Welcome to the LinkedIn group 'tony@boardsense' articles.

I set up this public group and also a private group as a way of providing a conversation medium on current governance issues.

In this section of my website the aim is to create something in the nature of a chat place. I'll raise the topics by way of the LinkedIn posts. Over to you whether you just want to read the posts and any comments, or say your bit by way of comment.

At the moment the comments are open. If necessary I'll moderate them, but I would prefer to not have to do that, That means we are are all going to have to be sensitive and respectful types!

Let's see what flows.

Cheers,
Tony

How to Blow Yourself Up at a Nonprofit
Joining a local nonprofit can help you build business, but proceed with caution.
By Bryce Sanders | June 20, 2019 at 04:25 PM
 
You believe community involvement can lead to business. You’ve joined a small local nonprofit in your area. It’s prestigious. It has a noble mission. It’s run almost exclusively be volunteers. They even invited you to join the board.
These people are generally polite. They won’t vote you out, boo or throw rotten vegetables. Instead, they can exclude you or work around you. Here’s what not to do
1. Take over. You realize they are nice people, but haven’t a clue how to raise money or run a business. You tell them. You try to force through changes.
Outcome: They freeze you out.
Why: The Old Guard may not be good at running an organization efficiently, but they are masters at getting rid of someone they don’t like.
Instead: Look and listen. Identify relationships in place. Get close to one of the Old Guard leaders. Ask questions. Make suggestions. Try to get support for your ideas before you voice them publicly.
2. Volunteer, then never follow though. You join committees. You don’t show up. People think you are all talk and no action.
Outcome: They assume you joined to get some nonprofit experience onto your resume. They marginalize you, not taking you seriously.
Why: You’ve demonstrated you don’t follow through.
Instead: Pick one project you’ve carefully thought through. Bring it to a successful conclusion. Build your reputation.
3. Prospect every board member. You ask each one “I would like to go over your finances sometime. What time is good for you?”
Outcome: They look at you funny. No one wants to have lunch or socialize.
Why: They think the only reason you joined is to get business. You are marginalized.
Instead: Tactfully ask the board member who got you involved: “I would like to raise my professional visibility. What do you suggest?”
4. Talk about your clients by name. “You want to do business with me. Everyone else does. I just did a great job for Charlie. Ask him.”
Outcome: They will not become clients. Ever.
Why: You violated client confidentiality.
Instead: “I can’t disclose or talk about my clients. However, the rule doesn’t work both ways. Clients are certainly allowed to talk about their advisor. We hope they do! If you ask around in town, you can probably get some feedback about me.”
5. Drink to excess. Free booze! What could be better? No, I am not slurring my words.
Outcome: He will not be my advisor. Ever.
Why: Some people assume a person who doesn’t know their own capacity and drinks too much is exercising poor judgment. They assume this carries over into their professional life.
Instead: “I’m just having one. I’m driving tonight.”
6. Assume business will come to you. You join. You attend the occasional event. You keep to yourself. No business comes. You think: “This social prospecting thing is a big bust.”
Outcome: When members of the group need a product or service, they don’t think of you in that context.
Why: Everyone needs to know Who you are, What you do and Why you are good. You aren’t making the effort.
Instead: “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Bryce. So, what’s your connection to the organization?”
7. Be a cheapskate. “Thanks for inviting me out. It’s my turn to pick up a round? Sorry, I’ve got to go. Catch me next time.”
Outcome: People avoid you or think negatively. You are out for what you can get.
Why: If the world were divided into givers and takers, these philanthropic folks (givers) see you as a taker.
Instead: “Thank for including me. Let me buy the first round. Oh, we don’t do it that way, we just split the bill at the end? That’s fine by me.”
8. Not show up for meetings. You join, but you don’t attend the group’s monthly meetings or support scheduled events.
Outcome: People don’t accept you into the group, because you are never there.
Why: They assume you only want to claim you are an active member.
Instead: “That was a good event. I’m hungry. Want to join me for a bite to eat before heading home? I hear that new Italian place is pretty great.”
Yes, it may be true. Many people in the organization do business with each other. The business flows through a shared commitment to the mission of the organization. They see a kindred spirit. People do business with people they like. These same people are wary of people who join, then appear to put their own interests first.

