Food for Thought

• Published date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/bl.30022
• Date: 01 July 2015

4 BOARD LEADERSHIP

“Good ideas are not

adopted automatically.

They must be driven into

practice with courageous

impatience.”

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, US

Navy, retired, “Doing a Job,”

Simple ideas, taken seriously (blog),

August 27, 2010, https://bebekim

.wordpress.com/2010/08/27/doing-

a-job-by-admiral-hyman-g-rickover-

u-s-navy-retired/

For Your Bookshelf …

Reviewed by Rose Mercier

Governance coach Rose Mercier gives us an overview of what can be learned

from Leading with Intent: A National Index of Nonprot Board Practices, a recent

publication from BoardSource, a US nonprot dedicated to advancing the public

good by building exceptional nonprot boards and inspiring board service.

Leading with Intent: A National Index

of Nonprofit Board Practices

by BoardSource

Washington, DC: BoardSource, 2015

AS SOMEONE who has worked with

and served on boards of direc-

tors and worked for nonprofit orga-

nizations for some forty years, I am

always interested in learning more

about what enables boards to be

effective. I am curious about “state of

the nation” studies and was intrigued

by Leading with Intent: A National

Index of Nonprofit Board Practices,

BoardSource’s most recent scan of

nonprofit board practices, policies,

and performance.

I share BoardSource’s deep valuing

of the importance of boards’ effec-

tiveness in governing the millions of

nonprofits around the world and the

integral role they play in an organiza-

tion’s successful performance.

I also need to declare at this

point, that my work with boards over

the past eight-plus years has been

devoted to helping them implement

the Policy Governance approach.

And so, in everything I read about

boards—articles and books that pres-

ent governance theories or practices,

print and online articles of “real-life”

functional (or dysfunctional) boards,

or the section on governance in every

corporate annual report that arrives

in my mailbox—I am looking for a

systematic approach. Specifically, I

am looking for the board’s role to be

clearly distinguished and an articula-

tion of what governance means and

how it is distinct from managing. I

also look for indicators that the board

is regularly assessing organizational

performance as well as its own effec-

tiveness. In short, I am in search of

evidence of advanced systems of gov-

ernance. With these eyes, I wondered

what I would learn from this report’s

summary and analysis of surveys com-

pleted by 846 CEOs and 246 board

chairs (of which I was one). How might

the responses be the same or differ-

ent from those of CEOs and board

chairs of organizations that use Policy

Governance? How would I be able to

use the findings?

In the first section, “People: Board

Composition and Structure,” the

underlying theme is that a board that

wants to perform effectively needs to

be intentional about its composition,

size, and terms of office: “Getting the

people right is fundamental.” Lead-

ing with Intent highlights the need

to thoughtfully and deliberately plan

for board composition and recruit

directors or candidates with a view

to having the right skills, knowledge,

and values, as well as diversity of

thought and background. Leading

with Intent also says that boards need

to take responsibility for ensuring that

their recruitment process yields the

desirable composition of the “right”

people. Taking accountability for find-

ing the right people is of increasing

importance given the growing chal-

lenge of finding individuals willing to

serve on boards. No matter the type

of board, these are insights to which a

board should attend.

The survey responses indicated

that boards are making slow progress

with respect to race/ethnicity, gender,

or age diversity among directors. This

is an important wake-up call for any

board, particularly for boards that are

serving on behalf of the community

or public at large. Responses shed

light on term length and number of

terms served. It appears most of the

respondents’ boards allow directors

to serve up to six consecutive years,

and a majority have term limits. And,

according to the survey responses,

board size is trending down, with a

current, still surprisingly large, aver-

age of 15 members.

A Policy Governance board might

consider this information and reaffirm

its responsibility to sustain its own

capacity to govern effectively by mak-

ing explicit the desirable profile for

individual directors and ideal composite

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Taking accountability

for finding the right

people is of increasing

importance given the

growing challenge of

finding individuals willing

to serve on boards.