September 2005

Innovation Tips

…ideas for building collaborative innovation

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Boards as Strategic Collaborators

 

The recently published book, Governance as Leadership, identified one of the key dilemmas faced by nonprofit organizations. Board members are often eager to do meaningful work but get mired in administrative detail. The board’s vast potential in human and social capital—among the strongest assets of the organization—is insufficiently tapped.

 

At the heart of the problem is the definition of the board’s role. Some see a tightly limited fiduciary role that strictly circumscribes the board’s relationship to management. Others see a detailed and active role in management, sometimes creating a conflagration of ill will among paid staff. Somewhere between those two extremes, boards may flounder in uncertainty about their optimal role.

 

Meanwhile, in the confusion, their bountiful assembled wisdom, knowledge, experience, training and expertise are wasted and board members tire of trivial detail.

 

Where is the solution to this perplexing dilemma? The authors of Governance as Leadership recommend adopting a more vital role as strategic collaborators.

 

The role of fiduciary agent need not consume all of the board’s time. With appropriate “dash board gauges” in place to monitor the organization’s activity, standing committees consisting of qualified individuals can readily review the relevant fiduciary issues.

 

The full board’s docket could be free of detailed administrative review or meddlesome operational decision-making. Once bright and capable managers are hired, they need the freedom to assume full responsibility for their managerial role, without the need for continually seeking permission or approval from an excessively watchful board.

 

A more valuable role for the board is as strategic collaborator with management. Sorting out the cues and clues of important strategic issues is difficult work and requires the perspectives of many. Management often feels swamped by the day-to-day operational details. It is hard to get one’s head above water to consider the larger issues of strategic thinking.

 

The board has the needed larger perspective. People of highly diverse experience and training, united by a common mission, can leverage enormous value in responding to the ever changing landscape of strategic concerns.

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