Open the Wall Street Journal on any given day, and you are likely to find at least one story about how technology is disrupting yet another industry, and the pressures companies face to innovate. And yet, for board members of companies around the world, technology and innovation don’t make the top three on their list of concerns.
That’s the surprising finding in a new survey of boards of directors conducted by Harvard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and doctoral student Yo-Jud Cheng. “The concerns that ranked at the top for them were things like the regulatory environment and attracting top talent,” says Cheng. “I don’t want to discount the day-to-day concerns board members deal with, but they don’t seem to match up with the critical issues we see covered in the popular press.”
The researchers wrote up their findings in a Harvard Business Review article, Innovation Should Be a Top Priority for Boards. So Why Isn’t It? In their survey of some 5,000 board members around the world, only 30 percent ranked innovation in their top three concerns, and only 21 percent ranked technology trends—making these issues fifth and seventh respectively.
Even more telling was when the researchers asked board members what activities they thought their boards were good at. Technology and innovation ranked 17th and 18th, with only 42 percent of board members listing their handling of those issues above average—far below the proportion ranking of activities such as compliance, financial planning, and staying current on the company, all of which scored above 60 percent.
"I don’t want to discount the day-to-day concerns board members deal with, but they don’t seem to match-up with the critical issues we see covered in the popular press.”“Not only do board members not think of innovation and technology at the top of their lists, but it’s also not something that they do well,” concludes Groysberg, Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration. The two findings, adds Cheng, “go hand in hand. If they don’t see innovation as a strategic imperative, they won’t be investing the time or recruiting people to improve those processes.”
The researchers conducted the survey over nine months between October 2015 and June 2016, in partnership with the membership organization WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation, then led by Susan Stautberg; leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart, directed by Julie Hembrock Daum; and independent researcher and management consultant Deborah Bell. The team worked for over a year before that to identify board members from more than 60 countries, in industries including consumer staples, energy and utilities, finance, health care, information technology, and telecommunications.
Inside the mind of a director“It’s rare to get such a comprehensive look into what board members are thinking, due to the difficulties in accessing such high-level individuals,” says Groysberg. “There has not been nearly as much research on board directors as there has been on CEOs and managers,” he says. Boards are an essential factor in whether companies do well.
“There are many examples of companies that had great strategies but were completely disrupted by other firms,” Groysberg says. “You can look at CEOs’ and managers’ roles in that, but you also have to ask whether the board was asking the right questions or looking at the right factors to be innovative.”
He blames a lack of diversity on corporate boards for sometimes impeding their ability to be innovative. “Their backgrounds are often very homogeneous, and this is not really positioning boards to think outside of the box,” Groysberg says.
Recent research has backed that up, says Cheng. “So many directors are recruited through social networks and informal channels,” she says. “Directors tend to recruit people similar to themselves, and our survey results suggest that many boards are not proactively evaluating potential gaps in their knowledge or addressing their shortcomings.”
In addition, Groysberg and Cheng’s survey found that age can be a factor in keeping up with new technology. Among older directors, 39 percent admitted that keeping up with technology was one of the top three areas where they struggled, compared to 27 percent of younger directors.
A focus on innovation also seems to be lacking in specific industries. Board members in the fields of health care, IT, and telecommunications were more likely to consider innovation a top strategic challenge—not surprising given the disruptions in those fields. But other industries scored more dismally in this area; for example, only 13 percent of directors in energy and utilities ranked innovation to be of top importance.
Groysberg finds that complacency disturbing.
“With the surge in renewable energy and the use of things like drones [for monitoring energy production], how could you possibly not think your industry is going to be disrupted?” he asks. In fact, with the rapid rate of societal and technological change today, no industry is immune from disruption. “Just ask all of the companies that woke up to find that they were now competing with Amazon.”
Reversing the trendWhat should boards do to improve their focus on innovation? Making that strategic change starts with a frank analysis of the skills and expertise that may be lacking among directors.
“Too much emphasis is put on industry knowledge or expertise,” Groysberg says, “but if your company is going to be disrupted, that may very well come from a player from outside your industry.”
Having a diverse board, both demographically in terms of gender, racial background, and age—but also regarding diversity of perspective—can help inject a range of ideas into debates that can be used to formulate questions and strategic directives for management.
Those conversations can’t happen if boards aren’t making time for them, however. “There can be a tendency for longer-term discussions about innovation, technology, and strategy to be squeezed out by more immediate, short-term issues,” says Cheng. Their survey showed, however, that those companies that routinely took a longer-term view did better on innovation overall. “It’s necessary for boards to carve out and protect time on the agenda for these long-range discussions.”
That analysis can then filter down to the hiring and recruiting process when it comes time for the board to pick the right CEO to lead the company. Groysberg and Cheng point to the example of Cisco, the subject of a recent Harvard Business School case study they wrote with case researcher Annelena Lobb. After a period of intense reflection, Cisco’s board determined that they would need a more innovative mindset to compete in a rapidly changing industry, and leapfrogged over the company’s two presidents to name the head of sales its new CEO.
“When they thought about what the company would look like in five to 10 years and what skills they needed to compete, they decided to skip a generation” in selecting a new CEO, Groysberg says. Cisco minimized the disruption by setting up a rigorous and transparent process laying out what the board thought the company would need to compete, and then inviting each candidate to present their vision and demonstrate the set of the skills required to make it happen.
Finally, if boards are going to focus on what it takes to be innovative in the long term, then they will need to be able to devote the resources necessary to do so. Too often, Groysberg says, boards can stifle innovation by worrying too much about short-term returns and thwarting management initiatives that require an outlay of investment. “Boards can encourage innovation, but they can kill innovation as well,” he says.
If they are to compete long term, board members may need to be able to take short-term hits in revenue and be able to explain to analysts the reason they are doing so. In all of these ways, Groysberg and Cheng say, boards can ensure that they are focused on the long-term innovation of a company and preparing for any signs of disruption on the horizon.
Rather than leaving it solely up to management to ensure a company retains its competitive edge, a proactive board can help to provide the guidance needed for the future.

