ThemeGovernance, Legal & Risk
CardCard 3 of 66
Questions5 to explore

Agreements & contracts

What you promised & agreed on, put in ink

The agreements your organization has signed are the legal skeleton of everything it does.

Contracts with clients, suppliers, landlords, lenders, and partners all carry obligations that outlast the people who negotiated them. When those people leave or memories fade, the text of the agreement is the only record of what was actually promised.

Keeping a clear register of active agreements, not just a folder of PDFs, means someone can always find the renewal date, the termination clause, or the liability cap without a frantic search. The goal is not to replace a lawyer but to make sure the organization is never surprised by commitments it forgot it made.

For small organizations especially, this often starts with a simple spreadsheet: who signed what, when it expires, and who owns the relationship. That alone is more than most have.

What to capture

For this part of the company brain, what is worth writing down and keeping current. The goal is not a complete archive but a living record that new people can read and returning people can trust.

Active agreements

A register of every active contract: counterparty, scope, value, start date, end date or notice period, and the person responsible for it.

Renewal & exit terms

The specific clauses that govern how each agreement ends or renews, including any automatic rollover periods that are easy to miss.

Signing authority

Who in the organization can sign agreements on behalf of the company, and at what value thresholds that authority changes.

Standard templates

Any standard contract templates the organization uses for its own agreements, and notes on which clauses have been tested or modified over time.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Where do signed contracts actually live, and can anyone other than the person who signed them find them?
Which agreements are coming up for renewal in the next twelve months?
Are there agreements where the original contact at the other party has changed, and have those been updated?
Does everyone with signing authority know what they are and are not allowed to commit to?
What happens to an agreement if the person who owns the relationship leaves?

Things to notice

Automatic renewal clauses are the most common contract trap: the deadline passes, the fee renews, and nobody notices until the invoice arrives.
Verbal or email-based agreements that were never formalized into a document often carry just as much legal weight but are nearly impossible to locate later.
Storing agreements by counterparty name alone makes it hard to find everything related to a theme, such as all data-processing agreements, when you need to review them together.