Good morning- Thank you for reading my blog. 
I have moved my blog to wordpress.  Please join me there:
http://nonprofitevolution.wordpress.com/
Thank you,
Dani

Board Work that Moves the Needle

I have been giving a lot of thought lately to how the work of the Board gets done.  Mostly it’s by decisions made in meetings and in between meetings.  Board members go to a lot of meetings- committee meetings, board meetings, meetings with the Exec – and sure they have work assigned that they complete between meetings, but it all leaves me wondering:  Where’s the strategy?  Where’s the generative thinking?  Where’s the advocacy?  Where’s the impact?  How do we know?

Boards approve things, they review things, they talk about things: Are they the right things?  

Boards have to have a quorum and must approve financials and meeting minutes and a whole host of other things.  Hopefully, Board members also represent the agency in the community, understand and talk about programs, support and evaluate the Executive Director, raise money and give money.  These are their fiduciary responsibilities.  But surely that shouldn’t be all we have our Board members doing.  They are the pillars of our community. They are smart, professional and talented people.  Are we correctly utilizing their collective brain power??

Have they decided upon a strategic direction?   Have they discussed the underlying causes that created the issue the organization was created to address?  I am hearing a resounding chorus of NO!   

All too often, there is no plan, strategic or even tactical.  There are no metrics.  There is no discussion of root causes, alternative options or new ideas.  There are talented people sitting in a room because they care about the mission of the agency – and in certain but by no means all cases- we are wasting their time.  And as such we are wasting our resources.

Strategic planning has fallen out of favor.  It kills me to say it but it’s true.  Most Board members have sat through at least one planning session, often more, that were long and boring; yet there they sat in an effort to decide the mission and direction of an agency.  And as a prize for their dedication, they got to spend two hours debating if they were going to use the word “a” or “the” in the mission statement.  Then, when they were – thankfully - finished after days or months and considerable expense, the plan sat on a shelf, collecting dust, never to be seen again.

It doesn’t have to be like that. 

In the article, Governance as Leadership; An Interview with Richard Chait, Chait discusses his book “Governance as Leadership” (Boardsource) which “recommends reframing board work around “three modes” of governing. The first is the fiduciary mode, in which the board exercises its legal responsibilities of oversight and stewardship. The second is the strategic mode, in which the board makes major decisions about resources, programs and services. The third is the “generative” mode, in which the board engages in deeper inquiry, exploring root causes, values, optional courses and new ideas.”

You may be wondering how to add generative and strategic to your meetings.   Strategy is all about connecting the resources to the goals, which, of course, requires having strategic goals.  If you don’t, I encourage you to read my previous blog about wheel spinning and begin to discuss planning.  Generative is a much deeper conversation about the underlying issues and how to impact them.  Chait presents governance discussions as ones that “select and frame the problem.”   In other words, were no longer talking about impact or program outcomes or even the agency itself, we’re talking about how we  - our city, community, country or even world - got here and what it takes to get out of here. “Committees need to think not about decisions or reports as their work product, but to think of understanding, insight and illumination as their work products.”

In order to use the collective brain power of our Boards to move our agencies forward we have to move into strategic and generative governance, while still meeting our fiduciary obligations. The Board Chair and the Executive Director can, should, and I would submit, have the obligation to use the collective brain power of their board to move the needle.  It’s why we’re here.  In the absence of that, we approve things, we attend meetings and we go through the motions, but nothing happens. 

I want something to happen; I want the world to change.

What’s been your experience?  How have you utilized the talent on your Board to move the needle? I welcome your comments.

Raising your Profile; Building your Credibility

I was running a Club in Texas, when I was offered the Executive Director position for the Boys & Girls Clubs in Akron Ohio.  I knew the President of the Akron Community Foundation and not another soul in town.  Thankfully, my Board had a plan.  