My takeout:
This is a handy article focusing on the impact your non-profit is having and whether you actually measure that impact and feature it in your strategic leadership. If you did so, would you find, as the study does, that there is a quite a gap between what you might achieve and what you are actually achieving?  
The study identifies  that the best nonprofits are able to master seven elements that constitute what the authors call “strategic leadership”:
mission, strategy, impact evaluation, insight and courage, organization and talent, funding, and board governance.
These elements work together as a system. An organization that exhibits strong performance in all seven areas becomes an “engine of impact” and is capable of achieving real impact on a scale that is adequate to current needs.
According to their analysis, more than 80 percent of nonprofits struggle in one or more of these areas. How do you rank?Filling Essential Gaps in Nonprofit Leadership

New research shows that most nonprofits fall short in important areas of performance. But stakeholders who operate at a systems level can do a lot to help solve this problem.
By William F. Meehan III & Kim Starkey Jonker Nov. 8, 2017

For nonprofits to leverage the potential of new technologies and new ideas—from mobile connectivity to randomized evaluation—everyone with a stake in the sector must work to narrow the distance between what nonprofit organizations might achieve and what they are actually achieving today.

However, our findings from a recent survey we conducted—which drew responses from more than 3,000 stakeholders in the sector, including executives, staff members, and board members at nonprofits and foundations—cast a revealing, and in some cases troubling, light on crucial performance gaps that exist in the sector.
After spending several decades researching, advising, and helping lead nonprofits, we have come to believe that the best nonprofits are able to master seven elements that constitute what we call “strategic leadership”: mission, strategy, impact evaluation, insight and courage, organization and talent, funding, and board governance. These elements work together as a system. An organization that exhibits strong performance in all seven areas becomes an “engine of impact” and is capable of achieving real impact on a scale that is adequate to current needs.
Unfortunately our survey showed that a large majority of organizations fail to meet this standard. Looking at responses from nonprofit executives, staff members, and board members, we found that very few of them represent organizations that excel in all seven areas of strategic leadership. According to our analysis, more than 80 percent of nonprofits struggle in one or more of these areas. What’s more, in three of these areas—board governance, funding, and impact evaluation—at least half of all nonprofit respondents indicated that their organization struggles to perform effectively. (Those curious about how their own organization fares in its practice of strategic leadership can use our Engine of Impact Diagnostic tool. It’s based on the same analytical framework we used to develop the survey and takes just 10 to 15 minutes.)

But while individual nonprofits have work to do, they alone can’t accomplish the sector-wide transformation that is so necessary. Much of the work of building more effective organizations needs to start, in particular, with the board members who oversee nonprofits and with the donors who sustain them financially. Consider the three areas of performance in which nonprofits are most likely to struggle. In each, influential players within the nonprofit sector can and must help nonprofits develop strategic leadership capabilities.
Board Governance: Demand High EngagementBetter governance at a board level starts with board members themselves. They need to approach their work for a nonprofit as a matter not of passive service but of active participation in the direction of that organization. (They call it a “board of directors” for a reason.) While reviewing budgets, project proposals, and strategic plans will always be a core function of a nonprofit board, those who sit on a board should demand opportunities to engage directly with “the thing itself”—the frontline activities that their organization pursues. Chris Bischof, cofounder and principal of Eastside College Preparatory School in East Palo Alto, Calif., cites this aspect of his organization as an important factor in its success. “At least half of the board members are on campus daily or weekly, tutoring or teaching after-school classes to kids or engaging in other ways. This involvement causes the board to really have their pulse on the school,” he says.
Equally important, if not more so, board members must take seriously their duty to monitor the work of their organization’s executive director or CEO. Hiring, evaluating, and setting compensation for that leader is their primary responsibility. Kathy Spahn, president and CEO of Helen Keller International (HKI), notes that the HKI board established a framework for evaluation at the very beginning of her tenure at the organization. “In advance of my start date, the board and I developed and agreed upon not only a clear and specific job description, but also mutually agreed objectives and deliverables for my first three, six, and twelve months,” Spahn explains. “Consequently, there were no surprises or speed bumps, and I was able to hit the ground running.” Nonprofit executives, for their part, need to shun the temptation to treat their board as a rubber stamp. The title of an article we wrote in 2014 says it all: “A Better Board Will Make You Better.”

