More governance isn't the answer. Better governance is.

When Australian investment managers have a product governance problem, the instinct is to add more signoffs, more committees, more documentation. In most cases, that makes things slower without meaningfully reducing risk. The problem isn't the volume of governance, it's the structure of it.

What's the difference between good governance and governance theatre?

Governance theatre is what happens when an organisation adds process in response to a problem without diagnosing what caused it. You get new layers of review, more sign-offs, longer checklists. The appearance of control without the substance.

The tell: it can't answer basic questions. Who made this decision? When? Based on what information? If the process produces paperwork but not answers, it's theatre.

Better governance is structural, it changes what decisions get made, at what point in the product lifecycle, by whom and with what information. It doesn't just document decisions after the fact, it shapes them.

What are the most common product governance failures at fund managers?

In our experience working across boutique and larger Australian fund managers, the failures cluster around three patterns.

Decision rights that aren't specified. Everyone knows there's a process, but nobody can tell you exactly who has authority to approve what. Decisions escalate by default, not because they need senior sign-off, but because the framework doesn't say who else can make them. This is slow, and it puts the wrong decisions in front of the wrong people.

Compliance involved too late. The product team develops something, then brings compliance in at the review stage. Compliance finds problems, the product goes back. This loop can run two or three times on a single launch. The fix isn't more compliance resources, it's involving compliance when the product concept is still flexible, not after it's been built.

Decision-making that happens in email. The formal committee exists, meets quarterly, and approves things on paper. But the real decisions happen in email chains and informal conversations that nobody records. The paper trail doesn't reflect how the organisation works. That's a risk that tends to surface at the worst possible moment.

Does better governance slow things down?

No - and this is the most important point. When a governance framework is clear, products move faster. You're not managing ambiguity at every stage. Decision rights are explicit, everyone knows what needs sign-off and what doesn't, the review sequences run without rework loops.

The fund managers we work with consistently report the same thing after a governance rebuild: the process is faster, not slower, because ambiguity is what was eating the time.

How do you know if your product governance framework is working?

A practical test: take your last three product decisions and trace them through the process. Were they made by the right people? At the right time? With a record you could show a regulator? If the answer to any of those is no or "probably, but I'm not sure", the framework isn't working, regardless of how many steps it has.

Often the problem is simple: the decision rights haven't been updated since the team restructured. Sometimes it's more fundamental. But the starting point is always the same, diagnose the actual failure, not the symptom.

What are you seeing? The pattern shows up differently at different types of managers, and I'm curious where it's biting hardest right now.


*Mayflower Consulting works with Australian fund managers to build product governance frameworks that improve decision-making, not just documentation. Get in touch if this is something you're working through.