One Board member, who isn’t the mayor of Akron but could have been because he knows everyone, started setting up lunch meetings.  We went to lunch with every community leader in town.  We told them of our struggles; we told them about our kids and what they needed to be successful; we told them our plan to ensure they were, indeed, successful – and that our Club was as well. After 6 months, I, too, knew everyone in town.

  

What’s the lesson for your organization? There’s actually a few:

1.       Who is on your Board and who do they know?

2.       Will they introduce you?

3.       Do you have a story?

4.       Can you tell it in a way that engages people?

5.       Who picks up the tab?

Now you might thing that it was silly of me to include the question of who pays for lunch on my list of lessons, but I cannot tell you the number of people who have asked.  It matters.  The question of what is a good use of agency resources is a blog for another day, but for today, it’s worth having the discussion and being clear about the answer before you ask Board members to set meetings. 

Once you do, start having lunch, coffee and breakfast! Get to know people in your community and let them get to know you.  Program officers of foundations are incredibly generous with their time and are interested in learning about your organization.  Community leaders, by definition, care about the community.  Go talk to them.  You will be pleasantly surprised by the number of people who say yes to your request for a meeting.

Profile building can and is partially done over lunch, but it only starts at lunch. It doesn’t end there.  To build your profile, you also have to build your credibility and the credibility of your program. Obviously, it won’t be enough to talk about your program if your program isn’t providing excellent services.  Impactful programming is critical.  Benchmark similar organizations, find and implement best practices and monitor and communicate your impact.   

Speak in the community.  Most service groups have a speaker at every meeting.  Recruit and train a Public Speaking Team to present at service group meetings and in the community.  It is a wonderful opportunity to get your message out there.  You can also blog about the issues that impact your clients, write op-ed pieces and meet with local politicians. 

Is there a Leadership group in your city? Leadership Akron was an incredible experience for me. It contributed to my professional development and knowledge about the city in ways that I could not have replicated on my own.  It also provided incredible resources for my organization. Now that I live in Columbus, I am a member of the Leadership Columbus Alumni group.  Consider participating in your local group.  Most leadership programs offer scholarships for nonprofit senior leaders and it is an incredible investment of your time and resources.

Figure out the “must attend” event in town, and attend.  And when you do, walk around and greet everyone, introduce yourself to people you haven’t been able to get in front of and ask if you can call them for a meeting.  Again, you’ll be surprised at the number of people that say yes.

Finally, join groups that coalesce around the issues you care about.  Most communities have nonprofit executive director groups, monthly or weekly educational forums, and leadership organizations.  Find one and get involved. If there isn’t a group, start one.  We invited all the leaders of agencies that offered after school programming in Akron to a meeting.  Akron had almost 2 dozen after school programs, yet there was no on-going discussions about programming, best practices or service gaps. The discussion that started at that first meeting continued and our group later became the After School Council of Greater Akron.

You can do it!  Profile raising, like everything else that is worth doing, takes time - lots of time.  Spending the time will pay off in spades, for your organization, its mission and the community it serves!

Please let me know how it goes. As always, if you have other ideas for profile building, or suggestions for blog topics, please share. A rising tide raises all boats.

Staff Management

When I was in Grad school I learned of a leadership style called “Management by Walking Around” which really resonated with me.  The basic premise is that staff may talk to you about things in their space or on the fly that they wouldn’t necessary come to your office to discuss.

I loved it!  When I became an Executive Director I made sure I walked around and checked in with my team at least once a day.  I asked: “How’s it going?” “What’s going on?” “Need anything?”

Great! Except that it wasn’t.  Balls got dropped; decisions never got made, or if they did, never got implemented – and the truth is, I never got the impression that anyone ever actually talked to me about things that they wouldn’t have come to my office to discuss. 

The other big revelation about Managing by Walking Around is this: it doesn’t work.  Walking around has its place, as long as we’re all clear that it’s not actually leadership, or even management. Managing on the fly isn’t managing at all; it’s really just walking around, checking in, seeing and being seen. None of which is irrelevant, but neither is it leadership.

