The Mythbusters

I frequently hear “myths” about Policy Governance.

Myth # 1: "Carver says to get rid of most and preferably all committees." 

In fact, Carver spends a significant amount of time in his books explaining the appropriate use of committees. What he says is to "start with no committees and add them only when clearly needed." That does not necessarily mean to get rid of them, although it will mean getting rid of "traditional" committees if they are not doing board work. A Board Committee may be very useful, and appropriate, IF it is doing board work, not work that has already been delegated to staff, and IF it operates so as to avoid interfering with the holism of the board. That means that a committee would be:

• doing "pre-board" work, not "sub-board" work, and
• identifying for the board a range of alternatives related to a specific board issue, and the implications of those alternatives. All board members can then consider and apply their values to the alternatives, rather than the committee members spending their efforts on applying only their values, and presenting a "recommendation." 

Myth # 2: "The Carver model is too rigid."

The insistence that boards should never get involved in operations is perhaps the right course for large, well-established groups that have lots of expertise on staff. But a small grass-roots organization may well be best served by a working board.

While Carver certainly stresses that the most important work of the board is in determining Ends, and developing broad-based limitations, leaving development of means to the CEO within those limitations, the model is NOT "one-size-fits-all." The beauty of the model is that it is based on a set of principles, which are internally consistent. Because of this, it is indeed possible to customize it to the circumstances of different boards, without contravening the principles. In the above case, two basic principles apply:

• "policies come in sizes," and
• "when the Board stops speaking, the CEO may make any reasonable interpretation of the Board's policy."

The Board's policies limiting the staff means should begin at the broadest level. For a large organization with lots of expertise on staff, ideally, those limitations would remain very broad. For a small organization with limited staff expertise, the Board may write more detailed limitations, as long as it remembers the principles of starting with the largest, moving inward only in sequence, and allowing the CEO to make any reasonable interpretation of the policies that it has developed.

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