I introduced the ‘Management Control and Enablement Framework’ (MCEF) in a previous blog, MCEFing the Gap – Introduction.  In this blog I hope to address one possible reaction, “Great, Another Friggin’ Framework”.

MCEF – Not Another Framework!

Organizations are surrounded by voluntary and mandated control concepts.  These includes frameworks, statutes (e.g. for taxation and government compliance), accounting /IT/ international standards.  All of these standards compete for management attention and organizational resources.  Many of these standards have organizational success as an overriding objective.  Despite this sometimes positive intent, it is questionable whether any organization can ever be perfectly compliant with all of the mandated laws let alone frameworks that are voluntary.

A Framework’s Framework!

MCEF can be seen as an over-arching way to consider Control and Enablement of an organization to contextualize existing ways to manage and support an organization.

On the far left of the above graphic are the laws and standards that primarily focus on control.  They include things such as legislation, societal norms or basic concepts of human decency and human rights.  They are included to provide the absolute outer edge of the control functions.  Their companion concepts on the right are lassie-faire capitalism, human ingenuity and personal motivations.  These two outer boundaries represent the best and the worst of capitalism, organizations, and the over all human condition – the stuff in the middle represents (to borrow from – or bastardize – Freud) the Ego’s ongoing compromise between organizational Id (Enablement) and societal Superego (Control).

Other frameworks, standards, laws, etc. can be mapped onto the MCEF.  There are a few things that are purely Control or purely Enablement.  External legislation against child labour is perhaps an example of something that is pure control.  Concepts on leadership, employee motivation and a higher purpose for an organization approach the right boundary organizational Enablement.

Filling the Gap

MCEF came about because of a frustration with COSO on how to make the leap from good sounding principles to the mechanics and specific of implementing internal controls within an organization.  From the above graphic it is obvious that COSO’s role is not to enable an organization but to identify the ‘things’ that would dis-enable the organization.  To do this managers need to use a well stock tool box of things such as Six Sigma, business process engineering and employee motivation. This is how to fill the COSO gap.