Nonprofit Boards

Board Nominations

The BBC ran an interesting interview of members of British Parliment who were stepping down after long careers.  A question that struck me as meaningful during the radio piece was, ‘what will you miss when you leave?’  To borrow that question and ask it of your board members should offer some meaningful insight into what they treasured most about their service.  By asking such an open-ended question you get an assessment of your organization’s culture and collegiality. 

One way to think about your board nominations is to consider who you would invite to on a backcountry winter yurt trip.  There are numerous responsibilities that need to be accounted for (melting snow, splitting fire wood, cooking, route finding, assembling group gear).  You need a variety of skill sets.  Who would you consider?  Who would exhibit favorable team expedition behavior?  Considering not only the talents of each individual but there ability to build chemistry among the team has increasingly become a valued attribute.  Of course, not all board nominations start at the talent level.  The New York Times ran a pieces yesterday that confirmed a trend that many of us are seeing repeated across the sector.  Advancing new board members with money to give is the highest priority, even if an organization is saying come and serve on our board as an ATM.  I believe there is a better way to engage major donors than slotting them all onto the board but that is another post.

What has worked so successfully for your enterprise? 

Loading the Lift

Adding a new member to your nonprofit board is a bit like managing a lift line at a ski area.  A good governance process is hopefully always in the process of adding potential board members to the line and then guiding towards the loading area.  You are checking their interest and measuring their skills in the same way a lift attendant checks a ski pass.  The lift line provides an opportunity to have a conversation about their interest and prepare them for the experience.  Ultimately your goal is to load the lift without having to slow or stop the chair.  The skiers on chairlift have a common goal, to keep it going as efficiently and safely as possible.  If the lift needs to come to a stop it feels like all momentum has been lost.  A long stop feels painful, especially when you are out-of-sight of the loading or unloading zones and have no idea what incident has taken place.  When you add board members who is not prepared or oriented, they typically require assistance and the loading process comes to stop while they get prepared.  Or an unprepared board member stands watching multiple chairs go by without loading before they load themselves, this slows the nomination process for many organizations.  A inefficient loading process can be frustrating and demoralizing to the rest of the board and limit the ski lifts capacity.


How do you use your nominating process as a chance to have a lift-line conversation with potential board members?  How do you prepare them for what to expect?  Do you partner them with an existing board member to ride your ski lift the first time?

(Image: conorneill.com)

Serving Somebody Elses Time

One of my mantras when making major decisions for any enterprise is to consider the perspective of the board who follow me.  If a board’s term limit is six years, I am thinking about how a decision today is going to impact the board seven years from now when nobody on the current board will most likely be in the room.  Does the opportunity seem like the appropriate course of action today and years from now?

The downside to poor decision-making is that you are asking a future board to serve time for you.  In some cases poor judgment today is the equivalent of a jail term from a future board.  Consider the investment committees that positioned an enterprise’s funds with Madoff; the board that took on massive debt to build a new facility; a marketing campaign using a celebrity who is later charged with illegal activities.

How do you keep a longer term perspective?  Who speaks for the future board when strategic decisions are being considered?  Do you document the criteria you used to make a decision?

Your Third Board Chair

In the independent school world there is a myth (and some fact) to the notion that at Head of School is most likely to be dismissed by the third person to serve as board chair during the Head’s tenure.  When I heard this the other day it struck me as funny and then I began to consider the circumstances around the idea and it began to make sense.  If you take into account the following points you begin to see a trend.

  • Board members at many independent schools serve term limits, usually ranging from 4-8 years of total service on the board.
  • The chair of the board is typically in leadership for 2-4 years.
  • Members of the Search Committee that hired the Head of School are typically a mix of board members, faculty and community members.
  • The majority of the student body and current parents will graduate from a boarding school in 3-4 or 7 years for a K-12 program.
  • Strategic plans at most schools usually range 5-7 years.

If you begin to map out the lifecycle of the board, faculty, students and current parents you discover that majority of the individuals that were at the school when the Head was hired are now onto college, other jobs or other boards.  The most invested group, the people that sat through all the interviews and selected the candidate from among all the applicants and the Board that ultimately hired the Head are usually no longer on scene.  The third Board Chair is usually an individual who came onto the board with the Head already at the helm.  This creates a different dynamic and relationship shift from those that were invested in hiring and supporting their candidate.

It is not necessary that this trend continues.  What strategies can a Head of School and the first two board chairs take to make sure the Head of School continues to succeed?  I propose a couple strategies:

