Eleven members, one system board, and a delegation chart nobody under sixty could quote. Rulings drifted upwards until the air thinned, then floated back down unmade. The system’s own review put it gently: “accountability is diffuse.” Every insider decoded the meaning. Nothing was getting decided.

Federations collapse in a characteristic way. Each member grips its autonomy, the centre grips its privilege, and the ground between them turns to marsh, swallowing urgent items without trace. Committees multiply to bridge the gaps; each new committee excavates two more. When I arrived, a routine property ruling needed nine signatures yet belonged to nobody.

We refused to start with the diagram. Instead we lifted thirty authentic verdicts from the previous year — appointments, budgets, closures, partnerships — and traced each: who proposed, who delayed, who concluded, who answered. The resulting chart implicated everyone. Half the verdicts had no decider at all, merely a parade of consultees.

In a federation, the riddle is never who leads. It is who concludes what — written down, where all can see it.

The fresh settlement ran to four pages. A decision charter in three tiers: items members settle alone, items the system settles jointly, and items kept for the centre — each tier with a named decider, a deadline, and a duty to explain. Anything the charter skipped defaulted downwards, to the member. Ambiguity finally had a postal address.

Launch needed the greatest caution. We tested the charter on live rulings instead of declaring it doctrine, and let a quarter of results win over the sceptics. The nine-signature property saga shrank to a two-signature ruling with a published rationale. Autonomy, it turned out, was never accountability’s enemy — fuzziness was.

What fellow federations can steal

  • Trace authentic verdicts before redrawing diagrams.
  • Fix a decider, a deadline and a duty to explain onto every tier.
  • Let open questions sink downwards, never upwards.
  • Test on live rulings; let outcomes enlist the sceptics.

Two years on the charter sits in its third edition — amended by the system’s own hand, which is wholly the point. Governance its users cannot amend is decoration. This version is applied, challenged and polished, the highest praise any framework can earn.

Jordan Ellery

Jordan Ellery steers public institutions through governance redesign. Sister engagements are sketched on the advisory page →