The best way I know to manage staff is to set expectations, clarify the expectations, as necessary and then support staff to meet their expectations.  The best way I know to do that is to sit down to talk with them. 

I recommend my clients meet with their team’s individually on a regularly scheduled basis, once a month at a minimum, preferably once a week or every other week.  (I also recommend Board Chairs sit down with their non- profit’s CEO on a similar schedule.)

What to discuss?  I like to have my team send me, by noon the day before our meeting,  a written list of:

1.       things they’re working on;

2.       things they need permission for; and

3.       things they just want me to know about

I then add a list of things I want to discuss and send it back the same day.  Then, I print the list for myself and I take notes on it at the meeting.   After the meeting I throw my notes in a file with the employee’s name on it- and voila! - I now have documentation of who agreed to do what by when and an entire year of meeting notes for when I need to do their evaluation.  It’s brilliant …… though I can’t take any credit for it; I learned it from a past board member.

Weekly meetings, coupled with expectation setting, valid and accurate job descriptions, performance reviews and professional development plans can transform your management style as well as the way staff work and work together – and that can transform your organization.

Try and it and let me know what you think!

Integrating Change

Since I became a consultant people have been asking me which change management planning model I use.  I’ve been answering that I create individual plans for my clients based on their needs and my experience leading change over many years, and I do.  Yet people never seem satisfied with that answer, which has always puzzled me.  People also quickly become dissatisfied when I say “It depends;” I still say it frequently, because it usually does depend - on the situation, the resources and the people at the table. 

I take my wisdom where I find it and their puzzlement has inspired me to challenge myself as to what answer I should be giving to help them better understand the work I do and also to identify and be proactive with the issues they face.  To help you think about your change, here are the issues I run into again and again:

1.     Role confusion between the board and the executive director, which may result in boundary crossings with the executive director performing the work of the board and the board performing the work of the exec.

2.     Lack of systems and measurements to ensure excellence, which may present as high turnover of clients and/or staff.

3.     Lack of policies to ensure safety or program continuity, which may lead to a general feeling of unease, or worse – a crisis.

4.     Lack of agreed upon goals, strategies or expectations, which may leave people spinning their wheels but not moving forward.

5.     No formal plan to recruit new board members or develop and evaluate current board members, which may result in a disengaged board, sometime with one or two members calling all the shots.

6.     No formal plan to raise money from a variety of sources/methods, make new friends or secure in-kind resources, which may result in staff layoffs that no one saw coming, fear of closure, multiple special events that raise little money and, occasionally, emergency fund raising.

7.     No professional development planning for the leadership or staff, which may result in the disengagement of staff.

8.     Executive Directors who are not aware of their role in building the board, which may lead to the creation of a weaker board that does not challenge the executive director.

9.     Boards that are not aware of the full scope or boundaries of their role, which may result in a lack of governance.

10.  All of the above. (Many of my clients meet none of the above, and that's a different blog post.)

Capacity building is an important part of the foundation of successful change and addressing these issues usually depend on the following elements. If any of these elements are missing, the potential for sustainable change is compromised.

      1.       The organization’s capacity for change

2.       People’s willingness to be uncomfortable and/or make others uncomfortable

3.       The strength of the leaders of the organizations and their emotional fortitude

4.       The willingness to implement a plan (and not just check it off  a list and put in on a shelf.)

Do I have a model for each issue?  I do.… yet the issues rarely come alone.  It might be issues 1, 3 and 7.  It might be issues 9 and 4.  It might be issues 5, 8 and 9.  It might be 10.  Even though the issues may be similar, the circumstance that prompts a call to a consultant is not.   As such, I offer individually tailored plans to meet the needs of my clients.  Those plans include trainings, meeting facilitation, plan development, goal and strategy setting, tactical planning to meet those goals, as well as coaching.

Which one do I use in which case?  It depends…..

Strategically Planning or Spinning your Wheels?

