Setting improvement targets

What the model asks

The governing body and relevant stakeholders should not chase the top maturity level but the level that suits the organization best, because aiming too high uses up resources and makes the organization less responsive. In setting targets they should take into account: how mature the governance conditions are; how mature the applied principles are, the behaviour behind their application, and how efficiently and effectively they are applied; whether the level suits the organization; and what earlier improvement initiatives produced. Targets should cover both a short horizon and a long one, and should be derived from the distance between the level found in evaluation and the level judged appropriate.

What it means when one board controls another

Targets set at group level need an owner at entity level. The model asks for targets that suit the organization, and in a group that means each entity's targets should be traceable to its own purpose as well as the group's. Record both links.

Evidence an evaluator asks for

A maturity rating is a claim about how the group governs. The evidence is what proves it operated. Keep both, and keep them together.

• Improvement targets: Short- and long-term targets per dimension derived from the gap to the appropriate level

Where evaluations commonly find gaps

• Targets set without a determined appropriate level
• Long-term targets absent

How this requirement enters the rating

This unit belongs to the evaluation and improvement sequence. Record the decision it produces, the owner and the date, and keep it with the ratings it explains.

It carries 1 evidence item and 2 common gaps in the model. One item is enough only if it is the artefact that proves the practice operated, not a policy that says it should. Both gaps are seen often enough in first evaluations that the evaluation design should test for them explicitly. The group application on this page is ours; the requirement and evidence are the model's, stated in our own words.

Requirements that sit beside it

• 6.4.1 Determining governance appropriateness
• 6.4.3 Implementing improvement initiatives
• 4.1 General: the purpose of evaluating governance maturity and its three aspects

The three aspects The six-point scale All 35 requirements

Note on the draft: The requirement, evidence and gaps on this page are read from ISO 37004:2023, which the draft states it builds on. The draft's own clause body is not public, so this page does not state it. The clause reference at the top is the draft's public contents heading that this requirement sits under.