Donors also have a decisive role to play in boosting the quality of board governance. In evaluating organizations to support, they should scrutinize the work of board members just as rigorously as they do the work of executive directors and other top staff members. And they should avoid funding nonprofits in which board members seem passive or disengaged, or in which the board displays a lax approach to overseeing executive performance.
Funding: Put a Premium on ImpactOf course the most direct way donors can improve nonprofit performance is through their funding efforts. Donors, we believe, must stop thinking small and start giving big. And they need to give with the aim of supporting nonprofits in a way and on a scale that will empower those organizations to achieve meaningful impact.
One impediment to effective funding is that donors are too ready to fund projects that will bring recognition—a new hospital wing, a campus building, a research center that will bear their family name. They focus too little on funding projects in which their money can do the most good. We don’t question donors’ understandable wish to earn a bit of glory for their giving. But we urge them to tap into the deeper source of satisfaction that comes with providing fuel to organizations with a proven record of making a difference in people’s lives.

We can think of no better model for donors than that of Tom White, whose largely unsung efforts to support Partners in Health (PIH) show what it means to give for impact rather than recognition. Today, PIH is an esteemed nonprofit that provides medical services to some of the world’s poorest people. It became a global health powerhouse in part because of the visionary work of its founders, including Paul Farmer, Jim Kim (who is now president of the World Bank), and Ophelia Dahl—and thanks to White, who helped launch the organization in the 1980s with a $1 million donation. White owned and ran the Boston construction company J.F. White Contracting Co., which built the Charles River Dam and Foxboro Stadium, and in PIH he saw a worthy place to direct the fruits of his success.
White continued to support PIH by systematically giving the organization roughly $50 million over a period of more than 25 years. To support PIH projects, he sold his company and many of his assets. He and his wife moved into progressively smaller houses so that they could make stretch gifts to the organization. Then, after taking steps to provide for his family financially, he set out to be as close to penniless as possible when he died. White made his last gift to PIH two weeks before his death, at the age of 90. It was for $5,000; that was all he had left.
Not all donors can be as selflessly or quietly generous as White. But his story shows that impact can be just as inspiring to philanthropists as recognition. White seized an opportunity to help fuel a high-impact organization. If more donors adopt this approach, then more nonprofits like Partners in Health will be able to flourish.

Impact Evaluation: Insist on It—and Pay for ItA chronic problem in the nonprofit sector is that very few people in the sector dispute the value of impact evaluation, yet all too few people are willing to spend money on it. That needs to change, and donors are clearly in the best position to affect the way organizations prioritize and fund efforts to evaluate nonprofit work.
For nonprofit executives, the incentives to pursue rigorous impact evaluation are mixed, at best. Many of them prefer to remain opaque about the effectiveness of their programs, because clarity on that front exposes them to unwelcome pressure for accountability. Many boards of directors, moreover, tolerate their executives’ avoidant behavior. Reinforcing this pattern is the indifference that many funders exhibit toward impact evaluation. In our survey, we asked nonprofit executives and staff members how many of their donors demand some kind of performance measurement. Only 42 percent of respondents indicated that more than half of their donors fall into that category. And crucially, a much smaller share of nonprofit respondents (11 percent) indicated that more than half of their donors are willing to pay for such evaluation work.
Yet donors are the systemically pivotal player in this area. They have the leverage to demand evaluation of the programs they fund. They also have an incentive to do so: Why should they invest their capital in a nonprofit whose work lacks empirical support? Most important, they have the means to finance evaluation efforts. If donors routinely decline to pay for impact evaluation, then improving this aspect of nonprofit performance will remain something of a lost cause. If they embrace this responsibility, however, then the nonprofit sector can end the state of gridlock in which nonprofits merely pretend to have impact and donors pretend to believe them.
Pratham, an organization that works to improve learning outcomes among children in India, has incorporated rigorous evaluation—including the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs)—into its work for many years. To do so, it has relied on support from donors that recognize the value of funding not just educational programs but also efforts to measure program results. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, for instance, paid for an evaluation of Pratham’s implementation of its Read India program in the states of Bihar and Uttarakhand. In fact, the foundation committed to supporting evaluation work on all of the programs it funded under its Quality Education in Developing Countries (QEDC) initiative. Other funders, including the Skoll Foundation, the US Agency for International Development, and the World Bank, have also supported Pratham’s evaluation projects.
According to Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham, collaborating with funders that are willing to pay for impact evaluation works best when the two parties approach this work in the spirit of experimentation. “None of [these funders] have the view that there is a ‘silver bullet.’ This is a long-run game. From Hewlett especially, we always got the feeling that we are all learning together. Never was the evaluation for the sake of evaluation,” Banerji says.
Before nonprofit organizations can pursue impact at scale over the long term, they must earn the right to scale. They can do so only by demonstrating their ability to excel in the essential components of strategic leadership. The best nonprofits are ones that absorb this principle. But even the best nonprofits need help in living up to it.

