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?

The Least

What is the least amount of change that your enterprise could make that would would be most transformative?

  • Who would you add or subtract from your board?
  • What revenue source could you enhance?
  • What expense could you cut?
  • What program could you alter?
  • How could your marketing effort be shifted?
  • What staff member could you add?
  • What one thing could you leverage to another organization?
  • Who would you partner with on one element?
  • What one metric could you start monitoring?


What if you did each of these little things over the next month?  Would the sum of these changes by cumulative or exponential?

Raising the Stakes

Simple reminder last week.  I was checking-out after getting a much needed haircut.  The receptionist asked if I wanted to leave a gratuity and I said, “five dollars.”  The woman next to me had just said “five dollars” in response to the same question.  She glanced at me and then changed her mind and said, “make it ten.”  I am not sure if my gratuity influenced her or if she realized my simple haircut on a receding hairline probably cost less than hers.

One of the reasons nonprofit organizations rely on gala fundraisers is that peer pressure adds to their success.  When the auctioneer asks for all the participants to raise their paddle to ‘fund-a-need’ it is hard not to participate.  When everyone at your table is bidding it is hard not to get caught in the moment.  It takes energy to drop-out of bidding for a live auction lot if a spotlight is shining on you.

Most capital campaign fundraising strategy is sequenced.  You start with donor A.  If donor A gives you go to his or her friend donor B and leverage donor A’s gift.  Sometimes you will even take Donor A and B with you to visit the elusive donor C who may make a bigger gift than A and B combined.  If you asked donor C for a gift with no momentum and having not tapped the network of friends you may have never been successful in setting-up a meeting.

Momentum and relationships are important factors in influencing success for your cause.  What can you do to enhance your existing relationships?

 

Active or Passive

Is your organization active or passive?  Are you taking action to meet a need or holding steady?  Are you interacting or focusing on outgoing communications?  I am often struck by the lack of momentum in many great causes?  One annual report looks like another.  Each email blast talks about opportunity but the gap stays the same.  It is easy to get lulled into a sense of normal.  

Should I expect us not to make any real progress on shelters for homeless this year?  Is it right to just try and meet the existing need?  Should I expect education funding to be cut in a down economy and gifted and talented programs to be disbanded?  Should I expect little arts galleries to close but the big museum to stay open?  It is easy to accept these as facts.  Except when major events take place and the public’s attention and focus shifts to a specific cause.  The coldest winter in a city’s history suddenly forces a community to address homelessness with anxiety.  More shelters, more services and more donations.  


How do you remain active?  How do you demonstrate momentum?


On my travels to New York City I am often struck by how quickly commuters will race from the local to the express.  Hoards swarm across the platform and abandon the local train and then leave it looking almost abandoned at the platform.  Why stay on a train that is going to make eight more stops when I can get there in two?


Does your enterprise create momentum to feel like an express or are you just getting people involved in the cause?  Will they shift to a better organization with more momentum once they see the opportunity?

Being Your Best

I have read and been repeatedly inspired by Marcus Buckingham’s books.  I embrace the theory that you maximize an individual’s talents and mitigate their weaknesses.  He recently released a new book titled Find Your Strongest Life that I anticipate reading as soon as I finish Seth Godin’s Linchpin.

I am always searching for the best question to ask at the right moment.  Marcus has a five-point strategy for problem solving.  Number three is listed below: 

Change follows the line of your questioning. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong?” ask, “What does it look like when it’s working?”

Checkout the rest of the steps on Oprah’s website along with tactics for decision-making, switching careers and developing connections.

Filling the Agenda

In the past couple of weeks I have facilitated two organizational retreats that covered approximately the same material.  One was scheduled for four hours and the other was scheduled for seven.  As I sort through my notes and consider what was accomplished during both sessions and the results were the same.

The difference in my mind was the work done in advance by the organizations.  One group was very clear about what questions needed to be answered and what the deliverable was at the end of the retreat.  The other was also focused but tried to cover a wider range of topics during the course of the retreat.  Their outcome was to refresh an existing document.

