Raise
the Bar: Demand Strategic Thinking and Accountability,
Part III: A Diet and Exercise Regime for
High Performing Boards
This
article appeared in CharityChannel in August
2004.
In
Part I of this article I presented four lessons
that Olympic high jumper Dick Fosbury
could teach boards about raising the bar of
their service. Fosbury is the innovator of
the technique that bears his name and is now
used by most high jumpers. In Part
II I shared
an exercise regime I have found
to work in conditioning board members to clear
the bar, regardless of how high we raise it.
In this last section I focus on diet. The
five critical aspects of building strategic,
results-oriented boards that I'll touch
on here are education, decision making, delegation,
evaluation and accountability.
DIET
Educating
boards members providing them
with the tools to do their job
Little is as nourishing as knowledge. If we
want to be able to hold our board members to
high expectations we must give them the right
food to fuel their ability to do their jobs.
Some board members will crave the information
we provide. Others may think they know it all.
Those are often the ones with nutritional deficits.
There are several building blocks on which I
recommend creating a healthy diet of knowledge.
Board education must be:
- Ongoing and cumulative. There is a tendency
to provide three to six hours of training once
a year at an annual board retreat and expect
miracles. One does not build strong bones by
drinking a single glass of milk. It takes years
of consuming calcium from many sources. The
same is true of board education. There will
be benefit if you spend even 10 minutes on
board education at every meeting. The benefit
will increase if more time is spent and the
topics each month build on previous topics.
- Chunked. People learn best if fed information
in bite-sized pieces. Trying to cover too much
in a single session is self-defeating.
- Relevant to your vision. Despite the fact
that meat has vitamins and minerals not found
elsewhere it is not appropriate to serve it
to a vegetarian. Likewise, the information
you feed your board members should reflect
the organization's values and help lead
them to fulfilling its vision.
- In line with your organizational strategy.
A diet consisting of donuts will not lead to
weight loss. If the focus for the year is on
membership your board education should focus
on community demographics, how to network,
or how to run effective membership events rather
than on how to establish a charitable remainder
trust.
- Capable
of demonstrating cause and effect. While
the jury may still be out on the Atkins
diet we do know that it is worthless
to provide training just because it is expected
or in to do so. You are probably
addressing this building block properly if,
for instance, your board can make better financial
decisions after learning how to read a financial
statement.
- Mandatory even for the most seasoned board
members. Certainly life intervenes and there
will be people that will have to miss an occasional
training session. However, everyone can learn
something from any situation and there is much
value in having the entire board hear the same
message in the same way at the same time.
The specific information we should feed people
fits into a pyramid similar to the famous food
pyramid, though with three categories. The categories,
along with a few examples of topics that might
be covered under each, include:
Mission
- Current research related to the organization's
mission
- Consumer stories
- Organizational successes
Community
- Pending legislation that could impact
the organization
- Community demographics
- Futures forecasting
- Trends in volunteering
- Trends in giving
Governance
- Board roles and responsibilities
- How to read financial statements
- Advocacy techniques
- Talking points on issues
- Solicitation techniques
- The change methodology the board uses/intends
to use
- Problem solving techniques
- Trends in governance
- Ethics
- Interview techniques
- Conflict management
Making decisions based on critical factors
All
too many boards make decisions off the top
of their heads. This is not exercising Duty
of
Care. Nor is it being strategic. Just as the
athlete who must maintain a healthy body reads
nutrition labels before placing items in the
grocery cart we must expect our boards to research
the topics on which they will be deciding. This
often means examining multiple options rather
than blindly accepting the first one, focusing
on critical issues the ratio between proteins
and carbs in our analogy and allowing
enough time to thoroughly debate the rationale,
ramifications, pros and cons of each option.
When generating options it is often helpful
to use a technique that will foster creative
thinking. There is no end to these techniques.
In fact, there are many books on the market that
outline different processes. I'll touch
briefly on four of these processes here.
The first requires that the board put itself
in different people's shoes and ask what
these individuals would do if faced with the
same situation. You can use your clients, staff
or volunteers. You might also pick famous generals
who were known for their ability to think strategically,
such as Napoleon, Patton, and Grant.
The
Six Thinking Hats by Edward
De Bono is somewhat similar in that it requires
a board look at its options from different perspectives.
Here each perspective is represented by a different
colored hat. White represents the objective approach
what do the facts indicate? Red reflects emotion
how
does this make everyone feel? Black requires
that the board take the cautious approach what
are the potential weaknesses here? Yellow encourages
an optimistic outlook. Green represents creativity
is there a twist that will make this really
fly?
And blue warns that whatever plans are put into
place must be well thought out and organized.
