Operational or Strategic?
Most agendas, as described in a recent post (see The Board Agenda, August 18, 2017) are filled with operational matters. Finding out “what the staff are up to” is surely interesting to board members, and it is tempting to excuse it as part of the organizational accountability/evaluation/monitoring function for which a board is responsible, but it is too often just a matter of “wandering around” in the data. The problem with this situation is that there is not enough time available to a governing board to allow inordinate amounts of time to be devoted to agenda items about operational issues. Worse, there is never enough time for the board to accomplish its strategic function, that which only a board can do. There is a need to prioritize the time devoted to agenda items, and agenda planning is the opportunity to assign those priorities. To get the board’s attention shifted from board-meeting-to-board meeting (a sure temptation to deal in operational matters) let’s begin thinking far out into the future. For a board that meets monthly, or quarterly, let’s prepare a plan for the next year, or even the next ten years, by developing an annual board agenda and a ten-year board agenda
The Annual Agenda
One method, as discussed in the earlier post, is to plan out, at the beginning of the year, a strategically oriented annual plan for board meetings. When the board takes a longer view, it tends to refocus its time horizon farther out into the future, which is the purview of a board of directors, and away from “the next board meeting”. When the board has established its meeting priorities for the whole year, the board chair and CEO are given marching orders that guide development of each meeting’s agenda to ensure that the annual plan is fulfilled. Examples of annual agenda items are:
- dates for review of individual big picture board policies and guiding documents such as the strategic plan, the budget, etc.
- briefings by futurists, outside experts, and major stakeholders to inform the board about major, long-term issues of concern
- reports of progress on major goals and objectives contained in the strategic plan
- board professional growth and development opportunities
- CEO evaluation and board self-evaluation
The Ten Year Agenda
In the August 2017 issue of Board & Administrator magazine (they actually produce two versions, one for Superintendents only, and an abbreviated version for board members) the cover article described an idea I had discussed with its editor (Jeff Stratton, see Board & Administrator, School Edition) about how to really focus the board on long-term, strategic thinking. I suggested that, while annual agenda planning is a major step toward the board exhibiting strategic level thinking, a ten-year agenda would take strategic thinking to a time frame (looking ten years out) that would put operational matters into better (punier) perspective.
The metaphor I used (and as mentioned in the article) was that of a board (let’s use a 5-member board in this example) and superintendent, riding in a car, with six pairs of hands on the wheel. Because the board members are personally involved in “helping” to steer the vehicle, the attention of the board is necessarily focused on the “here and how” of operational details of navigating the nearby features of the road just in front of the car. Even worse, imagine board members putting their noses on the front bumper, scanning the surface of the road immediately in front. That’s the image of a board with a micromanaging vision. Now imagine that same board, looking through the front windshield through a telescope, that can only focus on the road far ahead of the front bumper. Board members would have to let go of the wheel, or the car would crash. This illustrates the need for a board to define its role as strategic/long-range, because if everyone is steering, no one is looking at the route far ahead.
Agenda “Items” in a Ten Year Agenda
The kind of agenda I am referring to in a ten-year agenda would plan out the following kinds of long-term, strategic, “board business” issues:
- What academic attributes, (values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills) do we want developed for our current 8 year old third graders ten years from now, when they will have graduated from high school?
- What character qualities (values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills) for those same third graders?
- What physical health qualities (values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills) do we want for those same kids?
- What check-in points are we going to schedule during the next ten years for measuring progress toward these long-term goals?
- When will we schedule our updates of the 5-7 year strategic plan?
As you can see, the above agenda “items” are long-term and strategic in nature. That’s entirely the point. The board belongs in the strategic realm – it is up to the CEO and staff to carry out the operational necessities, and they don’t need board members’ “support”
The Board’s Job is Primarily Strategic – and It Must Resist the Urge to Tinker
The board’s main role in operational matters is to set policy, give guidance, and check to see that legal, ethical and moral boundaries are not crossed by the staff in order to achieve “short cuts”.
The board has an appropriate accountability role, so can and should monitor both results and programs/services, but they should be encouraged to resist the urge to tinker in those programs/services.
By devoting its attention to a ten-year agenda, and keeping the long-term focus through ten annual agendas, the board is much more likely to resist that urge.