I had the pleasure of being a panelist at Cause Collaborative last week.  One of the things I said that seemed to resonate with people is that spinning wheels only look like forward motion. 

Does your organization have a strategic plan?  The absence of a plan allows for organizations to spin their wheels, disengage their volunteers, frustrate their Board and burnout their staff, all while not moving the organization or its mission forward. 

If there is one thing that I hate, it’s wasting the resources of a community.

Strategic planning is a process by which the board, staff, and select constituents decide the strategy for the future direction of an organization and allocate resources, including people, to ensure that target goals are reached.  Having a board-approved, staff-involved strategic plan that includes effective measurements and the allocation of resources aligns the organization, provides direction to all level of staff and Board, and defines the path for the future of the organization.  It also allows leadership, both board and staff, to reject divergent paths that will not lead to the organization’s intended destination.  

Where are you today? 

Where would you like to be in three years?

How are you going to get there? 

How will you know when you do?

Do you have the people at the table to accomplish your goals?  If not, what or who do you need to add (or remove)?

Let’s start talking – and let’s stop spinning!

I’m a Volunteer

I’m co-presenting a workshop this summer called the 10 Dysfunctions of a Board.  As you might imagine, one of the top ten is what I have begun to think of as the “I’m a Volunteer” syndrome. 

Perhaps you’ve had some version of this conversation with a member of your board.  It sounds like this:  “Dani, I don’t have time for this; I’m a volunteer!”  And they are, but they are also a board member who agreed to do the work of the board.  Now, agree may be a fuzzy verb to use because it’s possible they didn’t agree at all.  It’s possible, all they were told is “we only need an hour a month of your time.”  If that’s the case (and it often is) shame on whoever told them that.  Boards represent the community as the stewards of an organization.  It is very difficult to steward anything well in one hour a month. 

You will get the Board you build.

Now, this blog is not intended to knock the millions of dedicated and committed volunteers across this city and the country that serve their local non profits with distinction.  I applaud and am grateful for you! Thank you for your service to our community!

This blog post is not intended to knock anyone.  I aspire to lay out a path of development, so that organizations can have the right people in leadership seats. 

How do you do that?  The best way I know to do that is to frontload it.  Frontload is my 2012 word of the year.  It means to be clear about things up front, so there is no confusion.

Frontloading Board prospect appointments look like this:   “Thank you for your interest in serving on the Board of Directors.  We are delighted to have this opportunity to meet with you.  Our Board meets on the 1st Tuesday of the month at 8:30 am.  Are you available at that time?  We anticipate Board service will take approximately 5 hours per month, (1.5 hours at the board meeting, 1.5 hours at a committee meeting, 2 hours working with the committee or the CEO to accomplish the work for the committee) but that could go up significantly should there be something of consequence to discuss or address.  Board members are expected to attend 75% of Board meetings, serve on at least one committee, attend agency events, act as an ambassador in the community, introduce us to your circle of influence, give a “significant to you” financial gift, and help us to secure an additional gifts from your circle of influence and, as appropriate, your company.  Is this something to which you can commit?”

If they say yes, Great!  Though we’re still not finished.  Their candidacy still needs to be vetted by the Board Development committee and if they are recommended, nominated and approved, they also need to be oriented.  I like to orient board members after their election yet before their first meeting.  That way, they can still opt out once they understand the full scope of the expectations and the role of the Board. 

After they have been orientated, Board members, and the Boards they serve, should be evaluated annually.  That can be as simple as taking the Board expectations and turning it into a 1-5 self rating form, or as complicated as tracking all gifts, training, participation and meeting attendance and having the Board Development or Executive Committee evaluate each member individually. 

The important thing is that you are intentional about your needs and clear about your expectations.  If you are, people will rise to the occasion, or defer because they can’t or choose not to.   Both will work toward our goal of building strong Boards that understand their role, and work collectively to serve the agency and the community.

As always, I welcome your comments, and your experience.