  1. Be transparent: As Head of School connect with all members of the board.  Find their talents and help them succeed.  Know what they want to accomplish during their tenure on the board.  Find out what projects keep their passion going.  Determine who you can confide in, who will be a megaphone for you and who is going to ask the tough questions.  The more you develop a one-on-one relationship with each member of the board, the less likely the whole board will allow a few board members to cast doubt on your leadership without strong evidence.
  2. Plan ahead: Do not wait until the six days before new officers are elected to consider new leadership.  Think years ahead.  Who will keep the board chemistry at an optimal level?  Who can manage the process of leading the board?  Who is comfortable stepping-back from being involved in the content of each conversations but helps all the voices be heard?  Who has a stable relationship with the Head of School?  I am not always a fan of the Vice-President succeeding the President because a great Vice-President plays a different role than a President but if succession is done this way be intentional, you are committing to your board’s trajectory for the next couple years.
  3. Talk with the Head of School:  I am amazed at how many groups elect a new leader of the board without talking to their Head of School.  The Board Chair-Head of School relationship is essential to your school’s success, why not engage the Head of School in the process?  A ten minute uncomfortable discussion about challenging peronalities is much easier than the damage 2 to 4 years of conflict can do in the board room.
  4. Mentor: Existing board chairs have a sense for who might manage the duties of board chair most effectively.  In many cases it is a strong individual but not necessarily the most opinionated nor the biggest donor or the most connected.  Who is going to bring out the best in each one of the board members?  Who can handle the peer-to-peer relationship that forms the basis for self-governance?  Who can work the network, making sure everyone is informed and focused on the major issues and challenges?
  5. Build criteria:  Have your Governance or Nominating Committee write-out the criteria for future board leadership.  If I want to buy a house in your town and ask for a suggestion you probably would be at a lost as to where to start.  If I say I want a recently constructed home with at least three bedrooms and access to a park in your neighborhood you could probably name a specific home for sale.  Why not paint a picture of what your school needs before you drive aimlessly down the streets?
  6. Strategic Plan: If you have a plan (why don’t you), it should provide a very accurate road map about where the school is headed.  This should not be a surprise to anyone.  Use it as guide to determine who can lead the board to meet the goals established by the plan.  The plan should also clearly outline the expectations of the Head of School.  If the plan is expiring it provides a great opportunity for a collaborative planning effort between both the board and administration.

 The third board chair should not be the ghost of Christmas Future.  It can be an orderly and thoughtful evolution of the school’s leadership.  Understanding the potential challenges is fundamental to your school’s success.  What would it feel like if the third board chair for your Head of School was the best one yet?

Checklists

Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a great reminder of how a simple approach builds long term performance and consistency.  Although the checklists reviewed by the author were developed and tested in the medical world with an aim at reducing infections and deaths the tactic is applicable far beyond the ICU.  The application of a checklist strategy to business and nonprofit worlds are evident and meaningful.  When preparing for a consulting engagement I often use a checklist to outline the client’s outcomes and manage the process.  Although it feels a bit like baby-steps it helps reduce the number of times a board retreat tries to do a 180 in the middle of the day because I missed the client’s intended outcome.  Why re-invent the wheel every time you appoint a new Chair for your organization’s largest fundraiser.  Imagine how much easier it would be to recruit a new volunteer to lead your next major event if there was clarity about the role and a template to follow.  Another opportunity exists with the orientation of new board members.  Many new board members take a couple meetings to get up to speed and begin contributing to the board’s deliberation.  Does a document exist within your organization to get the newest members involved more rapidly and effectively?  A few examples of unique checklists:

  • An outgoing Board Chair leaving a checklist for the incoming Board Chair.  The checklist outlines some basic strategies for general responsiblities over the course of the coming year.  Illustrations from the list: meet with each board member individually twice a year to hear their needs and thoughts; hold an annual gathering with the Advisory Council.
  • Board nominating procedures.  Have a checklist for the process that starts with identifying new board members and continues from cultivation to nomination.  Few boards have a wait-list of potential new board members and therefore the process is best not left for the last minute when it appears unprofessional and the pool of potential new board members may not be as anticipated.
  • Assessment of the CEO should be a consistent and transparent process.  How un-nerving for a CEO or Board Chair if the proceedure needs to be recreated each year or is only considered when a problem exists.
  • Roles of the board.  Give a checklist to each board member and allow them to mark the responsibilities as they accomplish them:  80% attendance of board meeting, Annual Fund contribution, serve on one committee or task force, attend three programs, advocate for the enterprise in a peer or business circle, write thank notes to 20 donors… the list is customized to your organization’s greatest needs but the steps are clear.



I have encouraged clients to take a few moments to design a simple checklist for some element of their organization that is critical but deemed reasonably simple.  One enterprise created a checklist for reviewing the financial statement during a board meeting.  Initially, only a few board member really knew what they were looking at during the report.  Now the Finance Chair walks step-by-step through the reports and everyone at the meeting understands the information and can truly fulfill their responsibility as a fiduciary.


What checklist might be most meaningful to your organization?  How would it change your organization’s effectiveness if you got the process correct almost every time?

Decision Making IQ

A collective belief on some of the organizations I partner with has been that people with high IQ’s are likely to be better decision-makers. You surround yourself with the best and brightest and then help them excel is the mantra of many leaders. It makes less sense if you think about the outliers- those gifted individuals who have put in 10,000 hours or more perfecting their craft. During a crisis you often see leadership turn to the retired veteran for counsel. Not out of deference but perhaps they have seen something similar during their lifetime and can offer perspective that comes with having been at the helm for a long enough period of time. Great decision-makers comprehend what they understand and readily ask for more information or input to clarify the voids. Regardless of IQ, this is a unique talent and does not come from a single metric.

