Creating Boards that Actually Govern
Richard M. Biery and Davie Mustine

This article provided by the Engstrom Institute

These days, finding an organizational board that actually governs can be as rare as finding a needle in a haystack. In our mismanaged culture, it may seem that the chances of serving on an effective board are extremely low. But good governance has nothing to do with luck! Anyone who has served on a functioning board knows that good governance is a skill that must be learned—it doesn't come naturally, and it certainly doesn't come to those who only wish for it.

John Carver's Policy Governance® model for board leadership has a proven track record of transforming reactive and inefficient boards into future-oriented and empowering policy makers. Clearly, the best way to learn this model is to go to the source and visit the Carver Academy in Atlanta. However, this article serves to introduce you to several key aspects of Policy Governance® to help equip you with the knowledge you need to begin to govern your organization effectively.

Four Essential Aspects of Policy Governance®

#1: Focus and develop organizational ENDS

The word "Governance" comes from the Latin, gubernare, which comes from the Greek kubernetes. The kubernetes was the man who stood on the ship deck beside the helmsman and gave strategic direction to the helmsman of the ship. He saw where the ship needed to go and he directed the helmsman toward that location.

In many ways, this is precisely the role of the organizational board. It does not "steer" the organization, manage its processes, or overview its current operations. Instead, it looks ahead, past the "helm" of the present and into the waters of the future, and it decides upon a destination. It sees the end toward which the organization must progress, and it begins to structure policies around this end.

To develop meaningful organizational ends, the board must spend significant time in discussion with all significant groups within and surrounding the organization. For example, the board of a missions organization will spend time listening to its missionaries, to its donors, to involved churches and missions committees, and listening to its CEO and its staff. Then, it will look ahead and ask, "what are we going to be about as a missions organization? Are we going to focus on planting churches where there is no church? Or are we going to focus on nurturing existing churches and providing theological/pastoral training?"

When (and only when) an organizational board asks and answers these "end" questions, it has then established the organizational destination. This destination becomes the center-point of all other policy-making.

#2: Empower executive leadership through clearly articulated boundaries

Though boards must define their organization's ENDS, these boards must steer away from defining the MEANS by which the organization will reach these ends. That is, boards are not to be prescriptive.

Yet, boards must also avoid simply rubberstamping a CEO's agenda for reaching the organization's ends. So, the board shouldn't simply approve, and it cannot be prescriptive about reaching their defined ends.

The only alternative left is to be proscriptive and say, "By the way, in accomplishing the ends, I don't want you to violate any of our values for which the ends do not justify the means."

This may sound rather negative, but policies stated in terms of "what not to do" in achieving organizational ends are actually the most empowering and freeing kinds of policies a board can give a CEO and the organization.

Negative policies provide a perfect balance between empowerment (i.e., giving leadership the personal freedom to get the job done inside the organization, to use all their creativity, knowledge, and savvy as executive officer to do what the owners expect the organization to accomplish) and limitation. They effectively put a fence around executive action so the organization doesn't violate the core values of the organization in creatively accomplishing organizational ends.

#3: Clearly establish standards and cycles of evaluation

Once a board has put a clear set of value-defining policies in place, it must hold executive leadership accountable to the standards they have set for the organization. Boards must ask the CEO questions such as, "How well are we making progress toward our defined ends?" and "Are we staying within the policy boundaries we have set up?"

The timing of these evaluations must be clearly stated (for example, every year, or every quarter), and the policy standards must be clearly understood by all parties.

#4: Speak with a single voice

Once a policy is decided upon, all members of the board must stand wholeheartedly behind it. This does not mean that every suggested policy is to be wholeheartedly adopted. Just the opposite! The board chair is responsible to encourage lively (and often argument-filled) discussion around each suggested policy so that the board does not end up approving policies which no member actually endorses (see The Abilene Paradox and Other Meditations on Management by Jerry B. Harvey). Conflict is essential to eventual unity.

Boards that Actually Govern

If a board is to effectively govern, it must switch its focus from the past to the future. It must build clear boundaries to clarify organizational progression. It must regularly evaluate its executive leadership according to its clearly articulated policies. And it must continually articulate its policies to the organization with a single voice. In doing this, a board truly becomes the guiding and empowering voice of a strategic organization.

Richard M. Biery, M.D. and David Mustine were both trained at the Carver Academy in Atlanta, where they learned the Policy Management® model of governance. Dr. Biery is president of The BroadBaker Group, Ltd., a consulting group in Kansas City, Mo. David Mustine has extensive experience in ministry, as well as domestic and international financial management, administration, and strategic planning.