A Good Question Can be a Game ChangerPosted by Anne Wallestad, President & CEO, BoardSource on Feb 9, 2017
One of my favorite questions to ask boards is “If your organization were founded today, what would it look like?” I love it because it leads to the board asking some other very important questions — questions that get to the heart of the organization’s existence:

• What’s our organization’s core purpose? What need or challenge are we seeking to address?
• What’s the best way — the ideal combination of programs and tactics — to achieve that purpose?
• What expertise, resources, and capacities do we need to achieve the ideal scale and reach?

I love this question because it helps leaders think broadly. It opens up new ways of thinking about their organization’s impact and work, and it creates a compelling entry point to planning and strategy.
When leaders are free from their current operating reality, they can think big about what their organization is all about. They can imagine what could — or should — be, without burden or obligation to what currently is.
And that’s the perfect starting point to another important conversation — a conversation about strategic partnerships. An open discussion about whether a partnership with another organization could unlock powerful new ways to achieve impact. An exploration of the many ways to build on complementary organizational strengths — including through structures such as joint programming, administrative consolidation, and mergers.
Talking about ways to partner with other organizations shouldn’t be scary. It should be exciting. It should be about finding creative ways to accomplish big things.
It should be about the power of possibility.
In the boardroom, just as in life, a good question can be a game changer. So ask yourself:

• What new realities might be possible for my organization with expanded resources and capacity?
• What might we be able to accomplish by working in partnership with an organization that has complementary strengths?
• What role can I play in helping to make that happen?

The English language is a joy to behold, but a beast to learn. In addition to its numerous irregularities, there's a plethora of phrases and idioms that seem to make no sense to non-native speakers.
Here are the origin stories of common phrases you might not have known; explaining these is a fun ways to connect with new people--say, at a networking event. You end up looking smart but entertaining at the same time:
1. To turn a blind eyeMeaning: To know something is true but refuse to acknowledge it
Origin: Horatio Nelson was a skilled British maritime officer who was also blind in one eye. In 1801, he led a naval attack in the Battle of Copenhagen. When his partner in the battle, Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, communicated via flags that he needed to retreat, Nelson didn't want to acknowledge it. So he turned to a fellow officer, lifted the telescope to his blind eye, and said he "didn't see any signal."
He won the battle.
2. To spill the beansMeaning: To reveal a secret
Origin: This is likely drawn from the ancient Greek process of voting, where votes were cast by placing one of two different colored beans in a vase (usually a white bean meant yes, and a black/brown one meant no). 
If someone literally spilled the beans, the election results would be revealed.
3. Straight from the horse's mouthMeaning: Getting info directly from the source
Origin: In the 1900s, savvy horse buyers could determine a horse's age by looking at its teeth. It was the most reliable way to know whether you were getting a good deal or not (as opposed to speaking with the seller).
4. To pull someone's legMeaning: To tease someone (often by lying in a joking fashion)
Origin: This has somewhat of a darker origin; thieves used to pull the legs of victims to trip them before robbing them.
5. Feeling under the weatherMeaning: To feel sick
Origin: When a sailor felt ill he often went belowdecks, and specifically under the bow (the front of the boat). The idea was to gain protection from the bad weather above (rain, lightning, swells, etc.). Thus a sick sailor was described as being "under the weather."
6. Hands downMeaning: Definitely; absolutely
Origin: In the 1800s, horse racing was an intensely popular sport. When a jockey won "hands down" it meant he was so far ahead he was able to remove his hands from the reins and still win.
7. To fly off the handleMeaning: To become enraged suddenly
Origin: In the 1800s, some poorly-made axes would literally themselves detach from handles, sending them flying. This would be not only dangerous, but very annoying for the person wielding it.
8. Sleep tightMeaning: Sleep well
Origin: This likely stems from the days when mattresses were supported by ropes. Telling someone to sleep tight meant you hoped the ropes were pulled tight, which would mean a well-supported bed for them overnight.
9. To get someone's goatMeaning: To annoy someone
Origin: Another from the world of horse racing: jockeys and others who cared for horses often put goats in stables to help horses relax and feel a sense of companionship (horses get lonely just like humans).
Competitors would remove the goat from the stables of rivals in the hopes of spooking the horse and having it lose the race.
10. To pull out all the stopsMeaning: To do everything in your power to make something succeed
Origin: The musical instrument the organ, often played in churches, has "stops" within it. Stops are knobs near the keyboard, which the player uses to select different sounds or timbres. When you pull out all the stops, it allows the organ to play to its fullest capacity (as loudly as possible).
11. Armed to the teethMeaning: to be completely ready for battle
Origin: Ever seen a pirate movie where they're carrying a gun between their teeth? When you've got weapons everywhere you can fit them on your person, the only other place to put the last one is between your teeth. 
12. To kick the bucketMeaning: Someone has died 
Origin: Another dark one: when people used to hang themselves, they'd use a bucket to get up high enough to tie the rope over a rafter; when they were ready, they'd kick the bucket to begin the strangulation process.
Interestingly, this phrase has equivalents in other languages. In Ukranian it's "to cut the oak" (that you'll need for the coffin); in German, it's "to look at radishes from below" (like our "six feet under"); and in Swedish, it's "to take the sign down" (i.e. you'd hung out a shingle for your business on the main street, and now you'd take the sign down).
13. It's raining cats and dogsMeaning: To rain very hard
This is my personal favorite. In Britain in the 1500s, houses had thatched roofs, which was really just a bunch of straw piled up on itself (no wood below). When it was cold and gray--which is at least half the year in the UK--animals like cats and small dogs would huddle in the straw of the roofs for warmth. 
When it rained particularly hard, some of these animals would slip off the straw and wash into the gutters. Thus people started to say, "It's raining cats and dogs!" to refer to particularly heavy rain.

