Remarkable content and insights at the BoardSource Leadership Forum.  Here are ideas that I am excited to explore further.

Daniel Forrester

• Leaders are spending their time in the following ares: 30% interruptions, 25% content creation, 20% meetings, 15% absorbing content, and 5% thinking.
• What books are you re-reading to confirm or challenge your original assumptions?
• Big Ideas–>Culture–>Dialogue are three areas where we can be obsessive

Cathy Trower: Stage V Thinking

• The five stages of thinking
  • Stage 1: collective, analyzing, interpreting
  • Stage 2: Strategic decision-making
  • Stage 3: Strategic planning
  • Stage 4: Execution.  Reviewing progress against the plan
  • Stage 5: Sensemaking
    • Engage board members as thought partners, not technicians
    • Distinguish between discussion (action focused) vs dialogue (exploration and new ideas)

Thomas McLaughlin: Nonprofit Collaboration

• Alliance is required for economic, resource, and operational sharing.  Mergers required in a corporate to corporate union.
• Corporate structures are allergic to mergers so they need time and both parties have to win.
• Honoring the brand is important.
• Culture is exponentially more important that strategy.
• Ask, what does success look like?  Who else has done this before?  What did the merger look like?

Richard Mittenthal: Governance 3.0

• Consider strategic initiatives that embrace the entire ecosystem your organization occupies, not just your enterprise in isolation.
• Build board capacity by providing board with the vocabulary and technical understanding necessary to discuss programs.
• Distinguish between collaboration and collective impact.  Collaboration does not give-up much whereas collective impact sacrifices for the whole.
• Is your organization breaking down the board walls by inviting external guests and taking field trips?

Gigi Woodruff: Advancing Governance

• Search YMCA’s Board Leadership Competency Model for great resources
• Six Competencies
  • Inclusion
  • Influence
  • Decision-Making
  • Philanthropy
  • Emotional Maturity
  • Functional Expertise
• Ask the board: How will we show-up?  How are we related to the bigger opportunity? Which competencies are you going to commitment to during the next year?
• Who on the board asks, what just happened?
• Recruit new board members by allowing them to tell their stories and sell themselves to you
  

Holly Duckwork: Ctrl+Alt+Believe

• Reboot your organization by transcending history and hierarchy
  
• Dying organizations have three common themes: fear, doubt, lack.  Growing organizations: faith, courage, abundance
  
• Ask, what are we optimistic about?
• Combine two best practices to create a new practice
• Zappos top five core values are remarkable
  • Wow through service, embrace and drive change, create fun and weirdness, be adventurous and creative, and pursue growth