Job description review: Set policy and establish goals for your executive to achieve

• Date: 01 September 2017
• Published date: 01 September 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ban.30533

© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company • All rights reserved

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

Editor: Jeff Stratton

Supplement

Invest in your own education

I recently heard from a long-time subscriber to

Board & Administrator who told me controversy

erupted at the nonprofit when the CEO terminated

an employee.

Because the board didn’t understand its rela-

tionship to staff and the board’s role in personnel

matters, it agreed to meet with the terminated

staff member after he demanded a meeting with

the board.

“This opened a real can of worms that took

me months to resolve,” the administrator said.

“Working through this mess also soured my re-

lationship with several new board members who

could not keep their hands out of the personnel

issue.”

This is one example of why boards need regular

training: When board veterans leave, the organi-

zation needs to be able to rely on a core group of

board members who understand the board mem-

ber’s job. This requires regular role education.

It got worse for the CEO when the board elected

a bullheaded chair and this individual decided

“things had not been run right here.”

The new chair believed it was his job to manage

the CEO. This even reached the point where the

chair managed the CEO’s work schedule. “I can

no longer attend my monthly association meetings

because he thinks I should be here working,” she

said.

The executive had to drop the local Kiwanis

Club membership to concentrate on work and is

under fire to drop the nonprofit’s chamber mem-

bership because the chair believes one-and-a-half-

hour lunch meetings “are a waste of time,” she

said.

There are far too many ways to provide the

board with regular education that don’t have to be

time-consuming:

• Slip the For Board Members section of B&A

into your board meeting packets.

• Find low-cost or free webinars for the board

to learn from.

• Ask your governance committee to survey the

board on the topics it wants to learn about.

• Improve the quality of your nonprofit’s new

board member orientation program. ■

Job description review: Set policy and

establish goals for your executive to achieve

When the board knows its role at the organiza-

tion, it will have a much stronger relationship with

its executive.

In a nutshell, board members acting as a group

set goals and make policies for the executive to

implement and achieve.

Board members do not carry out policy. That’s

why boards employ a CEO. Let this person carry

out board decisions.

It’s important to understand that board mem-

bers do not take action as individuals, but as a

team through votes at meetings. Board members

who take action without approval of the full board

can damage their organizations. ■

September 2017 Vol. 34, No. 1