If you’re a new CEO, you already know your board at least a little bit—a few of its members have likely sat on the executive search committee that hired you. But now that you’re actually the staff leader, the dynamic changes. You’re actually expected to start implementing that vision you talked about during the hiring process, and you may be doing it with a board that’s a little more resistant than they perhaps let on. Where to start?
Doug Eadie, a longtime governance consultant, has been thinking a lot about the question lately. “Coming up through the ranks, you tend not to learn what you need to work with the board, unless you’re very lucky,” he says. “One common mistake is to underestimate how much you have to learn, and not invest enough time early on to work with the board.”
In his 2014 book, The Board-Savvy CEO, Eadie writes about the multiple hats a CEO needs to wear to encourage their boards to think strategically and get out of operations mode. But when it comes to first steps, Eadie argues that the best approach is one that’s dirt simple yet often difficult: work on relationships, especially your relationship with the board chair.
If you take an arm’s length approach, you will run into serious problems.”
“The best CEOs get to know the chair well right away,” he says. “I want to know what they want out of this experience, because I [as the CEO] have an opportunity to help them achieve it. If their preferred method of communication is a well-crafted memo, that’s how I communicate with them. If their preferred mode is in person, I’m going to have to try to accommodate that.”
Being a good communicator is just the start, though. After all, CEOs are in the delicate position of needing to lead the board without dictating to it, and many CEOs may resist pressing their own vision to a board chair for fear of being perceived as hijacking the association’s leadership. But Eadie says that a too-distant attitude contains its own dangers. “If you take an arm’s length approach, you will run into serious problems,” he says. If you’re going to have a really good relationship with the board, they’ve got to be satisfied with their governing role. You can’t have a board feeling disengaged, dissatisfied. It’s too dangerous. So for your own protection, you have to step in.”
This soft-skills stuff has a more solid practical purpose, Eadie explains in The Board-Savvy CEO. Close communication with the board helps everybody not just feel like they’re on top of things, but avoids the ill will that can be generated if they feel blindsided by new information. The CEO “makes sure that board members are never caught off guard and embarrassed publicly by important events they’re unaware of,” he writes. Ultimately, leaders want to feel like they have a direct role in the stewardship of the organization. Surprises erode that feeling.
And the good-communications piece of the CEO-board relationship doesn’t have to be informal. Indeed, Eadie recommends creating a standing committee explicitly dedicated to monitoring the board-CEO relationship (made up of the chair, CEO, and the heads of other standing committees), or dedicating the executive committee to the task. This committee serves as both a formal performance-evaluation group, but also a complaint desk and place to simply talk about what’s working and what’s not.
Consider a relatively innocuous case, he suggests: a CEO who treats the job more as a public-spokesperson role advocating for the association’s mission, rather than a day-to-day operations executive. Boards can split on whether that’s the best move move for an association, but, Eadie says, “in traditional board architectures, there’s no place to talk about that. So what often happens is the relationship begins to sour, but no one’s managing it, and that can can happen very quickly. [The committee] gives you a place where you regularly monitor the relationship between the board and the CEO, with the CEO there.”
And that group can cut both ways. Just as the committee can keep an eye on the CEO’s performance, it also provides an opportunity for the CEO to raise a discussion about what the board should look like in the future.
“Every year, the committee can update the profile of what they’re looking for,” he says. “Attributes, qualifications, certain kinds of experiences they need on the board.” What the board does with that outline is up to them: One strategy Eadie recommends is inviting potential board members to the next strategic-planning retreat to watch them in action and see if they’re leadership timber. (“How do they do with the breakout groups? How collegial are they? How substantive?”) How the CEO and board decide to do that watching and vetting is up to them. The important thing is that they’re doing it together.
What strategies have worked for you in building a rapport between the CEO and the board? Share your experiences in the comments.
“Performance measurement doesn’t measure performance,” said Paul Pomerantz, FASAE, CAE, CEO of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, in front of a packed crowed Sunday at the ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo. CEOs are hungry for valuable feedback about how they’re doing their jobs, but too often they receive feedback that’s perfunctory, tick-off-the-box stuff that neglects serious issues.
That’s something I discussed in the August issue of Associations Now with Pomerantz’s copresenter, Nancy Green, FASAE, CAE, executive director of the National Association for Gifted Children. “My [board] members are mostly academics, so they wanted to cast a wide net, get a lot of data, and then crunch the numbers and give me the metric,” she told me. “Knowing that I was two standard deviations away from the mean was important to them, but not very meaningful to me.”
