Leading by Design

My last poll about board self-assessment attracted thirteen respondents. Six have done or do self-assessments; six haven't; and one intrepid person who admits to needing a bit of help with the whole process. So, to help get those of you who are interested in self-assessment a bit of a jump start, I'd just loaded a tool on my website that you can use as is, or adapt to best suit your needs. Here are some thoughts about using it, once you've decided to take the plunge: First, consider the self-assessment as a baseline of information/feedback from the board about how it does its work from the governance and organizational structure point of view. Give the board some time to review the findings and comments. Structure part of a board meeting (or several meetings or a retreat) around discussion of the findings. Focus primarily on areas of greatest discrepancy in responses . Spend some time delving into why some board members ...

A COLLEAGUE RESPONDED TO MY POLL QUESTION on board assessment with an email stating that his board has engaged in annual assessment for the last three years and they're gearing up for their fourth this fall. When I asked him if the assessment process surfaced any revelations, he replied: Not really, but it provides an opportunity to catch little things early, for folks to air anything quietly that wasn’t big enough for them to say in a forum – and it removes any excuse for not saying something until too much later…. I hadn't thought of assessment quite that way -- surfacing the small stuff, not so much larger issues, but of course it does. The amount of "big" versus "small" issues likely depends on the organization and how frequently assessment is done. For those boards that have never done assessment, the issues could range all over the map, from large to small. Boards that regularly take the reflective pause are most able to manage large issues as well...

MUCH OF THE WORK I DO WITH BOARDS involves some level of assessment about organizational strengths and weaknesses and the structure of the board to address them. About three-quarters of these groups will eventually get around to voicing the fact that they don't do enough talking about these most basic, yet most critical, issues. In the hustle of organizational life, these boards and staff haven't yet realized that they can take some "time out" to review and reflect. Self-assessment can be many things: it can focus on organizational strengths and weaknesses, it can focus on board effectiveness in broad ways or it can focus solely on how the board is working at one meeting. Macro or micro, a bit of self-assessment is, as the old advertising slogan declared, "the pause that refreshes." So, how might you go about some self-assessment with your board if you've never done anything like it before? I think one of the easiest ways to get the conversation sta...