REALBoard Buzz™

Board Focus: Aspirational Mission Statement or Targeted Results?

Posted by Paul Zilz
On June 10, 2021
Accountability, Board Leadership, Strategic Focus

Everybody appreciates an aspirational mission statement! Boards and staff often spend significant time developing and refining a mission statement that best captures what the organization does for others. And a mission statement is indeed very useful for branding and a key element for effective fundraising. But I would argue that your board’s time would best […]

Efficiency Lessons for Boards Using Policy Governance®

Posted by Richard Stringham
On June 3, 2021
At What Worth, Ends

In an interview on the CBC Radio program SPARK , Roger Martin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, contends that businesses’ obsession with efficiency over the past two centuries has gone too far. Although efficiency has been and will continue to be an important part of the success of businesses and […]

Evidently this is Not Evidence!

Posted by Richard Stringham
On May 20, 2021
Board Development, Board Self-Evaluation

Earlier on in my consulting career, it was common to come across boards in which directors thought that the Board Chair should be the CEO’s boss. However, when a board uses Policy Governance®, board members should operate in a manner that recognizes the board as a whole is the CEO’s boss and the Chair is […]

Change or Growth?

Posted by Jannice Moore
On May 13, 2021
Board Development, Board Leadership, Policy Governance System

Every now and then, I run into a board that has been using Policy Governance®, often for some time, and decides it wants a “change” – just to try something different. Almost always, this desire is precipitated by a significant turnover in board members, and a failure on the part of the board to have […]

No Matter How The Wind Blows

Posted by governancecoach
On May 6, 2021
Board Leadership, Sustaining Policy Governance, Values

The arrival of spring is always welcome. For my wife and me, one of the best parts of spring is the return of many migrating birds to our heavily treed yard. Finches of all varieties, woodpeckers, martins, hummingbirds and, of course, the iconic bird of spring, the robin. The past weekend, the wind was blowing […]

You Want to Measure What?

Posted by Rose Mercier
On April 29, 2021
Monitoring

In my decade-long path of helping boards and CEOs implement practices that support the elegant governance system that is Policy Governance®, I have learned that monitoring is both embraced and cursed. Embraced for its promise of providing evidence that the organization is really making a difference. Cursed because figuring out the ways in which the […]

Goldilocks and Monitoring Reports

Posted by Richard Stringham
On April 15, 2021
Monitoring

Among the many things that I wish I’d known when I was younger is: wait for it…how to write effective reports for the board. Okay, I realize that’s not a tantalizing subject for most young men, but in my earlier career it certainly occupied more of my time than it deserved. I reported to the […]

We’ve Always Done it This Way…

Posted by Jannice Moore
On April 8, 2021
Board Agendas, Board Meetings, Board Role

As I cleared away the remainder of our Easter ham this week, I was reminded of an old story. “Mom, why do you always cut the end off the ham before cooking it?” asked the youngster. “Well, that’s the way my mother always did it.” “But why did she do it that way? “I don’t […]

Maintaining Policy Governance® Muscles

Posted by Rose Mercier
On April 1, 2021
Board Development, Governance Improvement, Sustaining Policy Governance

My colleague, Ted Hull, wrote a blog a couple of years ago , about how boards can ensure the gains experienced through Policy Governance are not lost. However, because I think it’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of being intentional about sustaining excellence in governing, I decided to revisit this topic. Given my long history in […]

Board Intervention does Not Guarantee Better Decisions

Posted by Richard Stringham
On March 11, 2021
Accountability, Board Role, Values

Several years ago, I was coaching a board which had recently issued a public position statement on behalf of its organization. Unfortunately, the position it took was based on inadequate information and damaged the credibility of some of the association’s members, in addition to the association’s credibility. The irony was that the board had a […]

Is it Time to Do Away with Board Values Lists?

Posted by Richard Stringham
On March 4, 2021
Accountability, Board Leadership, Values

I’m not a big fan of boards creating lists of values. There. I’ve finally come out and said it and I’m glad I did! Of course, now I need to explain myself. A few decades ago, I ran a youth leadership development program. Toward the end of my tenure as the program manager I convinced […]

The Best Boards Maximize Time on One Type of Information

Posted by Paul Zilz
On February 25, 2021
Board Agendas, Board Meetings, Governance Improvement

How many times have you sat in a board meeting wondering why you were discussing what you were discussing and feeling frustrated that the “real” issues weren’t being discussed? Often that frustration can be traced to one key issue: The board doesn’t understand how to properly distinguish between the three types of information it handles: […]

Co-CEOs: Dream Team or Bad Dream?