If I have a president who’s a bomb-thrower, that reflects on me
So what works well when it comes to evaluations? There was some disagreement in the room about the virtues of 360 reviews; one attendee argued that they work best as feedback exercises outside of the formal performance review. But Green and Pomerantz listed a number of ideas they considered valuable:
Try a consultant. A third party can serve as an intermediary between the CEO and board, and give the direct feedback that might otherwise not occur. “They’ll give me the tough stuff, ” Pomerantz said.
Make it a forward-looking conversation. Instead of measuring against past metrics, turn the evaluation conversation that looks at the association’s future needs.
Keep it focused on strategic objectives. This is particularly relevant, Green said, with boards that have a habit of getting the weeds of chapter activities and other managerial tasks.
Involve more people than just the board chair. For better or for worse, the reputations of the CEO and the board chair interweave, and a divisive board chair can split opinion on the staff leader. “If I have a president who’s a bomb-thrower, that reflects on me,” Green says.
Get some informal outside input. Green consults with a “kitchen cabinet” of experts for help. “I do have people in most segments of the organization who I can call when I need unvarnished advice, whether it’s advocacy or government affairs or the convention,” she told Associations Now. “It’s a way to surface the early warning signs.”
Make it a forward-looking conversation. Instead of measuring against past metrics, turn the evaluation conversation that looks at the association’s future needs.
Keep it focused on strategic objectives. This is particularly relevant, Green said, with boards that have a habit of getting the weeds of chapter activities and other managerial tasks.
Involve more people than just the board chair. For better or for worse, the reputations of the CEO and the board chair interweave, and a divisive board chair can split opinion on the staff leader. “If I have a president who’s a bomb-thrower, that reflects on me,” Green says.
Get some informal outside input. Green consults with a “kitchen cabinet” of experts for help. “I do have people in most segments of the organization who I can call when I need unvarnished advice, whether it’s advocacy or government affairs or the convention,” she told Associations Now. “It’s a way to surface the early warning signs.”
These issues are more pronounced for CEOs, Green and Pomerantz said, because the skill sets of an effective CEO are much more dynamic now. He or she needs serious political acumen (both in terms of staff and the statehouse), business skills, change-management skills, value-creation skills, solid tech chops, and global knowledge.
The CEO gig is more challenging now, but more dynamic. But is your board aware of your hand in those responsibilities? And have they devised an effective way to measure performance that includes those responsibilities? Let use know how you do it—or think it should be done—in the comments.
When Debbie Witchey became president and CEO of the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness in October, she had replaced a long-standing executive who, she says, “for all intents and purposes” was ABHW’s founder. That has its upsides: Witchey was promised the outgoing CEO’s support during a transition period to reassure staff, board, and stakeholders. But being in an esteemed leader’s shadow meant making changes could be difficult.
To manage that dynamic, Witchey accepted the assistance but also made sure to draw bright lines around it to avoid any confusion about who was in charge. “The first week I was on, I shadowed her, and during the second week, she shadowed me,” Witchey says. “Then she went on vacation, which I think was helpful because I was doing things on my own, and I could see where my knowledge was lacking and what I needed help with.”
Having a clear plan about how to approach the early days of a new leader’s tenure is crucial, says Candance Chow, managing director and cofounder of NextGroup, LLC, a support firm for nonprofit leaders. That initial period, she says, “is a lot about building rapport and trust with the board as well as staff. Sometimes leaders will focus on spending time and developing relationships with staff, especially if they have a change agenda, but doing that with the board is just as critical.”
If you see signs the team is flailing and not sure of their direction, that’s a problem
Candance Chow, managing director and cofounder of NextGroup, LLC.
Witchey is doing just that, meeting with staff and board members to hear their thoughts and concerns about the organization’s direction. But she’s also clear about setting a start date for when actual changes will be implemented. “I told staff that I was not planning to change anything until the start of the new year,” she says. “There are things like the hybrid work schedule and things like that, which were important to them. So I told them that I was not going to change anything until the start of the new year, and even then, I might not be changing anything. But what I wanted to do was hear from them.”
