QUESTION 10: How Do We Get the Most Value Out of Our Limited Time?

The Most Important Issues on the Agenda Come First

Ram Charan pushes back on the common boardroom practice of presenting financial reports and minor agenda items first—just to get them out of the way. The problem: the board’s mood and psychological energy level sags. “That’s why I suggest that the most important issues on the agenda come first,” Charan writes.

This is not unlike the coaching competency trumpeted in The Coaching Habit: “Cut the intro and ask the question!” Starting strong is powerful, the author writes. “No James Bond movie starts off slowly. Pow! Within ten seconds you’re into the action…and the heart is beating faster.”

The Power of Moments asks, “How do you refresh a meeting that’s grown rote?” Chip and Dan Heath respond: “Break the script.”

QUESTION 10 of 14: How Do We Get the Most Value Out of Our Limited Time? Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask, by Ram Charan (Order from Amazon)

It seems that by chapter 10 in most books, most authors are writing on fumes—just eking out the requisite word count. Not Ram Charan! He’s just warming up. This chapter is packed with practical boardroom wisdom:

• ROUTINE VS. IMPACT. “In some cases, boards feel too much time is spent on routine items and resolutions, and not enough on the issues that have a significant impact on business—things like strategy, risk, and succession.”
• 5 MILLION DECISIONS? “Boards don’t make five million decisions over the course of the year; there are usually only a handful of issues and decisions that significantly impact the business.”
• 4 OR 5 PRIORITIES. “The CEO and the board’s leadership should identify those four or five, at most six, items that should constitute the bulk of the board’s time and energy in the coming year.” And “Every board should consider for its twelve-month priorities some kind of strategic dashboard…”

“If you have more than five goals,
you have none.”

Peter Drucker

• PLAN B. “Discuss management’s plan B to address changing conditions.”

Your meeting time—and your board members’ time—is precious and always limited. So is it time to step back and restructure the meeting agenda? The length and frequency of your meetings? The location and setting? Time to ramp up the Kingdom expectations? Chapter 10 (just nine pages) will help you refresh your meeting. Three more ideas:

• END-OF-MEETING DISTILLATION. “The purpose of the distillation is for the CEO to test the items he perceives to be at the center of the whole board’s deliberations, and that require follow through. The board can validate that the CEO has covered all the important bases.”
• SOCIAL TIME. “…take care not to squeeze out unstructured time together.” Charan encourages adequate social time (pre-meeting and post-meeting meals, etc.) so board members know each other better—which also builds trust.
• CEOs MUST COACH PRESENTERS. Direct reports to the CEO should be coached on effective boardroom presentations. Charan suggests a 50/50 time split between presentations and discussion.

See also the advice in 15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan to Save the World From Lousy Presentations. And…click here to read why Max De Pree warned, “The chairperson should not permit anyone to read to the board.”

Time is short and “a lot is expected of us,” whines a board member in chapter 10. “Deal with it!” responds Ram Charan. This jam-packed chapter will help boards maximize their limited time—and, for Christ-centered boards, it will also be a reminder to recruit board members who are already Kingdom stewards of their time.

Proverbs 16:33 (The Message) cautions, “Make your motions and cast your votes, but God has the final say.”

BOARDROOM DISCUSSION: How do we get the most value out of our limited time? What should we add, enhance, change, or drop?

CHECK OUT THESE HELPFUL ECFA RESOURCES

• READ: The board at Warm Beach Camp and Conference Center schedules a “Heavy Lifting” segment in every meeting—to address “big rock” agenda items. Read “Decrease Staff Reporting and Increase Heavy Lifting. Consider the good, the bad, and the ugly.” (From: Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. Click here to read Lesson 36.)

• TOOL: See how a “Heavy Lifting” segment—the best use of the board’s time—is incorporated into a quarterly board meeting. Read the blog here and order the book to download the meeting agenda template, “Tool #12, Quarterly Board Meeting Agenda and Recommendations,” in ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board. 

Best Board Books #9: Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board

Max De Pree writes, “There is a reason why this is a small book. We want it to be useful, but not a burden.” So…here’s my ninth nominee in this “best board books” series.

Book #9: 
Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board, by Max De Pree (Order from Amazon)

I tilt towards books that lean towards the contrarian quadrant. Example: former USC President Steven Sample's book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership. Before buying a book, he prefers a five-minute conversation with someone who has already read it.

So when I had a five-minute conversation with consultant and author Dave Coleman about Max De Pree’s 91-page contrarian gem, it fed my board governance book-addicted soul. I love this book and the title: Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board.