A startup board is an unusual ecosystem where unstructured roles, personal chemistry, differing degrees of knowledge and expertise combine in a mission-critical function. Admittedly, all the real work of building a company happens outside the boardroom. But at the same time, a good board can be a force multiplier for management — and a dysfunctional board can add friction for management or even destroy an otherwise good company. (For a broader description of start-up board roles and practices, please see the following posts by Fred Wilson and Brad Feld.)
A lot has been written on the role of investor directors (where lead investors typically negotiate board positions as part of their investment), but much less is said about the role played by the independent director in venture-backed startups. Everything an investor director says is loaded — because it comes with money. That’s why having an independent director as a “lower stakes” sounding board and coach can give a founder/CEO an extra tool as they go through their journey. The best independent directors know when to be guardrails, when to push for extra performance, and when to function as empathetic listeners.
Independent directors are often brought in for their domain expertise and company-building skills. Sometimes they’re invited in just to complement the functional skills of the founder. Before a startup begins to generate significant revenue, it’s common to find small boards that are only comprised of founders and investor directors. But space for “Independents” (as independent directors are sometimes called) is often included as early as the closing of the Series A. Before making a commitment to one another, always test personal AND group chemistry because a director is likely to be sitting on the board for at least a three year term.
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing how great independent board directors can make a difference. Here are the attributes they display:

1. Real knowledge of the Business. Independent directors often go through “boot camp” to get up to speed on the company. They come in because of some unique skill, knowledge or expertise — but it is hard to bring that unique skill without context that requires getting to know the business, the market, and the people. They are “disadvantaged” relative to investor directors in that they don’t join the board after a full investment and due diligence process so the cultivation of broad industry and product knowledge comes by reading, thinking and talking about the company and its market. I recommend meeting each member of the management team to understand their perspectives, priorities and challenges. Scott Petry on the Return Path board is a great example; as the founder/CEO of Postini, he came to the job with deep knowledge of the email ecosystem but stays current by engaging directly with the market.
2. Strategic Insight. Both into company strategy and the approaches that have worked and failed over the years. An independent might have acquired this attribute from running businesses or sitting on other boards. They also might have cultivated this ability by reading about the development of some of the world’s great companies and applying in practice the strategic theories of leading business thinkers. I recall a strategy conversation with Dave Kellogg, an Independent Director on the board at Alation, in response to a strategy conversation. He exclaimed, “This is a perfect opportunity for the three plus one encapsulation strategy,” and directed us to read a blog he posted on the subject.
3. Operational Insight. That involves “doing the work” of not only reading the board book, but shaping what analyses get done and deciding on the presentation of the material. Directors need to understand what’s working and what’s not. Some of the best questions may have to wait for offline data collection and further analysis. While many independents are experienced startup CEOs, boards should also look for candidates who possess “go-to” areas of functional expertise — especially when they complement the founding team of a startup. Since most founding teams are product-oriented, many startups are looking for specific market expertise in sales, growth/marketing and business development. Karen Richardson, an amazing sales leader who now focuses on board work, was an incredible resource for Chandran Sankaran at Closed Loop Solutions, especially when it came to her understanding of sales strategy, hiring and planning.
4. Hustle. In all the critical ways. While directors aren’t full-time employees, it is still critical to “add value” in tangible ways. They should be ready to help in sourcing and closing great hires or finding prospective customers. They should also be willing to offer assistance in sourcing, negotiating and building business partnerships. Robin Josephs on the QuinStreet board is a great example of someone who does the work that keeps a board — and, therefore, a company — going strong. Whether it’s chairing the compensation committee or serving on the (never fun) audit committee.
5. Perspective. A director’s job is to help see the forest through the trees. The best directors help keep the company focused on a 12–18 month time horizon. They seek to make sure that product plans, sales and marketing plans, growth and burn rates all fit together. Matt Glickman did this at Guardian Analytics as an active chairman and helped keep the company moving ahead during a CEO transition. Many directors concentrate on sales and finance but Matt also played a pivotal part helping the company focus on product roadmap and delivery.
6. Silence and Restraint. Sadly, this needs to be said: Directors need to know what they know — and know what they don’t know. Directors aren’t there to run the company — and management level decisions should be left to management. A Director who comes across as a know-it-all will be less persuasive and less effective. Keeping focus on the most important issues is essential and any Director who drags the company into the weeds repeatedly is wasting precious time. It is up to the CEO and/or Board Chair to set the agenda because as Scott Weiss from Ironport once said, “We’ll eat what you feed us.” Getting the balance of asking good questions and letting the group find its flow can be a delicate balance — but one that is important to get right.
7. Empathy. Building a company is an extraordinarily challenging task for management — especially for the CEO. Board meetings are where truth gets spoken, which can be a primary source of CEO angst. Threading the needle between setting inspirationally high expectations for performance and providing guardrails can be really challenging. Often, investor directors who are significant shareholders point out things that aren’t going according to plan or don’t appear to make sense. A great independent that listens well and builds trust with the CEO can have conversations that are not “loaded” by coming from the source of capital and can create a safe place for founders to get input.