Setting a stop date for the new executive’s listening tour can be just as important as the listening itself, Chow says, and each leader will have to determine when it’s best to start taking action. “I think sometimes new EDs [executive directors] prolong that period of listening and learning a little too long to the point that the team isn’t really sure actions are going to be taken,” she says. “And then on the other side of that, there are EDs that are hard-charging—everything is wrong, and everything needs to change. There’s definitely a balance there.”
Time for an Exit Coach?
It’s common for incoming leaders to call on a coach to navigate their transition. But outgoing CEOs are transitioning too, and Wipfli’s director of organizational performance suggests they could benefit from a coach too.
“If I’m interacting with an exiting CEO, one of the first questions I may ask with a big smile on my face is, ‘What do your tomorrows look like?’” she says. “And if an individual doesn’t have a clear idea of what their tomorrows look like, because they’ve been so committed to the organization and time intensive in that leadership role, I may suggest they connect with a personal coach, and that personal coach can help them define their tomorrows.”
That’s a reward for the outgoing leader, but it also keeps the exiting CEO from being overly intrusive with new leadership. “Part of that personal coaching process is to help individuals who have maintained an active and strong role in day-to-day operations and overall success of the organization, learn how to let go and how to pass the baton,” she says.
Julia A. Johnson, director of organizational performance at the nonprofit consultancy Wipfli, says new leaders should enter the listening period with both openness and a sense of what kind of leadership the new organization needs.
“When the CEO comes into those listening sessions, I think their job is twofold,” she says. “To come in with a very open agenda and simply sink into what is being shared. The second part is to reveal their leadership style and how it aligns with the needs of the organization.”
In conversations with board members and staff, Witchey is looking for more than just complaints or praise for past practices. She’s looking for opportunities to make changes. “I want to understand the value that [stakeholders] have seen in their relationship with ABHW,” she says. “If there are any ideas about other ways we can work together that we haven’t in the past, and also if there are any suggestions for how those relationships can work better, I want to understand that as well too.”
If the new leader’s presence or actions are overly disruptive, they’ll know fairly quickly, Chow says. “One red flag is staff not having a common understanding of what your overall vision might be, how you support the mission of the organization,” she says. “If you see signs the team is flailing and not sure of their direction, that’s a problem. And also, of course, if people start to leave.”
Getting ahead of those kinds of crises means an executive shouldn’t wait for the next big board meeting to bring them up. Indeed, during the transition period, Chow recommends recording brief weekly video updates to share progress and concerns.
“I much prefer someone giving me a weekly small update than having to digest a 50- or 100-page packet,” she says. “A weekly three-to-five-minute video helps you stay in touch and manage the learning curve.” She also recommends that boards discuss providing for leadership coaching with new leaders if necessary and building that into their employment contract.
Those actions help keep lines of communication open, and in turn help new executives better prepare to lead their organizations. “No matter how much you put down on paper, how many policies and procedures and transition documents you have, it’s just really hard to capture all that on paper or in a couple of exit interviews,” Witchey says.
Culturally, we admire change agents: People who disrupt the status quo, break things, reimagine what the future looks like. In associations, leaders are often encouraged to be the sworn enemy of phrases like “but we’ve always done it that way.” Transformation doesn’t happen by staying in well-worn ruts.
One thing that is less discussed while we’re handing flowers to those change agents, though: They can’t make change on their own. They need allies, staffers, stakeholders, board members, and others to understand what the change is going to be, and get buy-in for it. That process was on my mind when I was writing “Change Done Right,” one of the articles in the latest batch of Associations Now Deep Dives. In it, I speak with Debbie Witchey, the new CEO of the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness. Change is on her agenda, but she’s also been figuring out how to bring the relevant people along for it.
To do that, she has the assistance of the previous CEO during a transition period, and she’s done a listening tour with board members and staff. But she’s also taken care to let people know that the listening tour eventually ends and that she’s fully settled into the role of staff leader. “We told them that starting, November 1, I’m their point of contact,” she says. “The outgoing CEO is there to advise me for the month of November, not to advise them.”
Moreover, Witchey has been clear that she won’t rush into big changes, but may make relevant ones. To that end, it’s important not just for the listening tour to surface sources of frustration for the organization, but also to establish a tone from the top about how communication is handled.
The benefit of the listening tour is to go in wide open. Nothing is sacred, nothing is protected.
