Starboard’s Blog

While I can be accused of having a definite bias against establishing advisory committees, the reality is that others have achieved a level of success with them.  With that said, what I’ll offer here, based upon my own experience, and the good advice of others, are some tips to keep in mind as you consider establishing and running your own advisory committee: 

• Make sure you are committed to the work of recruiting and (most importantly) providing ongoing support to another group of volunteers.  Don’t underestimate the time involved or the damage you can do if you don’t keep your eye on the ball.
• Keep in mind that your “advisors” are going to expect that their advice will be seriously considered, if not followed. Find a way to demonstrate that the board is listening, taking the advice seriously, and implementing some of what is offered. Regular interaction with the board is a good thing.
• A great role for an advisory committee is the dual role of serving as advocates in the community and providing community feedback. Think about recruiting volunteers with these requests/questions:

“Help us understand/appreciate what is going on in the community.” 

“What should we be paying attention to?” 

“You are closer to the action than we are, what are you seeing or hearing?” 

“How do you think people will react?”

• Some advisory committee members will get excited about ideas and want to get going on implementation. If you like where they are heading and are ready to put them to work, develop a “task force” that works outside of the advisory committee. The task force might report-in to the advisory committee on their progress, but don’t let the task force’s work consume the purpose or the focus of the advisory committee or its members. 
• A well run (note the stress on “well run”) advisory committee can be a good testing ground for potential board members, a way to engage former board members, or to engage donors in a manner that doesn’t involve a heavy-duty commitment. 
• Choose a really good chairperson with proven leadership ability and experience in leading meetings to help you get things off on the right foot. Be very direct with the chair about what you want the advisory committee to accomplish (even if one of the goals is simply to encourage increased giving by the participants) and enlist his/her help in keeping the advisory committee and its members on track.
• Most important of all, recruit your advisory volunteers with very, very clear expectations (I can’t possibly stress this enough).  They need to know that they aren’t joining a board, and they aren’t a task force or a project committee. They are advisors, and use every opportunity to remind them just how much you value their advice.

I would love to hear some success stories of advisory boards that fill an important role and earn great reviews from the participants. Please share your tips for success!

I’m always looking for tools that will make life a little easier. One of the free on-line tools I recommend all the time is Meeting Wizard.  It is an easy to use on-line tool to help you simplify the process of setting-up meetings among groups of people. So if you are trying to pick a date for a committee meeting, go to www.meetingwizard.com, simply select a group of dates that work for you, plug-in the e-mail addresses of the committee, and send it out.  In short order, you’ll be able to see which dates work best for the majority of your committee (no matter what method you use, it is unlikely that you’ll get a 100% response or full attendance).  I may be making it sound easier than it is, but I encourage you to give it a try. 

I don’t have a stake in the company or any reason to promote the service other than to say that it has worked for me.  Click here to take a look.

If you’ve found other meeting software that has eased the challenge of scheduling groups, it would be great to hear about it!

As part of my work with one organization to revise their mission, lots of good work was done to describe what they value. While the mission succinctly tells people who you are, value statements describe what you care about, how you treat people, and what you value most.  Strong value statements will stand-up to this test: “Would we keep doing this even if we were somehow penalized for doing so?” A value like, “We will treat all clients, our volunteers, and each other with the utmost dignity in all of our interactions” probably meets that test for most. You would likely choose to go out of business rather than knowingly treat people poorly.

A discussion about organizational values is a great thing to do with board and staff (either separately or together). You’ll learn what really matters to people and how they, themselves, want to be treated. Along the way, you’ll create a document you can come back to from time to time or even print-up to accompany your mission. We include our business values on the Starboard Leadership web site, and the Rotary Club to which I belong displays its values (The Four-Way Test) at the front of the room, and someone reads them at every meeting. How you print them up or where you display them, however, is not all that important. There is no requirement that you have a list of value statements, and it is unlikely that anyone will ever ask you for them. What is important is that you have the discussion in the first place.

Ideally, the values become interwoven with everything you do. So, if one of your values is treating everyone with dignity, take the time to review your employment practices, your customer relations, and your other procedures to see if your practices live up to your values (see “Customers or consumers?” Why the answer matters for more on this).  Making sure that your practices align with your values demonstrates your integrity and is time well spent.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: “Do the right thing and you’ll never do wrong.” Take the time to have a values discussion with your board and staff so you can make sure everyone agrees on what “right” is. Then figure out a way to keep those values alive.

