Terrance Barkan asks:
“Is ‘Social Media’ going to significantly change your organization?”
Take the short 12-question survey!
What do you think?
The results are provided in a free report to everyone that participates and the aggregated statistics will be shared publicly. Even if you are just thinking about social media use, the short 12 questions in the survey will stimulate some important thoughts on this hot topic.
Last week, President Obama spoke of a “failure of leadership” at GM. What happens to GM affects their employees, vendors, retirees, contractors, dealerships. However, failures of leadership happen everyday. A failure of leadership in my community last week caused poor and marginalized people locally to lose services. A private agency closed its doors to these people because of a difference of opinion between the board and staff.
Typically, agencies that serve individuals who are poor and marginalized because these folks are incapable of maintaining a permanent situation due to psychological difficulties; or it may be because they can’t qualify for other public or private agency services. Now, a service those folks came to depend on is closed. Disruption of services for marginalized citizens can be worse than not doing anything at all. All that leadership could say was that it happened before and will likely happen again. A sorry state of affairs, I would say.
The shameful part of this entire situation is that it could have been avoided. Apparently, a disagreement between the staff and board caused the disruption in funding and services. The board accused the staff of not providing information needed. The staff wanted to be on the board. Volunteer or not, as a governance professional, I would recommend that the board and staff become crystal clear about their roles and responsibilities. Marginalized people lost vital services that allowed them some degree of self-sufficiency because of governance policy, not public policy issues. An opportunity to re-start this organization exists in the form of an interim board.
Re-starting this service, the board clearly needs to have a commitment to the specific mission to serve the poor and marginalized. The board’s responsibility is to ensure organizational performance. When the former board didn’t deal with problems and differences regarding decision-making, the clients suffered. The new board needs to get its values straight. Decisions of all sorts, as clearly argued by Drucker (The Effective Executive, 1967, pp. 113-141), rest on principles and generic understandings. Without setting down in writing these principles of how decisions will be made, this board will continue to have difficulties. The former board got so caught up in an event-driven incident that they forgot to focus directly on perspectives and values. Therefore, organizational behavior was dysfunctional and the fundamental services provided by the organization were lost to those who need them.
Defining governance is not easy. If you google “definition on governance,” you will find over 500,000 entries. Governance is a generic term with applications in information technology, Website management, research, corporations. I’ve found that how the term governance is applied in various disciplines is somewhat confusing. That’s why a simple definition for nonprofit board governance may not be enough to gain clarity and understanding.
For nonprofits, relating the process and practice of governing to a familiar or commonly shared experience helps. In my post “On board service“, I use ships. In April, I wrote an article for the Charity Channel Nonprofit Boards and Governance Review. In this one, I use the train analogy. It seems I’m attracted to transportation analogies when describing governance!
From the review in Charity Channel:
Executive Directors who dump a pile of financials in front of board members, expecting them to have the background and expertise necessary to make heads of tails of them, are not meeting their obligations to the board, according to the latest NBGR article by Sherry Jennings. Taking the point of view of a new board member, she writes, “Most of the financial information was incomprehensible to Martin. What was nagging at Martin was that he didn’t feel like he had a complete ‘picture’ of what was going on. The information he had plodded through last night seemed like a box of spare parts.”‘
In If I’m Not Running the Train, How Do I Know We’re On Track? the author uses a down-to-earth story-telling method to drive the point home and offer up the solution.
Caroline Oliver (brilliant author and consultant on governance) likens practicing good governance to riding a bicycle. You need to take the appropriate steps and practice to do it right. She said that the traditional approach to governance is okay but it’s a bit like pushing the bicycle along rather than riding it. Riding a bicycle is difficult at first. One needs to learn a new way of balancing and may fall a few times. But once one is confident and dancing on the pedals, it feels effortless and like flying (another transportation analogy!)
From Caroline’s reflections:
“Most of us want practical solutions and would prefer to skip the theory bit. However, the boards that tend to excel in the way that they practice governance are the boards that have an idea of what they are doing and why – in other words – the ones that have a good theory!”
I would add a good process and good balance.
Dear Association Executive:
Recently on the American Society of Association Executive’s (ASAE) Executive Section listserv, there have been many questions about how to get the board out of the minutiae in order to find time to work on strategic direction or Ends policy. The board’s focus on the day-to-day is not their fault (entirely.) Board members want to to a good job. But most have learned the traditional approach of board service — showing up at meetings, approving staff work and debating whether or not the office can afford a new copier.
When your board is busy with staff reports, committee reports and working on day-to-day operations, they don’t have the time to focus on strategy or governing. Board members come to your meetings with dozens of other competing priorities and thinking about their own business or family decisions. Once they get to your meeting, the agenda is full of operational (staff) reports or decisions. Is it any wonder board members default into operational mode?