Julia A. Johnson, Wipfli
“When we are in a leadership role, we tend to create patterns of behavior in terms of how we interact with one another,” says Julia A. Johnson, director of organizational performance at the nonprofit consultancy Wipfli. “There can often be topics that may be cloaked or protected. So the benefit of the tour is to go in wide open. Nothing is sacred, nothing is protected. The CEO should come into those conversations with candidness and tact, asking clarifying questions. What I suspect may happen is that an incoming CEO may discover themes within the organization to address. The communication strategy may not have cascaded down. How decisions are made haven’t cascaded down.”
Those listening-tour meetings are also good opportunities to float trial balloons about how people might respond to changes. “While you’re doing that listening, also set that stage for pieces of your vision,” says Candance Chow, managing director and cofounder of NextGroup, LLC, a support firm for nonprofit leaders. “You can always say, ‘Here are my early thoughts. Here’s what I’m seeing.’ Within four months, you should have some viewpoint on where the organization should go. Much longer than that, you’re going to start losing people.”
And that’s the tricky part about the listening tour: People want to be heard, but ultimately they also want to be led. Hearing out where people are struggling is an excellent first step. But it needs to be done with a plan to be the person who handles the solutions.
ONE OF YOUR CORE responsibilities as a board member is engaging in and promoting healthy board dialogue. Without the right kind of discussion and debate, neither the board nor the organization is likely to fully deliver against mission.
Your challenge is to build within your board what BoardSource founding president and governance consultant Nancy Axelrod terms “a culture of inquiry” in which leadership conversations feed true fulfillment of the organization’s mission.
A culture of inquiry involves gaining comfort with tension and vigorous debate. That means diverse views, experiences, and perspectives are sought out to fully inform the conversation. This must happen in an atmosphere of respect and appreciation that recognizes that the process is going to go more slowly than it would otherwise; that progress typically arrives at the intersection of diverse viewpoints; and that nobody is as smart as everybody. Therefore, collective wisdom is more powerful than any lone voice.
Another reason that vigorous conversation is necessary is to avoid what Yale social psychologist Irving Janis called “groupthink.” This is a tendency for established groups, like boards, to place a higher priority on unanimous agreement than on pursuing alternative courses of action. This is a natural response, because as humans, we like to get along. The risk of groupthink, however, is that you may miss key issues that are in your organization’s best interest.
Janis’ work is the basis for these board-specific tips to avoid groupthink:
The board chair should create an environment in which each member has the role of “critical evaluator.” This allows each member to freely air objections and doubts.
Board leaders should not express an opinion when assigning a task to a group.
The organization should set up several independent groups working on the same problem.
All effective alternatives should be examined.
Each member should discuss the board’s idea with trusted people outside the board.
The board should invite outside experts into meetings. Board members should be allowed to discuss with and question the outside experts.
At each meeting, at least one board member should be assigned the role of devil’s advocate. This should be a different person for each meeting.
Engaging in constructive conversation may sound simple. And, intellectually, it is. The challenge comes in actually doing it. The best way forward: practice, practice, practice. Your board and organization will be better for it.
HIRING AND EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE of a chief staff executive is a key role of the board of directors. The board should establish an executive assessment policy that includes how and when the assessment will be done, who will be involved, and whether and to what degree salary increases or bonuses will be tied to the results.
Associations assign the task of assessing the executive’s performance in different ways. In some cases, the whole board is involved; in others, only the executive committee; and still others use a hybrid model. In the interest of transparency and inclusiveness, the full board should be involved in some way, even if it just receives a report from the executive review committee.
Elected leaders often find it difficult to assess their CEO’s performance. In part, that’s because the executive is both a leader and an employee, which makes the relationship awkward. Board members may feel they know less about the association and how it is run than the executive, so they may find it difficult to give feedback about either programmatic or strategic issues.
ASAE’s CEO Assessment tool enables the board to meet its annual responsibility to evaluate the chief executive’s performance over the past year and mutually agree on priorities for the future.
Following a few best practices can help. The executive assessment process generally includes the following components:
Establishing measures. It is important to start by specifying executive performance expectations at the time of hiring and outlining them in the CEO’s contract. The board should work with the executive within the first six months to establish agreed-upon, measurable objectives for the coming year, along with the performance metrics to be used to measure success. Ideally, the executive evaluation metrics will be similar to the management metrics that are linked to objectives in the strategic plan.