The right independent can add a great deal to the company and to the board. But it is important to understand what skills the board is missing and find the personal and team chemistry that lets them bring their best.

August 20, 2019; Delaware Business Times and Inside Indiana Business
There are organizations devoted to it. There are conferences focusing on it. There are endless numbers of experts on the Internet opining about it. But when it comes to nonprofit boards and board development, what do we actually mean?
As an example, an opinion piece by Jeb Banner for Inside Indiana Business discusses the benefits of board engagement. He says the single most accurate predictor of the success of a nonprofit organization is the active engagement of the board and its individual directors. He goes on to describe some of the symptoms of engaged and not-so-engaged board. Basically, it boils down to whether or not the board is “leaning in.”
He goes on to make three suggestions about how to make a board lean in. One is to have good meetings, with meaningful elements of the agenda front-loaded. Another is to be explicit about volunteer and fund development expectations. The third is to have regular evaluations of board effectiveness as a whole, and for the individual directors. But then what? What do these things help the board to actually do?
Another example comes from a piece by Madison Gerdts for the Delaware Business Times, who writes more specifically about the role of treasurer of the board. Gerdts describes the role of treasurer as being quite important for the successful and effective nonprofit organization. It is a role that requires some very specific expertise in addition to the passion for mission and desire to serve that every board director should have.
Gerdts shares 10 ideas that she would recommend for a new treasurer. These range from touching base with your predecessor to making sure you know how the IRS form 990 works. She describes the role as having significant decision-making responsibility and serving as something of a liaison between the financial management of the nonprofit and the board. But then what? What do these things actually help the treasurer of the board do?
Banner has founded two nonprofits, has served on several boards, and is the CEO of a nonprofit called Boardable, an organization that makes a software program designed to help manage boards more effectively. We might assume he knows whereof he speaks. Looking at the Boardable website, we find the phrase, “Empower your nonprofit board with the right tools so you can focus on leading, not just managing.” So, can we assume he believes the role of the board is to lead? Lead where, and who is following?
Gerdts is a CPA candidate working at Whisman Giordano, a firm that has a number of nonprofits clients. Gerdts specializes in nonprofit work so, again, we can assume that she has experience with treasurers. In her description of the role of treasurer, she uses that term—“leadership”—encouraging the treasurer to embrace that role. She suggests that the treasurer should feel good about the work they are doing to help forward the important mission of the organization.
Leadership and leading are nebulous concepts in so many ways and particularly so when applied to a nonprofit board. Writers like Gerdts and Banner seem well-intentioned, but they are not really addressing the important questions that face nonprofits and their boards. They are speaking banalities, essentially, targeted to a reader who is new to the nonprofit world. What they write does not take into consideration how differently boards engage based on the culture, age, mission, size, and location of the organization. Boards will have different roles and different ways of engaging based on each of those variables, let alone the skills that are already on the staff and do not need to be duplicated by a board director.
So, it’s good to remember the ideas these “experts” keep forwarding, but let us also take them with a grain of salt, knowing that at least partially the articles are often intended to help sell the writer’s service or product.—Rob Meiksins