What would it look like if we created a measure of decision-making abilities? Would there be a reasonable metric? Guy Kawasaki offered the following excerpt in his Alltop blog:

IQ isn’t everything

“A high IQ is like height in a basketball player,” says David Perkins, who studies thinking and reasoning skills at Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “It is very important, all other things being equal. But all other things aren’t equal. There’s a lot more to being a good basketball player than being tall, and there’s a lot more to being a good thinker than having a high IQ.”

If You Felt Like You Were Going In Circles

You knew it was true, the feeling that you were going in circles. Turns out we are all prone to re-trace our steps and circle back on ourselves when we lack reference points. I am reminded of hearing the same suggestion brought annually by the newest board members of an arts organization. They all saw there was a flaw in the membership program. The new board member (without prompting from others or conspiracy) made the identical suggestion each year. You could almost hear a chuckle in the room from the veteran board members. It took a few years for the ‘new’ members to become the majority on the board and the suggestion was adopted. Turned out to be a smashing success. Just took a few trips around the calendar before enough people became comfortable with not repeating the old course.

Great article about a human navigation in the wilderness: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/science/21circles.html

Nine is Devine

Imagine for a second, your best team experience. Think of an achievement in sports, theater, school, volunteering, travel, etc.

What was the team experience? How many people do you recall being involved in the group? When I do this exercise in a consulting engagement most people say their memory involves 5 to 7 other individuals. Nothing scientific, just anecdotal evidence.

I am more convinced that nine individuals on a board or committee is the ideal size. Here is my rationale. Studies have shown that groups of ten and over trend towards parliamentary communication patterns. There is less of a collaborative conversation and more often the speaker addresses the Chair (or leader) instead of the entire group. Individuals feel less accountable and are more willing to miss meetings because they are convinced that their point of view will be represented by another member of the board. The dynamics of discussions take on a different chemistry as group size changes. I am not saying the Supreme Court gets it right every time but it is interesting to me that there are nine justices. The other trait boards over nine tend to exhibit is to start adding as many major donors as they can to the board. Major donors clearly have passion and the talent to invest significant funds into a cause. That does not immediately make them great decision makers. I encourage groups to focus on identifying a committed group of nine individuals who represent diverse points of view and are willing to be accountable for the decisions they make. You can always expand but it takes years to contract for most organizations.

As a former firefighter and EMT, I took an Incident Command class as a prerequisite course. One of the skills you learned was to be very clear about who you were assigning a specific task. If you were dealing with bystanders then you would either refer to them by name or acknowledge them by saying, ‘you in the red shirt, I need you to to call 911, now.’ Make the same statement without making eye contact and assigning responsibility to a crowd of on-lookers and your chances of success are much diminished.

What has been your most effective group sizes when it comes to making decisions in a team setting? In reality, does your preferred group size meet reality? Are your boards and committees larger or smaller than your preference?

House Rules

Have you ever been in a casino? Had thoughts of taking a few chips from a unsuspecting table mate and cashing them in for quick profit (the plot of many Vegas movies it seems)? I suspect most of you don’t act on this impulse. Why? The ‘rules of the house’ are understood. The casino retains the right to refuse service to anyone not meeting its guidelines, apparently this includes winning too frequently so I have heard. Have you ever checked to see where the rules of the house are posted? Are they prominently displayed on the gaming table, wall, backside of the playing cards? I have never seen them. Yet somehow we all know that there is a basic standard that we must meet in order to gamble. In my estimation, casinos do a fantastic job of establishing expectations and a culture without telling. There is no orientation, handbook, consent form to sign. How often do you enter an environment where the front-line employees are actually encouraged to dispense advice on how to beat the ‘house’? Entertainment is encouraged, especially as you place more chips on the table. But how do we know the rules? I may fly on the airlines weekly but I am certain we are not taking-off until somebody announces the rules and safety procedures. I cannot update my computer software without agreeing to a lengthy end user agreement. The local Shakespeare company cannot start a production without reminding me to silence my cellphone, not to record the performance, and clear the aisles.

How do you establish a customer experience that passively sets guidelines while focusing on your mission? Would this be helpful to your organization? Imagine an environment where clients, board members and volunteers can intuitively grasp the rules of the house? How would that change the culture of your enterprise?

The People in the Room

Listened to a Fresh Air interview with Adam Liptak. Adam was asked for his observations while covering the Supreme Court for the past year on behalf of the NY Times. He had some interesting perspectives of the recent year and the decisions rendered by the justices. Perhaps most revealing to me was his comment about how the cultural and gender make-up of the justices in the room has changed the conversations that take place in the court. Having an African-American, woman, or minority as a justice changed the tone, tenor, and process of deliberation. Adam argues that just by their presence, even before you get to their intellectual and legal input, the decision-making process was altered by the make-up of the people in the room.

“Diverse inputs make for better outputs” is one quote Adam Liptak sites during the interview.

This is perhaps a great reminder to be intentional about who we include on our boards, strategic planning sessions, decision-making moments. Diversity has power, especially when it comes to deliberating about tough decisions.