Gathering data. Executive performance should not be judged by quantitative data alone, and the executive’s role is about more than the organization’s bottom line. He or she is also a leader whose style, demeanor, and emotional intelligence count. The assessment process should include elements that can provide the executive with feedback on how he or she can be more effective in interpersonal relationships and leadership roles with the board, staff, and members.
Compiling and presenting assessments. The purpose of the data collection and assessment process is to frame a candid conversation with the executive about performance and to agree on a new set of objectives for the corning year. While assessment data may be gathered from a larger group, the synthesis of the data and presentation of the assessment is best done by a smaller subset—often the board chair and the chair-elect—who should set up a private face-to-face conversation with the executive and allow ample time for a reflective dialogue.
Done well, executive performance assessments are hard work, but they pay off in improved performance for the executive and the association.
NASCAR and INDYCAR drivers often credit their success to what happens before the race begins. Planning, preparation, and a strong crew are what most often make the difference. Each member of the team, from the driver to those who work in the pit, remains focused on the vehicle to ensure it can perform at highest level while encountering a variety of challenges.
Time, talent, and teamwork are also critical when a board convenes. While the road of good governance is less dangerous and overtly competitive, readiness and pacing still come into play. Some board meetings are short sprints, while others can feel like numerous laps around a huge track.
You can’t contribute fully to your next board meeting unless you’re fully prepared. In keeping with the metaphor, think of getting ready for your meeting as heading off to the “RACES.”
Remember to do the following:
Review. Read all materials provided in advance, including the agenda, minutes, financial reports, and background materials prepared to help orient and inform board discussion.
Ask. Get more information on anything that is not clear or that you think others would benefit from knowing. Questions can be asked at any point, including before and after a board meeting.
Contribute. Identify ways you can add value to the meeting. Perhaps you can listen and summarize key points, or you may be able to offer a suggestion or different point of view. Make sure you’re ready to participate—even if it’s your first board meeting.
Engage. Before, during, and after board meetings, get to know others who serve on the board with you, and take time to consider various points of view. Touch base with staff members to expand your knowledge, understanding, and insights about important issues being considered or discussed. (While staff can be a valuable resource for you, remember that your role is not to direct their work. That’s the CEO’s responsibility.)
Summarize. This one happens after the meeting. Identify a few key messages and takeaway points that are appropriate to share with others. Other people in your organization, your coworkers, and even your family will wonder what you did at the board meeting. If you’re not certain what you are free to discuss outside the boardroom, check with the CEO or chief volunteer officer.
Champion stock car driver Dale Earnhardt is credited with saying that finishing a race is important, but not as important as racing well. I suspect he was referring to his professional pursuits—as far as I know, he never served on an association board. Either way, he was right
GET MORE INFORMATION ON ANYTHING THAT IS NOT CLEAR OR THAT YOU THINK OTHERS WOULD BENEFIT FROM KNOWING. QUESTIONS CAN BE ASKED AT ANY POINT
GOOD GOVERNANCE matters to association performance. But it can be hard to find a path through the anecdotes, the conventional wisdom, and the sometimes competing notions of what works and what doesn’t. Given the enormous variety in associations, you and your board colleagues should be asking the hard questions about what success means for your organization.
But benchmarking can be helpful. In a series of research initiatives, the ASAE Foundation has studied good association governance from several angles. The foundation’s 2013 book, What Makes High-Performing Boards: Effective Governance Practices in Member-Serving Organizations (which I co-wrote with my colleague at Indiana University, Ashley Bowers), benchmarked governance practices from a broad perspective encompassing member-serving organizations across many tax statuses and missions.
What can be learned from the association boards that received the highest performance rankings from their CEOs and executive directors? The factors you might expect—size, budget, staffing, geographic scope— were not the strongest drivers of organizational performance. Instead, four things set these boards apart:
Strategic focus. High-performing boards were twice as likely to invest substantial board meeting time to strategic considerations. Fully 99 percent of these boards were operating under an organizational strategic plan—and the plan was more likely to be one the board had worked jointly with staff to develop. The result is striking: The top-performing boards also had healthier membership and budget growth, and their CEOs were less likely to report intentions to leave the organization.
Commitment to assessment and skills development. These boards were twice as likely to set performance goals for themselves, almost twice as likely to invest in board development activities such as mentoring and training, and twice as likely to engage in formal or informal board self-assessment.