This past weekend I worked with a board of directors and their leadership staff to put the final touches on their strategic direction.  All was going well until a board member questioned the word-choice of “customers” as a way to describe their clients.  It was one of those moments every facilitator fears…when the participants stop talking about the concepts and begin to wordsmith.  What followed, however, was a critically important strategic discussion for their organization. The gist of it is as follows: 

In our work, the individuals we serve have a choice of potential providers (our competition).  Whether the dollars they bring with them are state, federal, private insurance, or out-of-pocket, they still have a choice.  We need to treat them as valued “customers” and ensure that they get the kind of quality service we expect when we are customers of a business.  If we view them as “consumers,” we inappropriately elevate our own status in the relationship to that of equals and suggest that they are “consuming” resources, “taking” services from us, or “using up” something.

The key is ensuring that the values expressed here go beyond the words (it does in this organization). Ideally this focus on the customer, and what that means, is then reflected in the statement of organizational values, becomes part of all staff orientation and training, is evaluated on an ongoing basis (customer satisfaction surveys and the like), and is lived every day by the staff.

So ask yourself whether what you call your clients says something about how you regard and treat them. If what the name connotes doesn’t match with your values, maybe it is time for a change.  It might turn out to be much more than a bit of wordsmithing.

In an earlier posting “Be clear on the desired outcomes of merging,” I described the value of doing your homework and being very clear, before meeting with potential partners, as to why a merger might make sense. I also suggested that this discussion happen in the context of the strategic planning process, and that is what I would like to add to here. 

As a strategic planning process moves from “what we want to accomplish” (vision) to “how we plan to accomplish it” (goals and objectives), most organizations begin to bump into reality. Reality is that they don’t have the reliable funding, the necessary resources, or the staffing to accomplish all they would like to accomplish. Too often this means that plans are downscaled, implemented without the required staffing or resources, put on the back burner, or dropped altogether. While your clients are the ones most likely to be shortchanged when this happens, don’t discount the impact on your staff and volunteers as you build the case for “why we can’t” rather than “how we can.”

My advice is to incorporate into your planning process questions like the following:

One of the standard strategies facilitators use at the start of sessions is to involve the participants in setting “ground rules” for the session, the day, or for ongoing work together.  While I often dispense with this step (in favor of a streamlined set of ground rules that I set), I’m also sensitive to the reality that some boards of directors can really benefit from developing a set of “operating principles” for how they work together.

Different from the kinds of ground rules set for a retreat (use our “indoor voices,” every idea is a good idea, turn off your phones, etc.), “operating principles” help a board determine how you will treat one another and operate as a board or committee.  This can include a list of values, a code of conduct for meetings, agreement as to how you will communicate with one another, and so on. It is an opportunity to say, “this is important to me,” and “this is important to us.”There are many ways to approach the development of operating principles with your board, but any discussion should probably include a few key questions:

I’m on a board where I serve on the governance committee. While this committee has traditionally focused its attention on the nominating and recruitment functions, we are increasingly paying attention to the “health and welfare” of the board. One of issues we’ve identified as needing attention is finding ways to deepen the engagement and involvement of our board members. There is a sense that we all could be doing more to help the organization, but whether board members are ready to step-up, and what we’ll actually do, has yet to be determined.

It would be easy to hand-out the same assignment to every board member (“everyone needs to make ten fund raising calls this year”) and hope that some will do it. Instead, I’ve suggested that we go through an individual board member assessment process as a first step. I think that if we ask–and really listen–we’ll learn that some of our board members are delighted with their level of engagement and may or may not be ready to take on more. Others may be happy “flying under the radar,” where they can quietly provide help at their own pace. However, I’m betting that some other members are willing to do more if someone would just take the time to really learn what they have to offer and then provide them with some assignments that match their interests and abilities.

To begin the process, I’ve spent a bit of time looking at various models for individual board assessments. While I’ve not yet found the perfect assessment for our use (and will probably find the need to develop something unique), I believe that I’ve narrowed the process down to a few key questions:

• Do I know what is expected of me?
• Do I have what it takes?
• Do I have the necessary tools, information and instruction to succeed?
• Is what I’m doing on the board making a meaningful difference?
• Is there an opportunity here to make better use of my abilities/skills/experience/knowledge?
• Am I enjoying the experience of serving on the board?
• What would make my board experience even better?
• And (most importantly) what goals should I set for myself and my board experience?

I’m going to suggest that we put questions like these, and appropriate follow-up questions (“what additional information do you need?”) into a survey format, and ask each board member to fill it out and return it to the chair of the governance committee. From there, I anticipate that we’ll work together to respond to concerns that are raised, set-up one-on-one meetings as needed, and work together with the staff to help board members achieve their goals.

