BIG Seasons Greetings
December 19, 2025
Building a Strategic Framework for SMEs
January 22, 2026
From 80 Principles to the Few That Matter: Why BIG Governance Starts Here
The BIG CIC recently presented the latest session of BoK Club sessions. The event purpose was to present and discuss the BIG Principles and to examine what it truly takes for an organisation to deliver strategy effectively.
Thankyou to:
Three pages – outline here
That is all the Principles chapter of the Business Integrated Governance (BIG) Body of Knowledge takes. And yet it may be the most important chapter in the whole work.
What does it really take for an organisation to deliver strategy?
The BIG Principles provide a framework that connects purpose, strategy, structure, governance, accountability, information, data, and assurance into a single, coherent operating system for organisational performance.
Across the attendee group, a striking level of alignment emerged. People recognised the same patterns in their own organisations: strategy treated as episodic, governance fragmented across functions, accountability diluted through committees, data inconsistent or untrusted, and assurance focused on process rather than purpose.
What resonated most strongly was the connectedness of the BIG model. These aren’t isolated disciplines. They only work when treated as an integrated whole.
A few themes stood out in discussion
- Purpose → vision → strategy → objectives is the core logic chain. Strategy is the means of achieving purpose, and it must be understood across the organisation — not just at the top.
- Strategy requires an organisation capable of receiving and acting on it. The gap between formal structures and lived structures is one of the biggest barriers to change.
- Strategy management must be ongoing. Balancing BAU, value creation, and change is essential, yet rarely explicit.
- Governance is the mechanism that integrates decision‑making. It must be treated as an operation with a defined model, not an overlay.
- Accountability only works when paired with empowerment. Named individuals, not committees. Authority, resources, time, and information must go with the role.
- Information underpins governance, and data underpins information. Data must be designed for decision‑making, governed properly, and valued culturally.
- Independent assurance keeps the system honest. Challenge must be safe, and assurance must relate to mission‑critical objectives.
The sentiment across the event was clear: the BIG Principles are not only logical — they reflect the real conditions required for strategy to succeed.
Most organisations have fragments of this system. Very few have all of it working coherently.
The opportunity now is to make the whole system visible, deliberate, and operable.
Please see the session introduction here:
Further segments include:
2 – Strategy
3 – Governance
4 – Accountability
5 – Business Support and Leadership
6 – Information, Data and assurance
7 – Reflection