Hildy Gottlieb at Help4Nonprofits.com says it’s like running a ship. You, dear Association Executive, are the captain. You manage the crew, read the charts, navigate and ensure the safety of crew, ship and cargo. You make sure the cargo is delivered. The board’s role is representing the owners of the ship. The board decides what kind of ship, what cargo it will haul, where that cargo will go, to what customers and at what cost. They monitor performance based on how well you deliver. Too often, the board thinks they’re supposed to be captains. When you have nothing but captains on a ship, you have anarchy! (Plus, you sacrifice some much needed crew.)
The board’s job isn’t to run the organization. That’s what they hired you (the captain) to do. The board actually has its own job and it’s not an “extension” of yours. Their job (and their added value) is to represent the owners of the organization (people who expect certain outcomes or results.) This can be the community at large or a specific, defined group of stakeholders such as a neighborhood or micro business owners. In other words, they represent a subset of the community and sit at the board table on behalf of those who are not there. They are representatives.
My point is that, most board members don’t know that their job is representing and governing on behalf of those they represent.
Most board members don’t have a clue that that’s what they’re supposed to do. And, that’s what makes your job more difficult.
John Carver (author of Boards that Make a Difference) describes a traditional nonprofit board of directors as a group of competent individuals who get together to do incompetent things. Nonprofit board members tend to think that a nonprofit is a different animal than a for-profit. This perception is to the detriment of the organization. A nonprofit is an artificial entity created for the purpose of some pursuit — a corporation. The law gives corporations a great deal of power. For-profit corporations recognize this.
You can unleash that power by helping your board see a vision of what they can become when they’re not busy swabbing the decks and running the crew. Good board members are hard to find and harder to keep. Let’s not drive them away with mind-numbing operational matters.
Very sincerely,
Sherry
Insights into group dynamics are essential to facilitators to successfully accomplish the purpose of the meeting.
Organizational behavior is the applied discipline of understanding individual behavior in groups, group process and facilitating individuals in groups to work more effectively and efficiently. As a field of study, organizational behavior integrates psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics and political science. As applied in practice, organizational behavior helps facilitators motivate and encourage people in the group to be flexible and innovative as well as work together successfully.
As a facilitator, I need to understand the principles and stages of group development to cultivate effective group process and decision-making. In some situations, the group does not necessarily need to become a team but some teambuilding is advantageous. My strategies for the groups depend on what stage the group is in – forming, norming, storming, or performing (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forming-storming-norming-performing for more information). In addition, I need to observe group behavior throughout a session in order to create participation.
A facilitator will find it inherently useful to understand the culture within an organization. The organization’s culture is like societal culture and is comprised of a variety of things such as values, beliefs, norms, experiences, attitudes, artifacts (stories, rites and rituals) and patterns of behavior.
For facilitators, understanding organizational culture provides a powerful level for guiding group behavior. Each organization’s dominant culture is unique and can contain subcultures and countercultures.
As a facilitator I have observed that subgroups often form in a group that’s in the storming stage of development. This state occurs when members of the group find that they like some members but not others. The group is divided into factions. The storming stage is the most difficult stage to facilitate since it is full of tension and emotion. The best approaches I have found in this situation is to surface all the problems (get the “dead moose” off the table), create norms that make it safe to discuss the problems and encourage members to debate in a non-personal way. The worst thing is ignoring the situation, attempting to avert arguments or becoming authoritarian. The group will end up focusing its energy on being dissatisfied with me rather than solving its problems. I need to remain clear that I am not taking the group’s behavior personally and accept that tension is normal.
Again, I most often encounter subcultures or countercultures in groups during the storming stage. When interpersonal aspects overshadow getting the job done, I need to bring people’s attention back to process and help people learn group skills. I need to help the group identify their differences or issues and solve them together. I need to stay neutral and totally calm in order to best facilitate communication in this situation.
I use:
The tool that I choose depends on the job at hand and the group’s stage of development.
I am constantly learning about group behaviors, theories of group interactions and group processes.
In reality, this is not always achievable but a purposeful direction is necessary. If I can at least cultivate a sense of shared group responsibility and move a group toward the collaborative or performing stage, I believe I am successful.
In his book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins offers this wisdom for CEO’s:
“Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.”
This wisdom applies equally to a Board of Directors.
Boards need to be a disciplined as they expect their staff to be in gathering information. Good information gathering starts by crafting the right questions prior to conducting an environmental scan to assess whether your organization is meeting the needs of the community.
An environmental scan should insure that a board’s Ends consider the needs, concerns and demands within the community it serves. An organization should exist to create change. It should be the change itself that drive the Ends.
