DEAR JOHN: Books, Board Chairs, and Boredom

Based on my inbox, I’m wondering if it’s time to start a “Dear John” newspaper column? (You do remember newspapers, right?) I doubt if I’ll ever replace “Dear Abby,” but—here goes.

DEAR JOHN: I’ve noticed that you tend to answer board governance questions with “Read this book!” This isn’t the 1900s, Pearson! It’s 2020 and no one reads book anymore! Would you please just answer the question—and stop assigning homework to your readers? –A NON-READER IN REDDING

DEAR NON-READER: Charlie “Tremendous” Jones said, “You are today what you’ll be five years from now, except for the people you meet and the books you read.” And by the way, you must have read this governance blog somewhere—so apparently you are a reader. Way to go! And since you asked, I’d recommend you read The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: How to Get More Books in Your Life and More Life from Your Books, by Steve Leveen. Note his caveat: “Do not set out to live a well-read life but rather your well-read life. No one can be well-read using someone else’s reading list.” (Read my review.) 

DEAR JOHN: I read in one of the Dan Busby/John Pearson governance books that you have endured more than 500 board meetings. I affirm your word choice. I, too, have endured excruciatingly dysfunctional board meetings—and I’m the board chair (LOL!). What one book would you recommend I read to minimize the dysfunction and maximize our board’s effectiveness? –DYSFUNCTIONAL IN DENVER

DEAR DYSFUNCTIONAL: I’m so sorry you are not finding board meetings to be a joy. They should be. One of my friends, Mike Pate, says that board meeting days are the best days of the month for him. Click here to read Lesson 11 from More Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom: Effectiveness, Excellence, Elephants! “Thrive With Four Kingdom Values” is a great outline for a devotional thought at your next board meeting: Discernment, Deployment, Commitment, and Enjoyment. But…if you’re looking for one book on enriching your board chair competencies, read David McKenna’s powerful book, Call of the Chair: Leading the Board of the Christ-centered Ministry. He includes four assessment questions for the board chair—all convicting! (Read my review.)

And…one last thought. Not every board member has the wiring, the spiritual gifting, and the temperament to be a board chair. If this role doesn’t fit you—it’s OK to step down. Ask the Lord and a trusted friend what you should do.

DEAR JOHN: During this crazy coronavirus era, our board has cancelled our annual board retreat and—instead (wait for it…)—we’re meeting via Zoom for eight hours on a Saturday. Any ideas to keep the engagement high and the boredom low? –ZOOMED-OUT IN ZION

DEAR ZOOMED-OUT: You…and thousands of other boards…are mitigating COVID-19 in creative ways. Congrats! I wish I knew more about your board—and where you are, for example, on what Michael Hyatt calls the “Vision Arc” in his new book, The Vision-Driven Leader. His graph of the vision arc includes seven phases of the typical organizational trajectory through time (similar to Jim Collins’ five stages). If you don’t interrupt the trajectory, look where it leads you: Startup, Rising, Transitioning, Mature, Legacy, Zombie, Dead! (Read my review.) 

Generally—whatever stage you’re in—I’ve found that an excellent engagement exercise is to ask each board member to present a 10-minute “trendspotting” report—on a targeted topic of relevance to your ministry. A one-page template and instructions are included in “Tool #15: Board Retreat Trend-Spotting Exercise” in ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance. Have fun—and award Chick-fil-A gift cards to all presenters who finish on time!

DISCERN

“Discernment is a gift of the Holy Spirit that comes with spiritual maturity.
It may well be the gift that defines Christ-centered leadership.”
(David McKenna in Call of the Chair)

Best Board Books #16: The Council

What does the Bible say about board governance? That’s the weighty (but short and sweet—just 106 pages) commentary on what board members can discern from biblical and historical councils, such as the Council of Moses, the Jewish Councils, the Gentile Councils, and the Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15. It took three notable leaders/thinkers to tackle this topic. And beware—it’s convicting!

Book #16: 
The Council: A Biblical Perspective on Board Governance, by Gary G. Hoag, Wesley K. Willmer, and Gregory J. Henson (Order from Amazon)

Gary Hoag, Wes Willmer, and Greg Henson thoughtfully and biblically draw from deep wells of discernment about governance in this new resource from ECFAPress. Gratefully, the theology is well balanced with practicality. Example:

“We believe that no governing board of a Christ-centered church or ministry wants to become a case study of disaster. No such council wants the story of their oversight to report how they morphed from governing like the Council of Moses to ruling and controlling like the Sanhedrin to maintain its place in society. The truth is, it could happen to any board.” Yikes!

