Now that I'm off the board...

“Now that I’m off the board I am more valuable.”

I had a friend just recently mention to me that he had stepped down from a board he had been on for some time, and discovered that he felt that he could be more helpful off the board than on. He is not the first to make that observation to me. Indeed, I recently stepped down from a board myself and told both the president and the board chair that I would be available gratis as an advisor, feeling as though I had exhausted my value to the board and could be more valuable off than on.

The chair and president have indeed sought my counsel from time to time. My contributions are pure observation and advice. I can be candid because of it. This provides a refreshing freedom to what I can say to either the chair or the president.

So I began to think about the pros and cons:

1. When you are on a board you have to be careful that you don’t use your board position to “instruct” or “help” the CEO (or other employees). It’s so easy to be misunderstood. The board as a whole is the boss of the president, not individual board members. Nevertheless, a member’s position of presumed authority can be confusing, and board members often behave as though they had individual power. The CEO can get all the help he needs from anywhere. He doesn’t need a board to do that. The board is not for advice or help (much to many people’s disillusionment); it is to govern. Roles and power can be very easily muddled or misperceived when on the board. Off the board you can give all the advice you want and it can be accepted or rejected free of misunderstandings.

2. Now I can be friends with both chair and president, free of mixed loyalties. When I was a board member my first and legal duty was to the organization and its moral owners as we saw our accountability. Yet I developed friendship with the President (and his staff) and with that friendship goes a certain natural loyalty. This is a problem in governance because that friendship can blind or weaken my loyalty to the organization - my ability to be firm if necessary. There is real tension and there are innumerable studies discussing this issue. I believe that it is the most common reason behind CEO induced meltdowns - huge compensations, poor org. leadership, poor strategy, etc.

3. Your timing is your own. You can phone up for a visit at any time or e-mail a thought. It does not run the risk of being seen as tied to an issue coming up on the board, since you don’t know what is coming up. Your motives are seen as purer - less likely mixed.

4. The president or chair is free to be more open since your motives are not, of necessity, mixed anymore. This actually enables you to give better advice. You learn more and you see more clearly.

Anyway, those are some of the dynamics behind this feeling we have sometimes when stepping off a board but desirous of continuing to contribute. We can be valuable in a profoundly different way. Both roles are vital. But we can’t do both at the same time. There is a time…