Author Archives: Susan Low

Board governance topics have come up a lot for me lately, and I’ve been reading a veritable flood of books and papers on the subject. Two things have occurred to me: first, board governance authors seem to write in either overly academic language, or they try to dumb things down to the point of patronizing. As a language and writing nerd, this bothers me.

The second and much more important thing that I have observed is how prescriptive each model or expert seems to be about the role of the Board. The Board’s role is either to create the strategic plan, OR it is NOT to create strategy but rather oversee and approve it. Huh? Whether you look at working boards, policy boards, Policy Governance boards, or whatever model you want to dredge up, there are differing but very definitive prescriptions for how Board members are to connect (or not connect) with staff, leadership and customers.

Frankly I’m getting kind of tired of the back-and-forth… makes me feel like I’m trying to decide whether or not a glass of red wine is good for me. (I usually decide on “yes”).

I’m beginning to feel that Boards should build their own governance model based on the age & stage of their organization, the personalities and skills of the people involved, and the needs of stakeholders. Don’t forget the operating context either. There are so many factors that are at play in determining whether a Board using XX Board Model Trend Of The Year can be successful in helping an organization move forward and be useful.

This reminds me of one of my favourite facilitation questions when people are trying to make a decision: “What would be most useful in helping us move forward?” The other relevant question is “What is likely to actually work given our situation and resources?”

The long and short of it is, I believe, Boards need to design themselves. Use the best practices out there, but take no model at face value.

As the old adage goes, “what gets measured gets managed.” This is entirely true for almost every human endeavour we can imagine, and it gives rise to a healthy discussion around what one measures.

In business school, my management accounting professor told us a cautionary tale of a city works department that began measuring the amount of asphalt used by their pothole-fixing-crews as a way of checking on how productive the crews were being. My professor, who at one time had been a shovel-wielding road crew member, asked us to imagine what kinds of results that measurement would have. Did more potholes get fixed when asphalt use went up? Nope… but the holes dug on each pothole got deeper. Be careful what you ask for, was the moral of the story to our class of budding managers.

If measurement is such a key part of managing, in the for-profit or not-for-profit sectors, how do we do it well, so that we encourage the intended outcome? And how do we measure things without putting a load of bureaucratic nonsense in the way of getting things done? Read on for a few thoughts about this. read more…