The authors—with impeccable credentials from other gems like The Choice and The Sower—urge boards to practice four disciplines of what they call the “council model.” The four practices: Scripture, Silence, Sharing, and Supplication. This may seem like a no-brainer at first, but—honest now—when was the last time you experienced intentional silence in your boardroom? The Council quotes Richard Foster:

“Silence frees us from the need to control others. One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. A frantic stream of words flows from us in an attempt to straighten others out. We want so desperately for them to agree with us, to see things our way.”

Foster concludes with this poke: “We evaluate people, judge people, condemn people. We devour people with our words. Silence is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit because it puts a stopper on that.”

The authors warn about four snares of the Sanhedrin and four pitfalls of the Gentile Councils: 1) Selecting people of status, 2) Employing a ruling and controlling posture, 3) Being lovers of money, and 4) Pride. On the latter they note, “…to preserve their grip over their people they had the smug audacity to bring forward bogus testimonies.” Whew!

Board service is a high calling but Hoag, Willmer, and Henson remind us—it can get messy. “To share Moses’ burdens meant the seventy would voluntarily inconvenience themselves and put the needs of the people ahead of their own.”

That’s not a bad board prospect recruitment pitch—to test the humility and character of possible nominees: “Maria—we ask our board members to ‘inconvenience themselves’ as they steward God’s work at our ministry.”

BOARD DISCUSSION: The authors list 20 “Hard Questions” (plus a nine-page study guide) that can be addressed one per board meeting—or multiple questions, perhaps, at a board retreat. Example: “Does the [board] have a selection process that prioritizes candidates for the role of [board member] based on Christian maturity and administrative gifting and that protects against scheming and exploitation?”

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 39, by guest blogger John Walling, “Invest ‘10 Minutes for Governance’ in Every Board Meeting.” Order The Council and ask a board member to share a 10-minute review/taste at your next board meeting.

Succession Planning: The Ongoing Continuous Process

Note: This is the fifth of 11 blogs featuring practical wisdom from the new ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 4: Succession Planning. Free to ECFA members, you can download the resource and video by clicking here.

What committee or task force owns short-term vs. long-term succession planning?

Principle No. 5: Delegate Succession Planning to the Appropriate Committee lists three tips so you’ll keep succession planning on your year-round agenda.

Tip No. 1: There is a substantial difference between executive transition and succession planning. As Nancy Axelrod notes in her very helpful resource, Chief Executive Succession Planning, the first is “an intermittent event that is time-line driven,” while the latter is “an ongoing continuous process that boards (with the help of their chief executive) implement.”

Tip No. 2: Assign succession planning to the committee or task force that fits your board culture. One size doesn’t fit all—but consider what committee will have high competence in discerning your on-going process, but can also spring into action when an executive transition occurs (by design or default).

And this reminder: emergency transitions are a very bad time to begin learning how to spiritually discern God’s voice. Build some spiritual discernment exercises into your board work now—not when the crisis hits.

Tip No. 3: Provide your committee or task force with resource materials on succession planning. Four books are listed in the materials. Order all four and delegate your reading:

• Stewards of a Sacred Trust: CEO Selection, Transition and Development for Boards of Christ-centered Organizations, by David L. McKenna (ECFAPress)
• Chief Executive Succession Planning: Essential Guidance for Boards and CEOs, by Nancy R. Axelrod (BoardSource)
• Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way, by Ram Charan, Dennis Carey and Michael Useem (Harvard Business Review Press)
• NEXT: Pastoral Succession That Works, by William Vanderbloemen and Warren Bird (Baker Books)


Principle No. 5 includes “Five Critical Next Steps” for your board to address, including: “If outside help or counsel is needed (a volunteer, a board coach, or consultant, for example), does the committee have the authority to retain necessary assistance? (What is the budget?) 

Check it out here: 

DOWNLOAD: ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 4: Succession Planning – 11 Principles for Successful Successions: “Every CEO is an Interim CEO.” The toolbox includes 
   • Read-and-Engage Viewing Guide (20 pages) – photocopy for board members
   • Facilitator Guide (10 pages)
   • 4 short videos (4-5 minutes each)
   • Additional resources and succession planning tools

BOARD DISCUSSION: "Are there appropriate board-approved succession policies to guide the work of the Succession Planning Task Force?"

MORE RESOURCES: Follow the “40 Blogs. 40 Wednesdays.” color commentaries on Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. Click here.

