More on Board Spine, an Interesting Experience

It Often is the Little Things That Make a Difference and are Just Enough

I had an experience a few days ago that is very relevant to the blog I posted in October on the need for a board to have spine as a necessary component of governance. This was a favorable experience for once and fit the turnaround pattern that was emerging in this organization.

Here is the story. I was standing in an informal group prior to a meeting, a group which included the prior chair of the organization on whose board (mentioned earlier) I had reluctantly joined to help turn the organization around and rescue it before it went over the edge. Also, in the group was the CEO we had appointed to replace the previous one. This board was, (or became soon enough), a Policy Governance® board and so was looking forward to the first Ends (intended results, for whom, & the resources to be used) monitoring report under this new CEO. The new CEO had been unable to submit an ends report last year after just after arriving because the prior CEO had terminated the data system that enabled the quantification of ends.

As the group visited informally the new CEO seemed excited about his work on the ends monitoring, which would be submitted to the board very shortly. Suddenly into the casual conversation of this group, the CEO commented that one of the reasons he had been so diligent regarding reinstating the data system and driving him toward excellence concerning the ends monitoring was that the chairman last year had made a single comment. When he, the new CEO, had told the board last year, just after taking his position, that he would be unable to submit ends monitoring because the data system had been terminated by his predecessor (but he would be reinstating it), the chair had simply commented, “That (failure to monitor ends) is not acceptable.” The CEO told the group that that comment had “rung in his head” all year and he had not forgotten it!

One comment by a chair was all, in this case, that it took to reinforce to this willing and able CEO the fact that the board was serious about receiving decent ends monitoring reports. He assumed (rightly) that the chairman was speaking for the Board, and he needed no further indication of Board resolve.

That is a wonderful example of the use of just the right amount of Board firmness required in this case, and for this CEO, who got the message and willingly set about complying. The chair knew his board and where it stood in this matter and applied just the right amount of firmness to his message. Nothing in writing, just a simple, almost casual comment was all it took.

The Ends monitoring report? It was great! It focused the Board on the ends accomplishments of the organization, and suddenly all the effort and pain of the past couple of years were worth it. The Board and CEO, together, contemplated the future in terms of ends, discussed new challenges and dreamed about the future. That board went home feeling it had done its job.

Board Governance, Diligence, and Entropy

In an article posted this month on the electronic version of Quality Digest Donald Wheeler, one of my favorite trainers and authors in the use of improvement statistics, discusses the power of entropy (as in the Second Law of Thermodynamics) to drag an organizational process toward deterioration and chaos. Sometimes the process appears to be giving us the results we want but occasionally and unpredictably fails. Underlying that particular pattern may be a process that is not really fundamentally reliable at all, (i.e., it is unstable and is unpredictably so, at that), but it appears to be giving results, which lulls us into complacency and hence, benign neglect. Because we don’t recognize nor probe the real root cause of this behavior, the process swings from looking good (but underneath is “On the Brink of Chaos”) to “Chaos” and failure and then back as we reactively patch it. Wheeler calls this the “Cycle of Despair.” We constantly patch to fix it, getting it back to giving us results and then, wham, it goes out on us again.

As I reflected on this phenomenon, I realized that I commonly see governing boards behaving this way. They start into improving themselves, for example, saying they will learn and apply Policy Governance®, improving the rigor and intentionality of their governance. They promise their CEO to improve so he can be free to manage and they can govern. But as they begin to change and improve, they become complacent and don’t realize they are fighting a very persistent and pervasive hidden enemy, entropy. When they relax in their complacency, they slide backwards toward old habits and ineffectiveness.

Of course, there can be other causes for a board experiencing this pattern. A common one is laziness - a close cousin of complacency. It is always easier the old way (even if less effective). The chairman just doesn’t get around to doing what must be done to stay the course. (He is use to showing up, and finding the agenda and all the reports there in front of him ... done by the CEO.) Often staying the course simply means for the chair doing the agenda the way it should be done and holding the board to its stated intent. But it is easier to let the CEO do it, it’s new to me; he’s done it in the past, or use an old agenda - one simply calling for reports.

Occasionally ignorance may be cause, but that has no excuse either, since a phone call or e-mail for counsel or assistance is just a phone dial away.

Usually there is irony (or hypocrisy) here. The board would never condone its organization not striving for excellence and the diligence it takes but is, itself, unable to persevere against entropy and continue the climb to excellence.