Leading by Design

A RECENT CONVERSATION ABOUT WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE for ongoing member communications at a nonprofit got me thinking about how boards can, often quite unintentionally, waste their CEO's talent and, in turn, the talent of bright, committed staff.  Boards can waste their own talent, too, but that's the subject for the next post.  In this conversation, some board members argued that it was the role of the board to review and approve every word the organization relayed to its membership.  Others differentiated between "strategic" communications -- issue briefs, advocacy alerts, statements on future organizational directions, for example -- and "informational" communications, such as event promotion, volunteer or donor recognition, and activity recaps.  Clearly, the substance of the communication seemed to be one (if not the ) determining factor in when the board would involve itself in message development and approval.  However, we didn't get to that unde...

LAST MONTH I PRESENTED A WORKSHOP ON NONPROFIT BOARD-STAFF RELATIONSHIPS to members of the Long Island Museum Association. Here's a picture of most of us at the end of the session -- a fine looking bunch, don't you think? I shared with the participants four simple lessons that I've learned over the course of my work in nonprofits about the delicate interconnectedness of nonprofit boards and staffs.  We may know the accepted divisions of authority and responsibility between them, but they rarely function with textbook precision, even in the best of organizations. Why?  One reason is because it takes work to learn and try to understand the motivations of others. Here's a possible starting point: my four lessons, meant to be short, sweet, and hopefully memorable. Lesson #1:   We’re all in this together.     This is my personal and professional philosophy.  I take to heart this quote from John Carver, author of Boards that Make a Difference : ...

YESTERDAY AND TODAY I'M ATTENDING ONLINE sessions from the 2009 American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) conference that's being held in Indianapolis. In addition to about a dozen sessions, AASLH also has a blog and Twitter feed going. We were told in our first online session that the attendance from the online component (about 250+ of us) was making the total conference attendance a record-breaker. Impressive. A conference blog post relating to a session on leadership succession talked about the trend of retiring staff to stick around as paid staff or volunteers to work on special projects of interest to them or to fundraise. Here's the observation by conference-goer Barbara Walden of the session she attended : As the economy has taken a turn in our least favorite direction, a number of long time museum professionals are opting out for early retirement. Although their positions are coming to a close, a number are choosing to continue their involvement...