Called to Serve: Give Space…But Plan Sparingly

Note: This is No. 27 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.

Max De Pree: “How can a board expect a president to paint a coherent or imaginative picture on an unlimited canvas?”

In his insightful section on “What the Board Owes the President,” De Pree writes, “Like everyone else, the leader of an organization needs space, in the context of this [discussion], space to become president.” He then references wisdom from a friend and mentor:

Dr. Carl Frost “has taught a good many of us that when we are promoted to president, it does not mean we are instantly qualified. The board and the organization are actually giving us only, as Carl would put it, ‘the opportunity to become president’—a great chance, but still only a chance.”

De Pree adds that great boards give a president space “by acting with [the CEO] to set the priorities, as well as working to involve the entire organization in understanding and adopting those priorities. How can a board expect a president to paint a coherent or imaginative picture on an unlimited canvas?”

Ralph E. Enlow Jr. agrees. “Plan sparingly,” he counsels in The Leader’s Palette: Seven Primary Colors. “Plans also fail because they are too bulky. Good planning is participatory. Especially at the operational level, it should flow up from the grass roots. It requires the input of all major stakeholders and systems.” 

And then Enlow adds this kicker:

“But good planning is not the accumulation of everyone’s aspirations.
Ultimately, a plan represents the elimination of options.”

It’s ironic, but when a board gives “space” to the CEO, that space must be defined. Whether you use the imagery of the corral from the policy governance® model, or the board policies manual approach recommended by numerous board consultants—every board must define the parameters of the staff’s scope of responsibility. That’s giving “space” in the best sense of the word.

Max De Pree’s wonderful book, Leadership Jazz (Peter Drucker called the book, “wisdom in action”), concludes with a list of 12 leadership attributes, including discernment. De Pree writes, “Discernment lies somewhere between wisdom and judgment.”

Christ-centered boards and CEOs have amazing 24/7 access to the Holy Spirit when they pray as the psalmist prayed, “Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments” (Psalm 119:66, KJV). 

BOARD EXERCISE: Discuss “space” at your next board meeting. Are the fences to the corral well-defined? Is the corral too big or too small? Does the board allocate adequate space to the CEO—or does the board meddle and micro-manage?

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: Be a Frantic Learner!

Note: This is No. 17 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.

Max De Pree: “Be a frantic learner. Feel a strong obligation to learn everything you can about your organization’s history, about its vision, its mission, its present circumstances, and the people in it.”

But wait…be a frantic learner about what? And what else?

Here are four more topics where “frantic learning” will pay rich dividends:

#1. Be a frantic learner about Governance 101. Many highly competent people enter board service through the volunteer door and—no surprise—inappropriately wear their volunteer hats in the boardroom and—without thinking—wear their governance hats when volunteering. Be a frantic learner and view the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 2: Balancing Board Roles—Understanding the 3 Board Hats: Governance, Volunteer, Participant.   

#2. Be a frantic learner about policy governance. Some boards claim they operate with a “Policy Governance®” model, but in my experience, few do. (And not every board should.) I encourage boards to understand the continuum between “Policy Governance®” and hands-on/in-the-weeds board governance. At least one person on your board should be a frantic learner and read Boards That Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Nonprofit Organizations, by John Carver.
    
#3. Be a frantic learner about dating board prospects. Inviting a friend-of-a-friend-of-Cousin Eddie to serve on your board (“He is wealthy!”) might fill a slot at the last minute, but the best boards take 18 to 36 months to “date” board prospects before proposing marriage. Be a frantic learner and view the ECFA Governance Toolbox Series No. 1: Recruiting Board Members—Leveraging the 4 Phases of Board Recruitment: Cultivation, Recruitment, Orientation and Engagement.

#4. Be a frantic learner about spiritually discerning God’s voice. It’s possible that your board is skilled at decision-making, but not discernment. Bill Hybels notes, “…I meet many people who claim to have never heard the promptings or whispers of God. Not even once. Sometimes when I probe a little deeper, I discover that their lives are so full of noise that they can’t possibly hear the Holy Spirit when he speaks.”

So when your board is faced with that critical fork-in-the-road decision when you must spiritually discern God’s voice—what if your board is made up of individuals, who in their own lives “have never heard the promptings or whispers of God?” Big problem! Be a frantic learner and read The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God. Having the Guts to Respond, by Bill Hybels.

BOARD EXERCISE: Before you order your next “everyone read this book before the board retreat,” take time to discern where frantic learning is needed. Seek God’s voice—not the hype from the bestsellers list.