The “value add” of a board as trustees of the owners is to be the link with the external environment and bring that information to the organization. This linkage needs to be regular and periodic. The information gathered will help a board assess whether or not its Ends are relevant and current.
Just as a for-profit corporation conducts an environmental scan to assist with the strategic planning process, a governing board should periodically conduct an environmental scan and ask questions for which it doesn’t already have the answers.
Open meetings, focus groups, surveys, and presentations from third party experts are all dynamic ways to gather information. In addition, a board could consider:
• Board-to-board meetings
• Researching community needs assessments and demographic data
• Breakfast or lunch meetings with groups in the community (one of my clients found this to be so successful that it launched a new entity of like-minded organizations who have similar funding needs)
• Open forums
• Town hall meetings
• One-on-one meetings with community leaders
• Board committees to gather intelligence
Many of us in the nonprofit sector eagerly awaited the publication of this book by The Center for Association Leadership. The book is a research project spanning four years and mentored by Jim Collins. With the assistance of the best-selling author of Good to Great and Built to Last, The Center conducted four years of intensive original research and analysis of 15 years of data. The purpose was to tease out the characteristics that distinguish associations that achieve remarkable results year after year.While some conventional wisdoms were dispelled by the research (e.g., it’s better to hire a CEO from the outside), many common axioms were upheld. Collins wrote in the book’s introduction that “every association can deliver better results for its members.” This is a nice corollary to “good enough is never good enough.”It’s interesting to note the choice of words Collins used in his observation regarding the nature of what separates a great institution from the average. He says great organizations are comprised of:
Collins repeated this mantra a few times during a presentation to the American Society of Association Executives. Why not say “focused” or “purposeful” or “mission-driven?” If you’ve heard Collins speak, you know he’s a bit like that Monk character on television who is obsessed with order and detail. He doesn’t choose his words at random.In his speech to ASAE, Collins said it was more than mission or focus. Discipline requires the organization to stop doing the wrong things in order to have the time to do the right things well and achieve remarkable results. Collins’ observation is a meaningful one for governing boards. Is your board remarkable?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, it may indicate that your board views its role as managing instead of governing. If you answered yes to any of these questions, it may suggest that your board isn’t spending enough time on the “right things.”That’s where disciplined thought and action come in. Discipline helps the board get done what it needs to do efficiently and expediently. Discipline frees up time to make a difference for the people they serve (why most people join boards.) It creates meetings that are exciting and engaging (and worth attending.) It will help your board recruit and retain quality board members because everyone wants to be part of a remarkable board.Where do you start to create an environment that fosters disciplined thought and action? You can begin with the principles found in Policy Governance
People seem to believe that the status quo still isn’t working because they are still looking for “new” solutions. I’ve been in the nonprofit world for over 17 years and the same problems keep coming up. The spectrum runs from “my board is micromanaging” to “my board members are disengaged.” CEOs continually tell me about the need for their boards to become future-focused as opposed to functionally operational boards. Why, after all these years, are CEO’s still seeking solutions these problems when a perfectly good one has been there all along? It’s called Policy Governance®.
Most boards and CEO’s don’t have a good grasp of governance. Governance is not management although nonprofit boards have a tendency to think of themselves as “uber managers.” Among those who are aware of Policy Governance®, there is still a great deal of misunderstanding about what Policy Governance is and is not.
(Download a concise description of Policy Governance — go to http://www.policygovernanceassociation.org/index.html and click on the #3 Quick Link.)
The term governance is used very broadly in the nonprofit world. CEO’s tend to become focused on tactics to manage board behavior – instead of seeking a system or process of governing. That’s why CEO’s are as frustrated with board politics, meddling, micromanagement* rubber stamping, etc. as ever. One CEO summed up this frustration by saying: “We’re kidding ourselves if we think we can set up a process [that is sustainable.] Living in chaos is normal.”
As Policy Governance professionals it’s clear we have a lot of “undoing” to do. We need to overcome the perception that Policy Governance is a “cookie cutter” approach which causes it to be dismissed out of hand without any dialog on how it can lead to eliminating the chaos and creating an effective board of directors. In part, my fellow consultants and I think this is due to the perception that a model is a die-stamped, rigid structure.It’s unfortunate that the term governance is being used as a generic term to describe everything from organizational development to operations and web content management.
The term governance is used so generically, this is going to be a tough one for Policy Governance. It may be like trying to preserve a brand name like Kleenex and differentiate it from other tissues, but is worth some discussion. Give me your thoughts.
*(for a great article on micromanagement go to:http://www.help4nonprofits.com/NP_Bd_MicroManage_Art.htm