If you have experience with this kind of individual self-assessment, it would be great if you could share your experiences, suggest tools to use, and offer your insights. In return, I’ll tell you how our process turns out and share what we’ve learned.

I described in an earlier posting (Is Your Board a Dodge Dart?) my thoughts on the value of board self-assessment—it would be difficult to find a better diagnostic tool for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of your board. The self-assessment tool I use is one that I designed (so be aware of the obvious self-promotion here), and it is available through the Maine Association of Nonprofits. I also have experience in having used, several years ago, the Board Source assessment tool, and I can recommend that as well.

Whatever the tool you use, I find that the greatest value is in reviewing the results with the board and in the discussion that follows. Properly structured, this becomes a wonderful opportunity to have some very health conversations and to develop a board governance agenda for the year ahead—an agenda that the entire board plays a part in setting. Keep in mind that your goal is NOT to simply identify all the weaknesses. This is your opportunity to develop strategies and a timeline for board improvement, so don’t come out of the meeting without a substantial “to do” list.

While board self-assessment might be a very useful exercise for organizations that are having difficulties, need to reorganize, or are going through transitions, many boards conduct a self-assessment on a regular basis. According to a recent survey conducted by Grant Thornton LLP, approximately 1/3^rd of all nonprofits conduct a board self-assessment annually. That may feel like too much for some boards, but keep in mind that it doesn’t have to be a “full blown” assessment every year. For example, consider a shortened version every other year to see if you are making progress on your governance agenda.

It would be great to hear comments from those who have been through a self-assessment with their boards!

Whenever you go to a conference, a workshop, or a training session, you’ll undoubtedly be asked to fill-out an evaluation form. Good presenters and meeting organizers use this input to determine what worked, adjust what didn’t, and try to do better the next time. It is such a simple concept, but why don’t we do the same thing at the end of board meetings?

Doesn’t it make sense to ask the participants on a board meeting what went well and what didn’t? If we want to engage our board members in meaningful discussions (or just get them to attend meetings), we should be constantly evaluating and looking for ways to improve how we operate.

The meeting evaluation I pass along to people was originally developed by the governance committee of the United Way of Eastern Maine (feel free to use it as is or modify it as needed). It is short, easy to fill-out, and should be placed at each person’s seat at every meeting. While there are some standard questions you may want to ask at the end of every meeting, you’ll see on the meeting evaluation form that there is room to add agenda specific questions that will tell you whether you were successful in presenting the key agenda topics.

The board chair and the executive director can scan these after a meeting and quickly know what they need to adjust the next time around. Or, better yet, your governance committee can review them at each of their meetings and use that information to inform their work to enhance the board’s governance practices. In any case, your board members will appreciate the fact that you are asking for their input and will be deeply grateful for your efforts at ongoing improvement.

And, by the way, you don’t have to be the board chair or the executive director to launch this concept. Print-out a copy of the meeting evaluation, take it to your board chair, and suggest that it could be interesting to give it a try.

Please let me know about your own experiences in evaluating your meetings.

If your board of directors was a car, what kind of car would it be? An efficient and thrifty Toyota Prius? A high performing but finicky Porsche? A safe and reliable Volvo station-wagon? Or is it more like a Ford Pinto with a gas tank that is ready to blow? (This may be a good question to ask your board members.) Whatever the model, it is likely that your board needs a regular tune-up in order to identify problems, do some preventative maintenance, and enhance its performance.

For tuning-up your board, I think the best diagnostic tool is a board self-assessment. There are a variety of assessment tools on the market that you can use to engage the board in looking at what it does well and where there is room for improvement. This is not an organizational assessment, or a review of the executive director. The board self-assessment forces the board to ask “how are WE doing?” on the core responsibilities of governance.

Unless they’ve had prior experience with conducting a board self-assessment, the board chair or the executive director may find the prospect of self-assessment a bit worrisome: “Maybe they all think I’m doing a lousy job!” The reality is, however, that in a well-constructed self-assessment the board looks at itself, not at the leadership or any specific individual. Remember, it asks, “how are WE doing?” So, when coupled with a board retreat (ideally with a facilitator who can analyze the results and objectively lead the board through a frank discussion), the board will identify opportunities for growth, discuss strategies for improvement, and develop an agenda for strengthening your governance model.

So whether your board is a rusty Dodge Dart (with bylaws and members left over from the 1970’s), or a Lexus with some odd noises coming from under the hood, consider an annual tune-up using a board assessment.