick in organizational memory far more powerfully than smooth delivery ever does.

The Storytelling Problem: Offices as Gossip Networks

In office environments, people don't gather to celebrate when governance works. They compete to share worst-governance stories with colleagues, reinforcing a shared narrative of dysfunction. One person recalls a project where unclear authority delayed decisions for months. Another describes a steering committee that never actually decided anything. These anecdotes spread, shaping how new employees and incoming leaders perceive governance long before they experience it firsthand.

This creates a feedback loop: bad governance experiences carry forward to future projects and organizations, shaping negative expectations around governance itself. The reputation compounds even as specific circumstances change.

"Governance is the structure and systems that ensure the right people make the right decisions at the right time about project and delivery risk."

The reputational damage of poor governance persists far longer than the incidents that caused it. As discussed at length in this podcast, the Australian government's RoboDebt program illustrates this: six years after the program completed in 2019, reputational damage around governance failures remained strong enough to warrant a Royal Commission review in 2023. The $2 billion in refunds and compensation became shorthand for governance gone wrong, defining how organizations subsequently approached risk and decision-making.

Breaking the Cycle

Recognizing this pattern is the first step toward change. Good governance doesn't need theatrical celebration—it needs explicit acknowledgment that it's working and why. When project teams understand that clear authority structures, transparent risk conversations, and timely decisions are the backbone of successful delivery, governance stops being invisible and becomes recognized as strategic infrastructure.

The challenge is cultural: shifting from a default narrative of dysfunction to one where good governance is acknowledged as the foundation of reliable outcomes. This requires leadership that actively talks about governance as enablement, not burden, and creates space for positive governance stories to compete with the negative ones that naturally dominate office conversation.

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