Leading by Design

JANUARY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER (yikes!) and many if not most nonprofits will be holding their first board meeting of the new year sometime in the next four weeks.  While we might be inclined to fall back on comfortable agenda formats and conversations for this meeting, if you're embracing 2014 as a year of intentional organizational development (see my post about that here ), then I know you're giving serious thought to rethinking what and how business will be discussed. For those of you from organizations that tend to tick methodically through task lists at board meetings before calling it a day, structuring the first board meeting of the new year around an evaluation of past successes and failures coupled with discussion about future directions is in order as one way to move from microscopic dissection to big picture strategy.  For this type of conversation to be successful, it needs to be structured.  One way to do that is with a handful of big questions and ...

DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o3sNbI4Us4 So, what should be on the agenda instead?     How about trying a little strategy ....  using the organization's plan and key success indicators to evaluate how well program is meeting mission?    Maybe ditching most of those reports of past activities to free up time to discuss future steps? How about breaking into smaller discussion groups for a deeper dive into issues? Would a staff or volunteer presentation, a brief tour of a project, or a hands-on activity help board members to better understand your challenges and opportunities? We talk a lot about how to engage audiences.  Shouldn't engagement of the board be a top priority?

I ALWAYS GET A LITTLE SHIVER UP MY SPINE when a I see a board meeting agenda that is nothing more than a pro forma list of reports.  I bet you know what I mean -- after the call to order and the approval of the previous month's minutes we're off and running with a litany of updates from the president, the director, and any number of committees.  You can kind of put yourself on auto-pilot for most of these meetings.  In fact, one (at least) organization I know hands out the same agenda for every meeting.  It doesn't even take into account that a committee or two haven't met -- your committee is on there even if all you have to say is "we haven't met."  (And, yes, that shows up in the minutes!)  Please tell me what would excite you about attending that meeting if the agenda was all you had to go on? The fact is a board is a community -- a community of doers and seekers.  In order for this community to do it must seek meaning not only from facts, but f...

IN HER RECENT BLOG POST "Where good (board) ideas come from" , Debra Beck links to a great video (you've just got to watch it) and poses the questions "Do we nurture breathing room and value insights shared amidst the rush to check reports off the agenda? Do we foster opportunities for good ideas inside board members' heads to make it to the surface so they can be connected?" Thoughts of inspirational discussions and deep-diving into issues that were cut short by a too-full agenda and not enough time came flooding over me as I read Debra's post.  Yes, I've been in those situations and I look back on them with mixed emotions knowing that some great conversations will never be rekindled and some organizational energy was lost. So, how can we build in time for idea generation, rumination, and synergy at the board and staff levels?  Here are some of my thoughts: It's counter-intuitive, but the space to spark and nurture ideas needs to be planned ....

MY AUDIO/POWERPOINT SLIDES TO MY WEBINAR for NYS Arts on how to up the quality quotient for board meetings is available here . This webinar looks at some basics:  what board meetings should accomplish (and often don't), how revisioning an agenda can provide meaning as well as focus, and how dashboards, breakouts, facilitated discussions and conversation recorders can both deepen and expand understanding. Illustration:  The Boring Meeting from fourborne via Flickr

I GOT SUCH A BAD VIBE from watching snippets of President Obama's Health Care Summit that I almost had to avert my eyes.  This was a train wreck in more ways than one and I'd like to take up some blog real estate to focus in on some very practical aspects of the meeting that, frankly, occur a lot in nonprofit board and staff rooms all across the country. 1.  Room set-up :  I immediately focused in on the fact that all 37 participants were seated around a hollow square configuration of tables.  This way, everyone could see everybody else.  Name tags were prominently displayed on the tables in front of everyone's place.  Certainly, when you're trying to encourage discussion, everybody needs to be facing each other.  Yet, the group was large enough that the folks on the ends would not have been able to see the face of a speaker in the middle of a their row.  A really big round table would have been much better. The meeting room at Blair House seeme...