I came away with an appreciation for clarity and focus.  Group planning sessions are more productive when you take the following steps:

  1. Agree on an outcome before you start planning
  2. Ask for input from the participants.  For example using an online survey, interviews or focus groups
  3. Filter the information and develop specific questions or decision-making opportunities for the group
  4. Have the support and commitment to the outcome from the organizational leadership
  5. Allow the group attendees to react to the information and provide suggestions, alternatives or agreement
  6. Capture off-the-subject items in a “parking lot” list and then return to those topics at the end of the session to decide if they still need to be discussed or assign a plan of action for each one
  7. Create agreement about the expectations for moving forward from the session
  8. Report back quickly and share meaningful updates/drafts for the group to review and approve
  9. Celebrate success

As a facilitator it is almost as much work to prepare a half-day as a full-day retreat.  However, the best retreats seem to honor people’s time and energy levels.  It is easier to keep the tempo high, the energy flowing and a small sense of urgency over three to four hours than seven or eight.


What has been most effective for your organization?  How do you balance scheduling and planning?  Would you consider paying more for the same result in less time?

Training Your Competition

When I lived in a ski resort town in Idaho I was a volunteer member of the local fired department.  The fire department developed a policy that required new members to serve a probational year after which a firefighter who met certain requirements could begin to advance their medical and fire ground training beyond the core curriculum.  At first this policy felt like a glass ceiling because many of the new paid-on-call volunteers had a lot of energy, time and were motivated to learn as much as possible.  After inquiring about the process, I learned the rule had developed partly to comply with professional fire fighting standards but its real roots existed in the classic resort town struggle.  In earlier years volunteers were obtaining their Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification by joining the fire department in September and completing the course over the winter.  When the snow began to melt and the rivers ran high, some of the newly minted EMTs headed to work for the whitewater rafting companies.  Many of these companies required EMT certification or paid more if you had the training.  The volunteers had taken the course at the expense of the fire department and then bolted for the river.  After a couple years of developing frustration the fire department instituted the probational year as an assessment tool to quantify the aptitude and initiative of each member.  This is one method to ensure retention of your staff.

Alternatively, Seth Godin argues that if you hire exceptional people and provide a dynamic workplace retention will not be your issue.  Godin’s recent book Linchpins speaks at length about the old factory paradigm and how it is becoming obsolete.  He points to companies like Zapoos which are almost infectious with enthusiasm.  Places where the people do their best because of the their personal motivations, not because of a policy.

Both systems are in play.  The question is which one adds to your organizational culture?  Which one holds your best and brightest at a average pace that most everyone can achieve?

Are you training your competition’s employees?  Have you created a dynamic environment that attracts talented individuals?  Are your best people recruiting new employees for you?  

Compassion and Enlightend Self-Interest

Would we be more serious about committing and rebuilding Haiti over the next decade if we found that a Taliban training camp had been established inside Haiti’s borders?  Would we be more serious about climate change if a polar bear showed-up in the backyard?  Would we be more serious about addressing homelessness if one received a picture, profile and in-person introduction to the homeless person your tax dollars were funding?  

Paul Collier has a simple formula to address the needs of the bottom billion of the world’s population.

2+7+1= the begining of resilency

Lifetimeswork a UK firm specializing in Executive Coaching circulated the following paper on the topic of being resilient.  The document outlines some key concepts and formulas that are aimed at those in leadership, be it a Chief Executive Officer or a Board Chair.  In the second half of the paper there is an assessment tool for your consideration.  The full paper can be downloaded here. 

  
The 7 part of the formula is an fascinating list to consider with your own leadership.

The ‘7’

 There are seven attitudes whose combination is critical for the highest level of resilience

1.    Takes full responsibility for self, own actions and reactions.
2.    Doesn’t dwell, forgives when necessary, moves on.
3.    Not taking oneself too seriously. Humility and self deprecating humour.
4.    Optimistic.
5.    Grounded, feet on the ground, pragmatic.
6.    High level of independence and independent judgement.
7.    Values others and their opinions.