A
board might also employ stretch tactics to
force the brain to think differently about problems
for which viable solutions seem always just out
of reach. For example, a theater company that
is having trouble selling tickets might approach
the issue backwards that is, rather than
focusing on what is keeping the company from
filling the house, picturing the house totally
full and assessing the strengths that brought
the company to this imagined place. Additional
insights could also be gained by adding or subtracting
elements from the accepted mix our theater
company looks at what would happen if it suspended
its children's theater camp or added a
fantasy camp for adults that always wanted to
give the theater a try. Any element can be used
in this way, such as numbers, demographics, territory,
type of service, etc.
Finally,
if the problem facing your board doesn't require
or can't be solved by an immediate
solution you might use an idea board. This
is merely a large piece of newsprint that is
posted on a wall of the boardroom and left up
over time to stimulate piggyback thinking. People
are invited to add any thoughts they have as
the ideas come to them. A twist on this process
is to have pads of post-it notes readily available.
As ideas are jotted down they can be put up on
the wall for all to see and react to. This technique
is excellent for dealing with complex issues
such as board recruitment, fund raising or increasing
the organization's visibility.
Whatever problem solving techniques a board
adopts it still must measure potential solutions
against some sort of decision tree. While there
are many decision models from which to choose,
at the least the board should consider the ramifications
of pursuing or not pursuing a favored option
and ask whether that option is consistent with
the organization's vision and values.
Delegating work
Regardless of how well one eats it is often
difficult to get all the vitamins and minerals
necessary to keeping one's body in tip
top shape. Therefore, athletes often turn to
supplements.
As
leaders we cannot, nor should we, do everything.
We must supplement our skills and energy with
that of others. Delegation is the most effective
means of doing this. However, just like with
vitamins, where the average person is often afraid
of the consequences of making bad choices when
faced with the overwhelming number of bottles
available on the drugstore shelf, leaders are
often afraid that the job won't get done,
or won't get done well, and that this will
come back to haunt them. Doing nothing, however whether
this means forgoing supplements or failing to
delegate can be worse than making a mistake.
In the case of boards, failing to delegate reinforces
the belief that board members are incompetent.
As I indicated in Part I, the power of self-fulfilling
prophecy will soon make this so.
We
can relieve some of our anxiety about delegation
when we realize that the organization's
health is dependent on preparing for leadership
succession and that we can do some things to
lessen the number of potential mistakes. The
first thing is to expect that there will be a
learning curve. Someone let us make the mistakes
from which we learned! Second, we can't
expect to turn over a large assignment and just
walk away. We should always begin by breaking
up assignments into small tasks, defining the
outcomes we expect, and asking our delegatees to
explain how they intend to obtain these outcomes.
While no two people will approach a task in the
same way, this last point will give some assurance
that the individual understands the task, has
a sensible game plan and is capable of achieving
the desired results. Training needs will become
evident before the fact, at the time when it's
easiest to meet those needs. Once we've
assured ourselves that the parts of the whole
have been mastered we'll be more comfortable
turning over entire projects. The last and perhaps
most important element is to hold people accountable
for doing the jobs they have been assigned.
Evaluating the board's decisions and
actions
In
Part I of this article I talked a great deal
about Dick Fosbury who took home the gold at
the 1968 Olympics and changed the way everyone
has approached the high jump since then. Fosbury
faced a lot of nay-sayers. His college coach
tried to get him to go back to the straddle jump.
The US Olympic coach Payton Jordan came out with
the statement, Kids imitate champions.
If they try to imitate Fosbury, he'll wipe
out an entire generation of high jumpers because
they'll all have broken necks. And
the judges in Mexico City wanted to disqualify
him for his technique, but couldn't justify
it when they went to the rule book. In the final
analysis Fosbury's odd looking flop worked.
We must expect our boards to evaluate their plans
of action to determine whether they are working
or not and why. We must also expect them to tweak
those plans if necessary, like Fosbury continuously
increasing his angle until he was flat on his
back.
Holding board members accountable
Also in Part I of this article I indicated that
often we bring the problem of less than stellar
boards on ourselves. The process of evaluation
should be extended to our board members. Some
boards today are spending time at the end of
every meeting asking people to share what they've
personally done to further the organization's
mission. (Some groups ask their board members
to focus on the time in between board meetings.
Others focus on what they have accomplished during
the course of the meetings.)
When
it becomes evident that a people problem exists
we have to examine whether
the failures we are observing are a result of
a breakdown in will or skill. Did
the individuals responsible fail to live up to
the organization's expectations because
they simply didn't follow through or because
they didn't know how to follow through?
If it is a skill problem we have a responsibility
to provide the necessary training. But, because
we have an equal obligation to hold people accountable
for meeting the organization's expectations,
if it is a will problem we have to mete out whatever
consequences were previously defined. Ultimately,
this may involve asking board members to resign.
I believe it is time to decide that as leaders
in the field we are intent on raising the bar
for our boards. I know it is possible to get
at least a large number of boards to adopt this
strategic thinking/accountability version of
the Fosbury Flop. In the words of an unknown
sage, People who say it cannot be done
should not interrupt those who are doing it.
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