REALBoard Buzz™
7 Tips for Creating Board Committees
Should a board have committees? It depends. How many committees should a board have? It depends. It depends on whether the committees will interfere with the accountability of the CEO. It depends on whether those committees will help the board or hinder the “holism”...
Is Your Board Really Present?
Last weekend I was enjoying the beautiful summer weather taking a walk along a local nature trail. There were many other people doing the same thing. What amazed me was the number of them that were walking along, heads down, totally absorbed in their devices! ...
What about Executive Committees?
I received a call from the president of an organization that I coach which was in the middle of revising its bylaws. It had been suggested to the president that it was hard for a board to function without an executive committee. She called because she was curious...
Considerations before Implementing Policy Governance®
You may have landed on this blog because you are one of the quiet –or not so quiet –advocates for Policy Governance®to be introduced to your board. Perhaps your board would like to implement the model, but doesn’t know where to start. It’s possible it has all the...
You Don’t Need to Control Something to Make a Difference
Board members and CEOs who work with Policy Governance® should be familiar with the concept of Ends policies. These are powerful statements of what difference the organization is to produce in the world, for whom, and for what worth. This concept is distinct from what...
It Works in Small Organizations, Too
Several years ago I was invited to join the board of a small not-for-profit organization. It had been sliding downhill as a going concern for a number of years and the board had just taken the drastic action of dismissing the CEO with no notice amidst allegations of...
Ownership Linkage: The Interview Matrix
Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to be involved in some large group sessions where the facilitator was able to gather a significant amount of information from each of the people involved. The method used was called an Interview Matrix. As I thought about...
Start Where You Are
Board work can be frustrating. People serve on boards to help and they hope their contributions will be meaningful. But when the board as a group is ineffective, the disappointment individual members feel is unambiguous. This is too common an occurrence and more...
The Challenges of the Reasonable Interpretation
If you have any familiarity with Policy Governance®, you will have heard the term any reasonable interpretation. It is the Policy Governance principle that in my experience is the one most often misunderstood. If you are not familiar with this principle, let me...
Policy Governance® for the Generations
I coach an organization that, like many other organizations, is wondering how changing population demographics will affect them. They have been proactively trying to understand how their association will be relevant in the future to the various generations – Baby...