Effective recruitment processes. They were also more likely to recruit new board members broadly, by, for example, soliciting nominations from outside the board rather than depending on CEO nominations. They were more likely to screen prospective board members and to hold competitive elections rather than voting for a single slate. The result? Their CEOs were half as likely to report challenges finding board members who had the qualifications they needed and half as likely to report problems keeping the board members they wanted.
High participation levels. The CEOs at top-performing associations were half as likely to report board meetings that failed to make a quorum or to report that board members had left office before their terms were up. These may seem like minor issues, but they weaken leadership, complicate governance processes, slow down board decision making, and create a culture of weak accountability.
Whether or not you have these practices in place, asking your board colleagues and your CEO smart questions such as “Why do we have these practices? Why don’t we?” will help you understand the value they bring to your governance work and which practices should be prioritized.
When Chris Busky, CAE, became CEO of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) three years ago, one of the first things he did was go on a six-month listening tour of members. Much of the input he received had to do with the makeup of the association’s leadership.
“One of the most common themes I picked up was, ‘The society doesn’t look like me. The leadership of the organization doesn’t look like me,’” he says. “And they were right. It didn’t.” Busky took the matter to IDSA’s board, which has worked since then on diversifying the organization’s leaders and improving its nominating procedures.
It was, Busky acknowledges, a balancing act. CEOs work for the board, and they don’t want to be perceived as putting their thumb on the scale when it comes to the nominating process, installing favorites. However, the CEO typically has closer relationships with a broader group of members than most volunteer leaders do—and, frankly, often knows details about board candidates that make them subpar choices or should disqualify them outright.
How to handle that position? Carefully, association executives say. With some attention and tact, CEOs can play a meaningful role in the board nominating process while avoiding the perception that they’re remaking the board in their own image.
How Far Is Too Far?
In their 2018 book, Recruit the Right Board, Texas A&M professor William A. Brown and Association Management Center partner Mark Engle, FASAE, CAE, lay out some best practices for board nominations. The CEO often plays a role in that: According to an ASAE Research Foundation survey, slightly more than half of associations said their executive staff provides a substantial amount of input on board candidates. Only 19 percent provide no input at all. (See “Three Selection Practices” below.)
“Leading practices for the CEO during the nominating process are to provide information that aids in the decision-making process without unduly influencing the committee,” Brown and Engle write. But what qualifies as “unduly influencing the committee?”
“People can be extreme about this,” says Engle. “There was somebody who said, ‘I don’t touch that with a 10-foot pole, because I don’t want to be viewed as influencing.’ Frankly, that’s a bit naive. What associations do in governance, and particularly strategy-setting, should be informed by the CEO. What’s important is making sure the process is sound, transparent, and well-communicated.”
You would be overstepping your bounds if you were telling the committee to nominate or to not nominate an individual for your own personal reasons.—Vicki Loise, CAE, Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening
Vicki Loise, CAE, CEO of the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening, plays a formal role in this process as staff liaison to the association’s nominating committee. In a strict sense, her job is to communicate directives from the current board about what it’s looking for. But less formally, she sees her job as championing the characteristics that make for effective board leadership.
“I’m making sure the committee is thinking of people who can perform at the right level,” she says. “In many organizations, the people who end up on your board have probably served in some volunteer capacity, which is great. But you also want those folks who can make the transition from tactical committee work to strategic board work.”
Loise is well-positioned to know who qualifies in that regard, and she says she’ll share that information if it seems relevant.
“You would be overstepping your bounds if you were telling the committee to nominate or to not nominate an individual for your own personal reasons,” she says. “But a CEO does have to do a very delicate dance. The CEO very often knows all the skeletons and secrets that a nominating committee won’t necessarily know about.”
Busky recalls a case from the latest nominating process at IDSA. “An applicant came in that looks great on paper, had a fantastic CV, and has been very involved in the society for many, many years,” he says. “However, that person has had a number of issues with meeting deadlines.” That problem, combined with some “abrasive” behaviors Busky had heard about, prompted him to alert the committee chair. But he left it to the committee to act on that input.
“The chair took it and managed it with the rest of the committee, but I think that’s where the CEO’s insight and knowledge are critical,” he says.
A New Path for Nominations
Greg Wilson, CAE, executive director of the Child Support Directors Association of California, says he’s comfortable with actively recruiting potential board members. But he does so in open communication with his board, urging them to think more strategically about the nominating process.