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).

Even Your Board Members Are Changing Their Thinking!

Judges 2:10 is a good wake-up call for boards: “Eventually that entire generation died and was buried. Then another generation grew up that didn't know anything of God or the work he had done for Israel.”

Whether your board has term limits, or not, all boards struggle with passing the mission/vision/values/history/strategy/culture baton from one year—and one board meeting—to the next. Some members miss meetings. Other members are new. News flash: even some members forget!

I’ll be at a board planning retreat next month and all of us are reading Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, by Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell. (We’re also reading the headlines: Orlando, San Bernardino, Brexit, Supreme Court decisions…and a lot more.)

We’ll be drilling down on the book’s implications for our roles as board members—such as why moving from “complicated to complex” will require a “robust and resilient” response, per McChrystal. We’ll also address this year’s book within the context of the last two books we’ve read:
   • The Attacker's Advantage: Turning Uncertainty Into Breakthrough Opportunities, by Ram Charan
   • Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way, by Ram Charan, Dennis Carey and Michael Useem.

I get it! Some of your board members might wince or whine at the thought of reading yet one more book. Team of Teams is not easy reading (300 pages), but if the title temps you, be assured that every chapter is compelling.

When’s the last time your board has read a book together? Trust me—as you steward your ministry’s future, one book a decade is not enough. Leaders are readers.

My friend and mentor, George Duff, served 27 years as president of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce—and he quoted to me (often!) this pithy rationale for lifelong learning—and the speed of change, "You're Leading a Parade!"

If your board has a reading culture—this reminder: Your new board members didn’t read the last book. Some of your board members have forgotten what the last book said. Perhaps several board members now disagree with what the last book said.

So…yes, keep reading to determine what the board should know and do—so you’re thinking, praying and reflecting to spiritually discern God’s direction for your important ministry.

QUESTION: What’s the next book our board should read together?

Board Meeting Rules of Thumb: 2 Prayers and a Poem?

Your board might be different, but I sense that many boards that consider themselves “Christ-centered”—in fact—are not Christ-centered at all. You might call them agenda-centered.

Check the box if this is common practice in your board meetings:

[  ] 1. Opening prayer. Closing prayer. (In-between: stick to the agenda.)

[  ] 2. If there’s time, someone shares a devotional thought or a poem—but the subject matter is rarely tied to critical agenda items. (“I found this on the Internet this morning.”)

[  ] 3. A fork-in-the-road issue faces the board—but no one suggests you pause and pray.

[  ] 4. Disagreements: frequent. Lack of unity: often. Inappropriate hallway conversations: sometimes. Confession of sin: never.

[  ] 5. Spiritually discerning God’s voice: no personal experience, so no group experience.

In The Power of a Whisper: Hearing God, Having the Guts to Respond, Bill Hybels writes, “We serve a communicating God—a God of words. [Throughout Scripture, he] created with a word, he healed with a word, he encouraged with a word, he rebuked with a word, he guided with a word, he prophesied with a word, he assured with a word, he loved with a word, he served with a word and he comforted with a word. Throughout all of history, God has communicated, and he still is at it today.

The issue isn’t whether or not God is speaking;
it’s whether we will have ears to hear what he says.”

It’s possible that your board doesn’t take the time to hear from God (to spiritually discern God’s voice and direction) because, as Hybels explains, the individuals around the table have never heard from God. A holy connection with heaven is not on anyone’s radar.

Hybels adds, “There is a God who loves you and who would gladly whisper to you words of encouragement or direction, wisdom or well-timed warning, if only you would carve out the space to hear from heaven throughout the course of your day.

“I’ve said those exact words to many people over the years and sometimes I have sensed in their response,

'Thanks, but no thanks.
I’d rather make my own judgment calls.’ 

"In my view, these people are running the risk of missing out on some of life’s God-guided adventures.

“God tends to speak to people who want to hear from him. He tends to offer divine direction to those who are willing to order their daily lives around receiving input from him.”

So…if money is tight. If unity is absent. If your ministry’s direction is lost in the fog—maybe instead of two prayers and a poem at your next board meeting, you embark on a new journey of hearing from God—and “having the guts to respond.”

Note: A participant guide and DVD (perfect for a board retreat) for The Power of a Whisper is available from Willow Creek Association.

QUESTION FOR A BOARD CANDIDATE: Tell us how you spiritually discern God’s voice in your own life—and your experience of hearing from God when you’ve served on other boards.