Comedian Henny Youngman had a joke (often repeated) that went like this:
The patient says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” [The doctor’s response:] “Then don’t do that!”
Sometimes the first advice a board should follow if it wants to improve its performance is to find out what it does that hurts…then stop doing that.
Of course, that may be a good beginning, but we can do more.
Board meetings are where/when boards do things that sometimes hurt, sometimes help. Meetings are where and when boards accomplish their business. Between meetings, when not officially convened (per state law or board by-laws) by having a quorum in attendance, the board is not active and can take no official action. Between meetings, the board can only accomplish something through the actions of others whom it has delegated to take action on its behalf. Between meetings, the board can only “speak” through documents it has written in the past.
Experts in governance assure us that what boards do in board meetings matters for both good and bad. Board governance experts have long advocated for effective board behavior in meetings. Governance consultant Les Wallace, in a BoardSource® posting, offers an idealized vision (based on a real board meeting he attended) of “The Best Board Meeting I Ever Attended.” Features of that meeting included:
- Consent Agenda – Provides for prior reading, and quick action on, routine items in order to free up more time for strategic board work during the meeting.
- Meeting Agenda – Prioritized, with the most important issues scheduled first, then other issues in descending importance, one at a time.
- Dashboard Financials – Fiscal data is presented in a one page dashboard, highlighting color-coded key indicators to focus board attention on the most important information.
- Board Succession – An agenda item focusing on qualities desired in a good board member.
- Reduced Jibber-Jabber – Board members fully engaged, avoiding distracting conversation.
- Executive Summaries – Every staff or committee report was preceded by a one-page summary, followed by additional detail, which was also available online for reading prior to the meeting.
- Strategic Dialogue – Time saved elsewhere (e.g. in the consent agenda) was devoted to deliberation and debate of issues more critical to board business.
- Board Development – A brief discussion of a reading on a board governance topic identified as a learning objective during a board retreat or via an annual board self-assessment.
- Immediate Assessment – The last item on the agenda, discussion of three prompts:
- Are you leaving the meeting confident in the overall performance of our organization?
- Did you feel you had ample opportunity for input?
- Would you change anything for future meetings?
Research too supports the notion that what boards and board members do in meetings matters. Professors David E. Lee (University of Southern Mississippi) and Daniel W. Eadens (Northern Arizona University) have conducted studies of televised school board meetings, and have found statistically significant findings correlating certain observable behaviors in school board meetings and the relative performance (high, medium, or low-performing, based on measures of student performance on standardized state tests) of the school districts those boards govern.
Findings of Lee and Eadens’ research study (The Problem: Low-Achieving Districts and Low-Performing Boards) include the following observable board behaviors that are significantly correlated with the top third of school districts, as measured by performance on state standardized student achievement tests, which are termed high-performing school districts:
- Meeting is orderly
- Amount of time spent on student achievement
- Board listens respectfully and attentively to the person speaking
- Board members [do not] seem to advance their own agenda
- Board members and superintendent seem to have a good working relationship, and there is evidence of collaboration between the superintendent and board members
- [People] speak other than board members or the superintendent
- Board member(s) other than the board president [do not] stand out for taking a lot of time.
- Meeting flows well (agenda followed, well organized, easy to follow, etc.)
- Board acts on policy items.
Summary: We can learn important lessons from governance experts, we can learn more lessons from research, and we can even learn from comedians, that what we seek to accomplish might start well by finding out what hinders or gets in the way of board business, avoiding those same things, and moving on to the important business for which we joined the board in the first place.