Contrarian Max De Pree (1924-2017) writes:
   • “We believe good people need reminders and an occasional nudge, not a sermon.”
   • “A good board will measure the appropriate inputs as well as the outputs. Failure to measure what matters damages our future.”
   • “My friend Jim Beré…once told me that he would serve only on boards that had hard-working executive committees.”

Commenting on board committees, De Pree notes the story of the English visitor who watched his first American football game and observed, “The game combines the two worst elements of American culture—violence and committee meetings.”

Rather than penning a 300-page snoozer, De Pree crafts a coaching conversation (a series of letters) with a young leader and his first CEO/board relationship. It’s easy reading and the short epistles are extraordinary.

Board service, writes De Pree, should be “demanding in the best sense of the word.” He lists three other characteristics of great boards:
   • Lively
   • Effective
   • Fun to serve on

CEOs will appreciate every page: “…the chief responsibility of boards is to be effective on behalf of the organization.” He adds, “Effective boards, in a nutshell: 
   • remember the long view,
   • remember that the president and staff are human,
   • and do the work of the board…”
   • Plus this: “Most of the work of the board takes place through the implementation of an agenda.”

More contrarian pokes-in-the-ribs:
   • “Many high-priced consultants will tell you to have the shortest possible mission statement. I don’t happen to think that is such a great idea.”
   • “I feel that the closer an organization comes to being defined as a movement, the closer it will come to fulfilling its potential.”
   • “I’m a great believer that management should be invited into the board’s world but that the board should not go into management’s area.”
   • “The chairperson should not permit anyone to read to the board.”

Max De Pree served as board chair of Fuller Seminary—and get this—the seminary honored him with the establishment of the Max De Pree Center for Leadership in 1996. His day job was with Herman Miller, the office furniture company, where he served as president from 1980 to 1987 (and as a board member until 1995). His book, Leadership Is an Art, has sold more than 800,000 copies. (See also Leading Without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community.)
Effective boards do very good planning, says De Pree. He lists three planning questions and then suggests who must be involved in the planning. “…some people need to be involved, to be blunt, because they are going to pay the bill.”

He balances the CFO’s involvement in planning with this: “Planning by the board ought always to include the chief financial officer, a bringer of necessary reality to the process. Of course, the chief financial officer should never have a role that stymies the vision. Some realities have priority over numbers.”

Oh, my—I could write another 30 blogs on his contrarian coaching! (In fact—I did!) See the index to the 30-blog series here.

More Wisdom:
   • “Loyalty by itself is never sufficient. You always have to link loyalty and competence.”
   • “When an organization demands true leadership and the results justify the time and energy, good boards respond with gusto.”
   • “Another crime, it seems to me, is to give really good people poor leadership.”

Trust me—this book will not disappoint. All 91 pages are packed with power. Perfect snippets for your “10 Minutes for Governance” segment at every board meeting. (You do that, right?) 

BOARD DISCUSSION: De Pree recommends that “Key proposals and issues like building programs or fund drives should always come to the board through its committees at least twice.” Think back for three years—has this been your practice?

MORE RESOURCES: Check out the “40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays.” color commentaries on Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, by Dan Busby and John Pearson, including Lesson 31, “Cut the Cord! Invite Board Members to Exit When They Don’t Live Your Values.”

Called to Serve: The Bell Curve of a Board Meeting

Note: This is No. 7 in a series of blogs featuring wisdom from the 91-page gem by Max De Pree, Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board. (Click on the title to order the book for every board member.)

Max De Pree: “I have found it very helpful to think about designing an agenda by following the lines of a bell curve.” 

He adds, “At the top of the curve (that’s my shorthand for the way energy at board meetings starts out slowly, then rises, then declines) for regular board meetings we will want to focus on the future and plan time to be thorough.”

Do your critical agenda items align with the prime energy spurts in your board meeting? At the top of the bell curve, De Pree suggests you focus on:
   • Strategic plans and the potential for achieving stated goals and results
   • Significant issues
   • Vexing problems
   • What the board has agreed to measure
   • Key appointments and promotions (“because these people are our future”)

On being “thorough,” De Pree notes that the following agenda items should never occur at the bottom of the bell curve—and should never be delegated to committees:
   • Time to dream together
   • Time to ask questions
   • Time to scrutinize
   • Time to voice contrary opinions

Where would your board place prayer and discernment on your bell curve? (My confession: for a board I chair, I recently moved our substantial prayer time to the end of the meeting—due to extenuating circumstances. Yet—big surprise!—when we arrived at the end of the meeting, time had evaporated and we missed the opportunity to seek God’s wisdom together.)

