“Governance is like parenting. Everyone just kind of assumes you'll know how to do it, and they don't really give you much instruction on how to go about doing it,” said Rick Funston, CEO of governance consultant Funston Advisory Services.
That’s one of the reasons why Funston decided to write his latest book, “Transforming the Dialogue: Fiduciary Essentials,” which serves as a handbook for fiduciaries of public retirement plans and multiemployer plans.
When becoming a fiduciary and assuming the responsibilities that come with it, “there is no forgiveness period; there’s no learning curve, and there’s just an enormous amount of material for people to try and digest,” Funston said. “So, this (book) was just one way to try and get another resource into their hands that they could use as needed.”
Through his business, Funston offers an online governance learning resource known as Board Smart, which goes hand in hand with his new book, published March 31. He took the material available on Board Smart, which includes podcasts and transcripts, “and condensed it down into highlights of each of the major topics,” he said, so the book can serve as an overview of the program’s material.
In the book, Funston aims to create a clear framework for fiduciaries, which includes their purpose, their essential relationships and their duties. The book also covers what Funston calls oversight responsibility, which often presents a challenge of how to “oversee without getting involved in the day-to-day operations and trying to become part of management.”
Since starting Funston Advisory Services in 2010, Funston said the biggest change he’s seen over the last 15 years is the velocity of change itself, citing events such as the COVID-19 pandemic. He contended that fiduciaries “need to be able to have a framework and a lens to look at these changes and figure out how are they going to adapt from a policy perspective.”