Posted by Rose Mercier
On February 18, 2021
Accountability, CEO Evaluation, Clear Delegation

If someone asks me, “Can a Policy Governance® board have co-CEOs?” my longish reply is some version of ”Yes. However . . .” Let’s deal first with the “yes” part of my answer. It is not inconsistent with Policy Governance if two people occupy the role of CEO. The board directs the co-CEOs as […]

Stakeholders’ Place in Governance

Posted by David Gray
On February 11, 2021
Owners and Ownership, Policy Governance System

A recent article on boardagenda.com caught my eye[1]. The thrust of the article is that, as a result of the pandemic, businesses are being compelled to “…adopt more of a ‘stakeholder’ approach to governance.” To this end, the article argues that businesses ought to have “…a special committee to represent stakeholder interests to the board […]

Building a Better Airplane

Posted by Richard Stringham
On February 4, 2021
Board Leadership, Governance Improvement

Orville and Wilbur Wright (yes, the chaps credited with inventing the or airplane), were known to have debated each other fiercely on various ideas. What made those debates unusual, and I expect more productive, was the fact that they would change sides in the debate. Few of us would dispute the need for critical thinking […]

Change Fatigue or Opportunity

Posted by Andrew Bergen
On January 21, 2021
Board Leadership, Strategic Focus

The fact that the world situation in the past 10 months has demanded much change from everyone is not news to any of us. We have all had to adapt – work patterns, schooling, parenting, shopping, dining, entertainment – and everything else has required new ways for us to interact. We have, in fact, been […]

With Apologies to Julia Child – The Art of Governance through Mastery of First Principles

Posted by Rose Mercier
On January 13, 2021
Policy Governance System

Every once in while, I read something that produces an ‘eureka’ moment. That happened last week when an article about Julia Child was brought to my attention. If you knew how much I enjoy being creative in the kitchen, you might not be surprised I responded enthusiastically to the Farnham Street post.[1] But it wasn’t […]

Boards In The Future

Posted by Dee Incoronato
On January 7, 2021
Board Recruitment, Board Role

What will board composition be like in the future? When thinking about future board members there is a danger in assuming everyone in a demographic grouping is alike. However, there are some basic similarities that reflect the characteristics of different generations which may be useful in imagining governance for the future. Who Will They Be? […]

Merry Christmas from The Governance Coach™

Posted by Jannice Moore
On December 22, 2020

A message of hope from Jannice Moore, President of the The Governance Coach™

Just Waiting, or Preparing?

Posted by Jannice Moore
On December 17, 2020
Board Development, Board Leadership

This season prior to Christmas is known in church calendars as the season of Advent, the time of “waiting” for Christmas to arrive, re-enacting the period of waiting for the birth of the Messiah. Advent is a season of Hope. This year, perhaps more than any other, we need to hold on to hope. In […]

Accountability: A Governance Imperative for Charities – and Others

Posted by Jannice Moore
On December 9, 2020
Accountability, Policy Governance System

The effects of the pandemic have created a significant hit on the bottom line for charities. As many businesses have scaled down or shut down, temporarily or permanently, resulting in job losses, an Angus Reid poll in Canada earlier this fall (even before the second COVID wave hit) indicated 37 per cent of those surveyed […]

How Does a Policy Governance Board Evaluate its CEO?

Posted by Ted Hull
On November 25, 2020
Accountability, CEO Evaluation, Monitoring

One of the most common questions I’m asked is “How does a Policy Governance® board evaluate its CEO?” Let me suggest that if your board is asking this question, it is asking the wrong one. If you hired someone to build a fence, you wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) evaluate the competence of the carpenter while the […]

Is Your Board Examining the Right Costs?

Posted by Richard Stringham
On November 19, 2020
At What Worth, Values

In a recent episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast, Vivian Lee, the author of: “The Long Fix: Solving America’s Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone,” describes the results of a substantive change that took place in Utah’s Medicaid program. Prior to the change, health care providers were paid for each medical procedure […]

How a Board can Embrace Diversity

Posted by Rose Mercier
On November 11, 2020
Board Development, Values

It would be hard not to notice the proliferation of media stories, academic and industry research, anecdotal evidence, and statistics about the diversity – or lack thereof – on boards of directors. Corporate boards, in particular, have been under pressure from institutional investors, governments and regulators to address gender diversity, and there are many excellent […]

If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going…

Posted by Andrew Bergen
On October 28, 2020
Ends, Future Focus

One of my favorite pieces of literature is Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. At one point in the story, Alice has an exchange with the Cheshire Cat that goes like this: Alice: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”Cheshire Cat: “That depends a good deal on where you want […]

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