ONE OF THE CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO MY decision to leave full-time nonprofit organizational life was the amount of time I spent in meetings. Board meetings, staff meetings, committee meetings, community meetings....you name it (and you know it, I'm sure). A day at the office wasn't complete without one....or two....or.... Given the fact that nonprofits are all about people means that there's a ton of communication that must take place in order to nurture and maintain them, and service the constituents who need them. In the communication quiver is one arrow that gets readily used: the meeting. Trying to contain meeting virus is a serious management tool. With so much written about it, it’s a wonder that many organizations still haven’t been able to master it very well or at all. Here’s one more bit of advice – by Harvard Business blogger Gina Trapini, Extreme Ways to Shorten and Reduce Meetings . Among her suggestions: Start and end on time. Basic stuff, but it’s...

It's amazing how one new participant can change the dynamic of an established group. We're often not conscious of it until after the group has convened, when we're either congratulating ourselves for wisely choosing the new addition or grousing about how things didn't quite click. No matter the outcome, it's best to be aware beforehand that new additions will play a role -- large or small; subtle or bold -- in the interactions and outcomes of group work. Knowing that a new addition will be joining an established group, it's always useful to lay out expectations and ground rules with the individual in advance. During the meeting, group leaders will need to pay particular attention to providing more background information and insights in order to give the newcomer a chance to "catch up". Group leaders should also be mindful of ways to include newcomers in discussions by actively inviting their perspectives and posing questions for them to answer. A...

The agenda was developed and circulated weeks ago. A revised financial projection for the second half of the year was created and emailed to board members last week, along with a cover email that included several prompting questions for discussion at the board meeting. The final location arrangements were squared away earlier this week. I'll be spending the next couple of days gathering additional materials for handing out and for mental preparation. I mentally prepare by going through the agenda and visioning the conversation around each discussion item. This exercise helps me to articulate my thoughts, anticipate questions board members might ask of me and it prompts me to bring various types of supporting material along. Sometimes, it even leads to another handout -- an article, graph or factsheet. Since I believe that board meetings are golden opportunities to solicit opinion, explore issues, and address the needs of our organization's constituents, I work with my board ...

Meetings, it seems, are the stock in trade of organizational life. A centuries' old managerial tool that has changed little in format, except for the presence of electronic gadgets and the digital or telephonic presence of far-away participants. As much as some folks would like to get away from them altogether -- paring down frequency and length of time spent together -- the fact remains that organizations are comprised of two or more people and communication among them is what gets things done. Whether you call it a conversation or a convocation, it's still a meeting. And most agree there's room for improvement (why else would there be so many books, articles and blogs devoted to them?). Here's one more . Gretchen Rubin offers up fourteen tips for running good meetings with a rundown of the basics -- start on time/end on time; send out an agenda beforehand and stick to it; be specific about action items -- and she throws in a big dose of etiquette while she's...

There's a propensity for like-minded folks to cluster together in group situations. When so many boards are comprised of people who know one another outside the board room (or may be related to one another) clustering  is common....and can be a common problem.  As we strive for greater diversity of board members, those who aren't from the same social or familial circles may find it especially difficult to break into the circle that is the board. The executive director, nominating committee and board president need to be mindful of clustering or cliques, and consciously work to minimize their effect.  The first rule of thumb is that everyone is diversely, but equally, skilled in the board room -- a tenet that needs to be voiced and modeled at every turn.  It is to the long-term advantage of the organization to institutionalize this democratic vision. There are several practical ways to minimize clusters: mix up the seating at meetings.  Humans, being who they are, tend to sit wi...

Those of us who work with and for boards inevitably amass a pile of good, bad and ugly meeting stories.  We could write a book!  Today, though, I thought I'd focus on the positive aspect of board meetings and try to answer the rest of the 'I know I've had a successful board meeting when...' sentence.  I hope you try to answer it as well and send your thoughts along to me. I know I've had a successful board meeting when  the bulk of our time together is spent on strategizing how to gain the greatest impact from our work, and everybody (or nearly so) gets the opportunity to participate I've come to this conclusion because I've sat through some (alright, many) meetings where the agenda is not much more than a series of updates given by one or two people (including myself!). Those meetings tend to be pretty lifeless and, frankly, don't make good use of the talent, insight and intelligence of the people around the table. My successful board meeting takes som...