Use questions when drafting board meeting agendas

• Date: 01 August 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/ban.30510
• Published date: 01 August 2017

August 2017 • Volume 33, Number 12 5

DOI 10.1002/ban© 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company • All rights reserved

Use questions when drafting

board meeting agendas

In “What If Agenda Items Were Questions,”

Cyrus White, president of the St. Louis–based

South Cabin Group, spells out several key ben-

efits to framing your board’s agenda items as

questions. For example:

• It encourages participation. White ar-

gues that questions naturally invite responses

and tend to generate more questions, all of

which leads to more board members involved

in the discussion.

“By presenting the work of the board as a

series of questions, the agenda can encourage

directors to engage issues, offer opinions, and

seek facts,” White writes.

He continues, “In trying to answer an agenda

question, directors may discover they need ad-

ditional information that supports and strength-

ens their decision-making.”

• It can help focus the discussion. How

a question is framed can have a big impact on

what is being discussed and where the discus-

sion leads, White says. When questions are

drawn up the right way, they can help guide

members to move past routine topics and to-

ward more strategic thinking.

“It’s the difference between asking ‘What hap-

pened in our programs last quarter?’ and ask-

ing ‘How did we deliver intended benefits to our

clients, and [at] what cost or value?’ White says.

The latter provides better guideposts for the

board members by providing additional direction.

• It keeps the board on track and out of the

weeds. A well-phrased question can also direct

board members away from areas they shouldn’t

be involved in, White says.

“Asking only ‘Shall we approve the annual

budget?’ can quickly divert the board out of its

governance role and into areas best delegated

to management. But asking ‘Does this budget

support efforts to achieve our intended results?’

offers an opportunity for the board and CEO to

talk about finances in ways that respect their

distinct roles,” he says.

The questions should be structured so that

they direct the board toward making policy deci-

sions, monitoring performance against those

policies or gathering information that’s needed

to do its work, he adds.

For more insights from White and his con-

sulting firm, visit http://cyrusnwhite.com. ■

Mind the value of personal connections

It may sound like a no-brainer, but the value

of personal relationships in the nonprofit sector

can’t be overstated, according to Randy Ber-

nhardt, president of Bernhardt Consulting in

Albuquerque.

In a blog post on this topic, Bernhardt drives

home a simple truth: People give to people and

people buy from people. In other words, the per-

sonal connections that nonprofit CEOs, staff and

board members have cultivated through their

time in the field are valuable and a critical source

of revenue, both direct and indirect. And this has

to be considered if a change is being considered.

“Case in point: The board of a nonprofit or-

ganization that had been financially successful

for more than a decade restructured the organi-

zation,” he writes. “An executive was informed

that they would no longer have a role at the

organization. In the years that followed, the or-

ganization lost more than $3 million in revenue

and has been deficit spending ever since.”

He attributes the decline to the loss of deep

connections the executive had—that no one else

had, and that could not be easily replaced.

It doesn’t mean that such changes can’t be

implemented—just be prepared to address the

impact that losing valuable personal relation-

ships will have on the organization.

For more information, visit http://bit.

ly/2sTjTzh. ■