“I’m pushing the board to think more long-term,” he says. “I presented it with an environmental scan—here’s what I see going on the next three years in the state, and here’s where I see the association in three years. And I asked, ‘If this all plays out, what skills do we need in board members over the next three years?’”
Those conversations can extend beyond board members. One prescription that Brown and Engle make in Recruit a Better Board is for associations to shift from traditional nominating committees charged with developing a slate of potential board members to a “leadership development committee.” The latter looks more broadly for future leaders who can serve in different roles at an association, not just on the board.
“The nomination function is to say, ‘We have three open seats, and we’ve got to fill them,’” Engle says. “The leadership development function is to identify paths of leadership for potential leaders of the future and to develop them.”
That’s something Busky has started to implement at IDSA as an outcome of his listening tour. A leadership development committee is studying how to make the volunteer application process more inclusive. That’s involved looking at how unconscious bias affects the process—white men, for instance, are conditioned to be more confident about nominating themselves than other groups.
“It’s our responsibility as the leadership development committee to be as inclusive as possible and use the right language and not put up barriers for our members to apply for different roles within the society,” Busky says.
There’s one step in the board selection process where the CEO is unequivocally welcome to participate: when it comes time to talk to the candidates who ran but weren’t elected.
“It’s not easy to call somebody and let them know they didn’t win—that’s a terrible thing to do,” Engle says. But he recalls one case he encountered during research for the book about a CEO and nominating committee chair calling one such candidate. The call “went a long way in keeping her loyalty to the organization.”
“I think it’s as big a responsibility as the nominating process,” Loise says. She remembers a conversation with a candidate who lost in the most recent cycle. “From his point of view, he was thinking, ‘I’m putting in a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of my reputation and cachet into this organization. How long does it take before I can reach that point of being on the board?’”
To such candidates, Loise counsels patience but also shares how they can become a better candidate for the next election.
“I’ve had conversations with folks and said, ‘There are a lot of great things here in your CV, but there’s a gap that the committee identified,’” she says. “Usually it has to do with their volunteer work—either they haven’t done enough of it or they haven’t done it at a high enough level for a leadership role. I communicate that to them. And then we find places for them to fill those gaps.”
Read More
Read these articles and more at associationsnow.com:
How often are you able to devote time to thinking about the long-term future of your organization? Have you considered how your association’s situation could change as society changes, the economy adapts, and technological advances provide organizations with new ways of doing business? To do this effectively, association volunteer and staff leaders need to engage together in the disciplined practice of foresight.
Foresight is a systematic, multi-stepped process for discerning, analyzing, and acting on potential futures. Future-focused activities like environmental scanning play a key role in the foresight process, which supports organizations in four critical areas:
Strategic planning and strategy development. Association leaders generally recognize that environmental scanning is a necessary precursor to effective strategic planning. Fewer leaders recognize the need to look five to 10 years ahead to anticipate change. Associations are more likely to do more comprehensive scanning and scenario planning when they are creating or updating their vision to set a strategic direction. However, a traditional SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis only provides an assessment of current performance and not of what must be done to prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities. Performing a systematic environmental scan helps participants focus their plans for the future.
Anticipatory learning. Members value content that keeps them apprised of changes in their field. They expect their associations to offer topical conferences and webinars and to report on timely topics in their publications. Association leaders must be aware of the trends and changes that will affect their members in order to produce relevant content.
Risk analysis. Association leaders have been effective at identifying issues that can lead to public policy and regulatory changes, especially when they have staff dedicated to these activities. They have also been successful in confronting new developments that affect businesses of all types, including technology advances and generational shifts. Leaders have been less proactive in assessing potential vulnerabilities in their business models and operating practices.
Innovation and business development. Businesses frequently use foresight to spot trends and anticipate future markets. As associations strive to be more innovative, they will be able to use foresight to see beyond today’s issues and identify new capabilities that can turn “what if” ideas into real possibilities. Associations can use foresight to recognize and build on technological advances or changes in customer priorities and preferences. In doing so, they will be better able to see emerging opportunities to do things a new way.
Practicing foresight is a shared responsibility across an association, but boards play an especially critical role in demonstrating the importance of exploring and planning for the future. Leading an organization requires an understanding of the looming drivers of change. The practice of foresight in associations will not only advance the association sector; it will help professions and industries create their own futures.
Manage Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
