Document View

Barbara E. Taylor, managing editor of Academic Search Consultation Service and Richard Chait, a professor from Harvard Graduate School of Education, offer 6 strategies for keeping your board of directors keenly focused on the big picture. The methods include: 1. Ensure that your board knows its members. 2. Give board members relevant information. 3. Keep agendas focused on the big picture.

You've heard the complaint many times. You've probably said it yourself. "My board just won't stay focused on the association's priorities," CEOs lament. "They would rather debate the merits of redecorating the association headquarters than address strategic, long-term issues. What can I possibly do to keep my board on track?"

You can do plenty, say two noted authors and speakers on trusteeship. As the association's chief executive officer, you-more than anyone else-can sway your board's emphasis and priorities.

"Most CEOs fail to understand the full range of their influence," says Barbara E. Taylor, managing director, Academic Search Consultation Service, Washington, D.C., who has spent much of her career doing research on governing boards. "If you ask board members who the real leader of the board is, they'll say the chief executive, interestingly enough. They really put a high premium on what the chief executive does, what he or she thinks, and what his or her reading of the issues is."

Richard Chair, professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, Massachusetts, concurs. "The CEO, more than anyone else, controls the flow of information, the channels of communication, the focus of attention for the board," he says. "CEOs have an enormous impact on the degree to which boards are substantive and effective."

Taylor and Chait offer six simple strategies for keeping your board of directors keenly focused on the big picture.

1. Ensure that your board knows its role.

"Make sure board members understand that every minute they attend to operational, daily issues is a minute they have not spent on matters that are central to the organization's long-term future," Chait says. "It's what I sometimes refer to as the whale in the pool. If the CEO doesn't help the board see the whale in the pool, the board will naturally gravitate to the paramecium and the algae, because they just don't see the whale."

Adds Taylor: "I think it's valuable for any board to spend time talking about its role and responsibilities. The normal tendency of a board, without any intervention, is to drift into operations, to drift into aimless reports, to just sort of go along. Without a considerable amount of intentionality on the part of the staff and on the part of the board's leadership, the board is going to be a nonvalue-adding board, which is a drag on the organization instead of a benefit."

Chait sometimes compares board members to automobile drivers. The really good ones, he says, have mastered the art of absorbing the passing periphery and glancing in the rearview mirror without getting distracted from the route to their destination.

2. Establish a rapport and shared vision with your chief elected officer.

This is so obvious, both experts say, that it's easy to overlook. The goal here is to complement each other's efforts. "When the chief executive and the board chair agree about what issues matter most and what role the board of directors should play in the resolution of issues, it is a key step in the empowerment of an effective board," Chait says.

3. Assess the associat tion's particular situation.

Chait recommends that after you and the chief elected officer have come to terms, you summarize the challenges and opportunities that you believe will require the board's attention during the next few years. Document those challenges and opportunities in a two- or three-page memo that you share with the board. Committing these ideas to paper "helps define a strategic agenda and make sure that there's agreement between the entire board and the CEO about what issues matter most and most deserve the collective attention of the board and the executive team," Chait says. Include in the memo the issues that you judge to be "of such magnitude and significance that the board will have to continuously attend to these issues to ensure the organization's long-term success."

Barbara Taylor likes to call this defining for the board "what keeps you up at night." She advises you to engage board members in discussion about your association's major stresses, environmental factors, current situation, and options.

"If a board is to be active in a way that's productive, members need to start by understanding the strategy of the organization," Taylor says. "That's where the chief executive officer comes in. That's a crucial role that only the chief executive can play."

4. Encourage the board to develop an action plan.

Once board members understand current strategy and have reached a consensus about the association's challenges and opportunities, they need to ask-and answer-a series of questions:

* What role does the board need to play to address or resolve these issues?

* What committees, work groups, or task forces need to be involved in these issues?

* What are the time frames for each issue?

* What information does the board of directors or do committee members require to examine an issue intelligently?

* What decisions will the board need to make?

* How will board members monitor progress on the decisions they do make?

According to Chait, you and the chief elected officer can use these answers to develop an action plan or annual work plan.

Taylor cites the example of a university board that identified Four major issues facing the institution: multiculturalism, global education, marketing, and technology. The board's action plan included forming standing committees or task forces to deal with each issue and incorporating one of these topics as a theme of each board meeting.

"This board of directors really transformed itself by being very, very intentional about its challenges, its structure, and how members can best use their time," Taylor says.

"It has made a lot of progress," she points out.

5. Give board members relevant information.

"Minutia in, minutia out," Taylor says. "Ask yourself if you are pointing members toward issues of strategy or if you are pointing them toward issues of minutia."

Of course, Chait says, a few CEOs intentionally try to divert the board's attention, to withhold information, or to deny channels of communication. Why? "Some CEOs prefer control, autonomy. Some are excessively selfconfident. Others believe governance is untidy or that it just takes too much time and effort to make sure the trustees are fully informed. They believe they are the professionals, trained for the responsibility."

Taylor believes that CEOs who withhold information from their boards fear opening Pandora's box. "I don't want to underestimate that fear," she says. "The danger of an empowered board is that it may get the idea that it's basically a group of staff members who can meddle in anything they want to." Of course, CEOs and chief elected officers who understand their own roles can head that off in a hurry.

6. Keep agendas focused on the big picture.

"Chief executives normally have a lot of control over the agendas of board meetings-maybe even more than they should," Taylor says. "So they, in effect, determine how the board spends its time." One time-saving technique she favors is jettisoning board meeting standbys-such as committee, old business, and new business reports-that encourage board members to passively listen. "If a board is just sitting there watching an organization go by, who needs it?" Taylor asks. "If your board is going to be value-adding, it needs to spend time dealing with the challenges that are facing the organization."

According to Chait, if you include on the board agenda issues of "irresistible and obvious importance," trustees won't dare overlook them. "Most boards that micromanage have been denied the opportunity to macro-- govern," he adds. "The truth is, most trustees do not want to be mired in minutia and awash in trivia."