Case study: Board reprimands exec for following board policy

• Date: 01 May 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ban.30692
• Published date: 01 May 2018

© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company • All rights reserved

View this newsletter online at wileyonlinelibrary.com • DOI: 10.1002/ban

Editor: Jeff Stratton

Supplement

Case study: Board reprimands exec

for following board policy

Individual board members can get out of line.

When it happens, it’s the board’s responsibility to

rein them in. Here’s a story that illustrates the point:

A Minnesota board recently voted, narrowly, to

put a written reprimand in the executive direc-

tor’s personnel file for, of all things, following the

board’s written policy.

The organization’s policy states the administra-

tor must review a minimum of two bids when bid-

ding out a project. When the organization needed a

new furnace, a board member asked the executive

director to seek a bid from a friend in the heating

and cooling business. The administrator did this

and gathered bids from two other companies.

The company the board member recommended

was too high, so the executive director brought the

board the two low bids. The board approved the

low bid.

The administrator thought the issue was over,

but a week later the board called a “special meet-

ing” to review the bidding process. The board mem-

ber whose friend didn’t get the contract took over

the meeting, accused the executive director of ig-

noring the third bid and moved that a reprimand be

added to his file. The board narrowly approved the

motion. The board is now divided over the issue.

What went wrong here? Three things:

1. Board members with a conflict of interest

have a special obligation to remove themselves

from an issue. In this example, it appears one

board member wanted a friend to get the nonprof-

it’s business, and when that didn’t happen, took it

out on the administrator.

2. The board chair failed in not preventing a

special meeting from taking place.

3. The full board failed because it allowed a

board member with a vendetta to damage the

board’s relationship with its executive director. ■

Tip sheet for board evaluation of the CEO

• Do not incorporate undue focus on good

or bad incidents. It’s too easy to get hung up on

a single issue—like the complaints of a disgrun-

tled employee—and spend too much time on it.

• Avoid basing the evaluation only on recent

performance. Evaluations that reflect only the

performance within a few weeks of the evaluation’s

due date are unfair to the administrator. This will

happen if the board isn’t constantly reminded that

the administrator’s evaluation is a yearlong pro-

cess and a professional responsibility of the board.

• Don’t allow personal agendas of board

members into the process. It’s important for the

board to be as objective as possible.

• Avoid including issues outside of the ex-

ecutive director’s purview. An example: criticiz-

ing the administrator for his implementation of a

board policy that is poorly written or unclear.

• Never “spring” the evaluation on the ad-

ministrator. The executive director should be

given the opportunity to see his appraisal prior to

discussing the results with the board. ■

May 2018 Vol. 34, No. 9