CompassPoint’s new report on nonprofit leadership trends (Daring to Lead 2006, available for download here) has lots of great insights for cultural leaders and their boards. Among the most striking of their summary conclusions is this one:
Boards of directors and funders
contribute to executive burnout
Negative perception of the board of directors is strongly associated with executive director turnover. Although a majority (65%) of executives feel personally supported by their boards, most don’t appear to be experiencing a strong strategic partnership. Fewer than one in three executives agree strongly that their board challenges them to be more effective.
If that didn’t smack you in the head, you must have ducked.
Compare that finding to John Carver’s concise description of a governing board’s role:
Simply put, the board exists (usually on someone else’s behalf) to be accountable that its organization works.+++
Either a bunch of board members are intentionally doing the wrong job, don’t understand their job, or can’t do the job they’ve been given, or two thirds of the executives surveyed are confused (I’ll guess it’s somewhere in between…tilting toward the board side). Assuming most board members really want to promote strong, compelling, and responsive work by the organizations they govern, there’s clearly a structural flaw in our system of leadership that can’t be resolved by changing the players. That means we have to change the game.
Thanks, Tracy, for bringing the report to my attention.
+++NOTE: An extended perspective from Carver on how the board achieves this role might be interesting to some. Both quotes are from a downloadable article I’ve referenced in the past. Here’s the meat of it:
Since the board is accountable that the organization works, and since the actual running of the organization is substantially in the hands of management, then it is important to the board that management be successful. The board must therefore increase the likelihood that management will be successful, while making it possible to recognize whether or not it really is successful. This calls upon the board to be very clear about its expectations, to personalize the assignment of those expectations, and then to check whether the expectations have been met. Only in this way is everyone concerned clear about what constitutes success and who has what role in achieving it.
Excellent posting… I think the last quote indicates the real issue, that is the lack of a real honest discussion to ensure that all are on the same page as to what success means. Many heads nodding in agreement is not enough. Spelling it out in detail is required.
There’s no question that even the best boards contribute to the stress level of the ED. I’ve been blessed with excellent boards through a 35-year career (29 of them as the senior manager of an institution). We’ve nearly always been on the same page regarding the priorities of the institution and the roles of staff and volunteer directors.
However, given the fiduciary responsibility of the board, the nature of most non-profit financial reporting (highlighting monthly budget variances) directs attention to the margins, rather than the overall work of the organization. Therefore, as circumstances (environmental or institutional) vary from expectations taking variances with them, EDs find ourselves explaining the same things month-after-month — again-and-again preparing new projections and analyses of situations WE already understand — using time and energy and creativity that would be better applied to adapting to the changed circumstances.
That’s not because board members don’t understand their role or take it seriously. It’s because they DO understand their role and want fervently to make a difference on behalf of the organization.
It is the nature of that peculiar beast known as the volunteer board to become most engaged and involved when pressure on the executive is already at its most intense. Any ED who doesn’t understand that is in the wrong business.
However, understanding it doesn’t lessen the stress when it’s happening.