At our next meeting, I’m bringing a graphic of a “bell curve” to remind me to leverage the best energy for our most critical agenda topics (including prayer).

BOARDROOM EXERCISE: At your next meeting, ask one board member to observe and plot the bell curve for the entire board meeting—and then share an end-of-the-meeting analysis if the most critical agenda items were discerned at the top of the bell curve.

To order from Amazon, click on the title for: Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board, by Max De Pree, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company).

Called to Serve: Governance Through the Prism of the Agenda

Note: This is No. 6 in a series of blogs featuring wisdom from the 91-page gem by Max De Pree, Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board. (Click on the title to order the book for every board member.)

Whew! This book is packed with meat and potatoes! Today’s meal is from page 23—and we haven’t even tasted 75 percent of the book yet.

Max De Pree says the best way to look at what a board does is “to see it through the prism of the agenda.” (I’ve never seen “prism” and “agenda” in the same sentence.) What an intriguing thought!

This former board chair of Fuller Seminary writes that the agenda ought to have a future orientation and the following areas should be given high priority on the agenda:
   • Strategic plans
   • Financial enabling and soundness
   • Facility needs
   • Governance
   • Succession plans

People who are task-oriented and get-it-done “Type A” movers and shakers may not (my opinion) have the wiring, or the gifting, to be effective board members. De Pree cautions, “The board is not an instrument for doing.”

He adds, “Of course, it does some important things—but primarily the board exists for other purposes. To reflect the mission and vision and strategy of the organization, the board is responsible for determining the philosophy, the values, and the policies of the organization.”

That’s a timely and insightful reminder—especially to nominating committees. As you create the criteria and a matrix for future board members, the job description of the board member must be established before you consider any nominees. What the board does will determine the profile for board members. What competencies do you need?

Does Karen have prior experience in spiritually discerning issues of mission, vision, and strategy? Does Alberto understand (and does he believe) that board members are recruited to wear governance hats—not volunteer hats? Will Tashawna add value when the board annually reviews the emergency and long term succession plans? (Who has that competency?)

As we pray and spiritually discern who should be in our board prospect pipelines, Max De Pree is calling us to see governance work from a unique viewpoint—“through the prism of the agenda.” And he quotes Walter Wright: “A board holds the future and mission in trust.”

Will Karen, Alberto and Tashawna make great board members? Are they future-oriented? Hold up your recent agendas to the light—and discern if their experience and wisdom would help your board address those critical fork-in-the-road agenda items and policy decisions about the future.

BOARDROOM EXERCISE: Do our board agendas align with our philosophy and theology of governance? Do they “hold the future and mission in trust” by focusing on priorities that are future-oriented? Do we nominate people who have demonstrated competence in hearing God’s voice about our future?

To order from Amazon, click on the title for: Called to Serve: Creating and Nurturing the Effective Volunteer Board, by Max De Pree, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company).

The Tell-Tale Agenda

Call me a governance wonk. Who else reads the agenda of board meetings like a love letter? For most of us, a board meeting agenda is a necessary evil to keep us on time and on track. A deeper look at the agenda shows that it can be a keen instrument for executive leadership in advancing a policy-making board. Consider these questions:

• Who writes your board agenda? Many board agendas are products of accumulated staff reports. It is a hodge-podge of information collected to woo and wow the board. If the agenda is an effective leadership instrument, however, it is a product of executive leadership coordinated with the board chair and nuanced by the members of the board itself.
  
• What is the focus of your board agenda? The focus of the board agenda should not be on information. Prior mailings from the CEO and staff should be read in advance by board members so that only highlights from the reports or new information will take up meeting time. Like a laser beam, then, the focus of the agenda will be upon implementing existing policy and developing new policy as needed.
  
• What is the rhythm for your board agenda? Think of your board agenda as the score for a symphony with the CEO as the composer and the board chair as the conductor. An opening sonata of devotions and the CEO report sets the theme and the tone for the meeting. While energy is high and attention is focused, important policy issues become the movements of the symphony with the rising sound of full discussion and the faster beat of final decision. Interludes between the movements give time for an executive session, a consent agenda, and a learning period for board development. A coda of benediction then closes the meeting with the members having heard the grand theme of the organizational mission played over and over again. And, don’t forget intermissions. Skillfully used, they can save the meeting.