Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom

Issue No. 373 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting is a tad self-promotional, but only 50 percent. Read the new book by Dan Busby and yours truly. And this reminder: click here to download free resources 


Boardroom Bloopers and More

News Flash! There’s way too much confusion in the trenches on the appropriate roles and responsibilities of the board of directors:
• New board members are often overwhelmed. (“No one told me!”)
• Veteran board members have turned micro-managing into an art form.
• CEOs often use the mushroom management approach (Google it!).
• Senior staffers plead for more face time with the board, then often convert board meetings into staff meetings.

Stop the madness!

Here’s one solution to these and many other obstacles to God-honoring governance: Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, the new book by Dan Busby and yours truly.

When ECFA President Dan Busby invited me to join him on this book project, I jumped at the opportunity. We’re both passionate about good governance so we wrote 40 very short chapters in 11 irresistible categories:

Part 1: The Powerful Impact of Highly Engaged Boards
• Would you trust a surgeon who stopped learning? How about a board member who stopped learning? (Lesson 1)
• What’s the “Gold Standard Question” to ask after every board meeting? (Lesson 2)

Part 2: Boardroom Tools, Templates, and Typos
• “A BPM (board policies manual) will help your board negotiate an emergency leadership transition, frame the strategic planning process, and give direction and boundaries in dozens of other important policy issues.” (Lesson 4)
• True or False: As a board member, “I receive way too many emails from our CEO, and I can’t discern what’s really important and what’s just an FYI.” (Lesson 6 on a nifty template, the “CEO’s Monthly 5/15 Report to the Board.”)

Part 3: Nominees for the Board Member Hall of Fame
• Andrew Murray: “Humility is the only soil in which the graces take root; the lack of humility is the sufficient explanation of every defect and failure.” (Lesson 9)
• General Norman Schwarzkopf: “Leaders need two things—character and strategy. If you can do only one, drop strategy.” (Lesson 9)

Part 4: Epiphanies in the Boardroom
• To inspire your board to go deeper into spiritual discernment, “…consider how St. Ignatius identified three distinct times when faced with making Spirit-filled choices.” (See Lesson 11 to learn more about a revelatory time, a discerning time, and a waiting time.)

Part 5: Boardroom Bloopers
• “Harebrained motions rarely pass. However, they may get unmerited oxygen resulting in a compromise with the strong support of an ‘out to lunch’ board member. (Read Lesson 17 for more on sidetracking harebrained motions!)

Part 6: Boardroom Time-Wasters, Trouble-Makers, and Truth Tellers
• “Without adequate advance preparation to fully address an issue, boards tend to function as a committee of the whole, often resorting to painfully circuitous discussion.” (See Lesson 19, “Never Throw Red Meat on the Board Table.”)

Part 7: Boardroom Best Practices
• On mission impact and sustainability, quoting Elmer Towns and Warren Bird, “Dakota tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.” (Read Lesson 23 for more on the “dual bottom line” which equips boards to address dead horses and sacred cows.)

Part 8: Boardroom Worst Practices
• On spotting, catching, or exiting a falling CEO: “It was obvious to many others that our CEO was utterly failing, but our board was blind to what was happening right before our very eyes.” (Lesson 26)

Part 9: Holy Ground and Other Locations
• “Ruth Haley Barton puts a sharp stick into the heart of board decision-making that masquerades as discernment: ‘One very common leadership mistake is to think that we can take a group of undiscerning individuals and expect them to show up in a leadership setting and all of a sudden become discerning!’” (Lesson 28: Slow Down and Wait on God)

Part 10: Building a 24/7 Board Culture
• On four types of board members: “When you have board members in Group 4 (not performing and not living the values), invite them to exit the board. Then as you recruit new board members, remember this: if you want a healthy board, recruit healthy people.” (Lesson 31: Cut the Cord!)

Part 11: Boards That Lead and Boards That Read
• “As we’ve observed in hundreds and hundreds of ministries over the years, the numbers reveal the reality. Successfully achieving stretch goals is very uncommon, and thus reaching for the moon (and beyond!) should generally be avoided.” (Lesson 37: Don’t Stretch Credulity with BHAGs and Stretch Goals)

40 BLOGS. 40 WEDNESDAYS. Dan Busby and I have recruited 40 guest bloggers to add their color commentary to the 40 lessons. Click here for the Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom blog.
 
SAMPLE CHAPTER. To read a sample chapter, visit the book’s website here. And by the way, Dan wrote 20 lessons and I wrote 20 lessons. I’ll send a Starbucks gift card to the first reader who correctly guesses which 20 lessons I wrote. (Hint: Dan’s are better!) Email me.

PODCAST. Dan Busby and I were interviewed on Oct. 9 by Al Lopus for The Flourishing Culture Podcast. Listen here for some learnings and laughs from the book.

AMAZON. To order from Amazon, click on the title for Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. 

 

Your Weekly Staff Meeting Questions:
1) Lesson 27 urges staff and board members to “report once and report with clarity,” noting that hearing the same report more than once is a “10” on the pain threshold. Do your committees and staff tend to regurgitate the same report endlessly (and needlessly)? Does your full board trust—or not trust—your committees?
2) Lesson 30 shares the inspiring story, “The Truck Driver Was No Match for the Faith-Filled Board Chair.” How effectively do your board members share your organization’s tribal stories?
  
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Date Board Prospects Before You Propose Marriage Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook

Imagine…if every person in your boardroom would prioritize their charitable giving so that your organization was in the Top-3 for each board member! That’s possible if you bring board prospects inside the concentric circles of involvement from event participant to donor and then into the generous donor circle.

But! You must date board prospects before you propose marriage. Read more in the new workbook, Chapter 14, “The Board Bucket.”

That’s just one of the 99 take-aways from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates, and Tips From John Pearson. Created by John Pearson, it also includes color commentaries by Jason Pearson. And for more on the Board Bucket, click here.

For more resources in all 20 buckets, click here. And if you still haven't read the original book, click here: Mastering the Management Buckets

P.S. Read John's latest board governance blog, "Agenda Clutter," here.

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