Imagine this. Your gala is three weeks away, and even accounting for last-minute registrations, you are well below target. You review the list of table captains. The poorest performers? Five of your board members. Three of them aren’t even hosting a table.
You fight the urge to rant and, instead, create a short video highlighting everything the board needs to know to get the word out and increase attendance. You share it with the full board. Separately you ask the board chair to hit ‘reply all’ with an encouraging message to other trustees to recruit attendees.
Four hours later, no responses. The problem: You have a bad board. You’re not alone.
A few years back, Stanford University joined forces with BoardSource and GuideStar to survey nonprofits’ board members about their boards. The picture is startling and probably reflects some serious underreporting by participants:
Almost half (48 percent) do not believe that their fellow board members are very engaged in their work, based on the time they dedicate to their organization and their reliability in fulfilling their obligations.
What’s most surprising is the degree to which executive directors and staff leaders are in denial about the root of board problems. You might blame your board chair for not holding members accountable. You might blame the nominations committee for recruiting members who don’t care. You’re right to be angry, but you’re wrong about why.
The real problem? It’s you. Across the sector, executive directors and key leaders are not holding up their end of the bargain. It is your job — and the job of every staff member at your organization — to be in the business of stoking your board’s passion, the "pilot light."
Anyone responsible for board recruitment should identify new members who, first and foremost, are in love with the organization. Skills can be learned, but passion has to be in the DNA. Recruitment efforts must give first priority to candidates whose "pilot light" for your cause is bright. When a board member has that kind of passion, you can feel it.
You won’t hit 100 percent all the time, but most of your board members should arrive with their lights shining. Staff leaders tend to think these bright lights just magically stay bright. They don’t.
"Dim bulb" boards govern poorly; they care less. Board members check their phones at meetings while staff members are sharing successes. They focus on cutting expenses when revenue projections are off. They are responsible for more nonprofit leaders returning calls to recruiters than they will ever know.
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How to Reignite Your Board MembersTo engage trustees, I use a simple equation when coaching executive directors, which creates a more productive partnership and equips trustees with the enthusiasm and tools they need to become real ambassadors:
The formula: Inform + Engage + Enrich = Ignite
Most board members will tell you that they are informed. But as a nonprofit leader you need to take two other critical steps to create vocal and visible ambassadors for your cause ― the kind of ambassadors whom those you serve need and deserve.
For example, last year I worked with an equine-therapy program that offers the benefit of horseback riding to kids on the autism spectrum. I gave the executive director some tough love: I told her that her fingerprints were all over her disengaged board.
Here’s how we used the formula.
Inform. The information has to "stick" ― no recitation of your board report. Instead, a PowerPoint presentation with only 13 slides, each with a single image of the horses — the real stars of the organization. On every slide, the name of the horse and its "magic power," such as one horse that is uniquely attuned to anxiety whose healing power helped transform one child. Not only are those board members informed, but now they have personal and powerful stories to tell.
Engage. The topic must tap into what board members bring to the boardroom. For example: The equine-therapy group is considering purchasing an adjacent property. The executive director wants to serve more kids, and the conversation about purchasing the property is big and strategic. So, the director framed the pros and cons to the board, asking questions like these:

• "Am I thinking about this the right way?"
• "If we don’t buy it, who might be our neighbor, and how would that affect us?"
• "If this property weren’t going on the market, would we be looking to expand?"
• "What other questions should we be asking?"
• "What additional information do we need?"

A boardroom of people with the right skills and expertise will add a lot of value to the discussion. And then, when you move forward, the trustees share ownership of the decision, which always leads to more-enthusiastic fundraising.
Enrich. Board members are leaders. Leaders have context and know trends, but they need data. For example, if you are serving kids on the autism spectrum, you need to tell trustees the extent of the problem, expected future trends, and whether the population is growing.
The executive director of the equine-therapy organization has a large network of contacts. Working with her board chair, she extended one board meeting by 30 minutes to allow time for an expert to give a 20-minute presentation with 10 minutes of Q and A. The expert also joined a social gathering afterward. Very few board members left early.
Think of your last two, three board meetings: Did you give your board a bite of any of these three elements of the formula? Were you intentional about how to use a meeting to accomplish any of these things?

“I hate my board.”
I hear it all the time, from board sharers, Executive Directors. You hate your board, really? I get it. You’re a board chair. No one will even volunteer for a committee, and you feel like you’re doing it all on yourself. Or you’re an Executive Director and you just sent out this crazy, great, program success email, and you get crickets. I get it. But I need to be honest, I’m kind of over folks complaining about their boards.
Far too often it feels like sport. When I was an Executive Director I belonged to this ED Group, and I really recommend them. Sharing best practices, giving moral support, and yes there was always time for a little bit of board bashing. I’d like us to encourage a reality check. Your board didn’t come from another planet. You built it. So reality check number one, the board you have is the board you build.
Check two, endless complaining about your board, it’s kind of not that helpful. Not to you, not to them. Reality check three, I am convinced you have better things to complain about. You don’t really hate your board. The phrase is code, it’s code for, “oh I need more resources to do this good work. I feel like this conversation is about centerpieces.” It’s time for you to take responsibility for the board you built.
It’s time for you to do something to change the dynamic. Here are three ideas, recruit with intention and strategy, wait for the right person. Help me I need board members, is neither intentional nor strategic. Number two, be sure your board members are set up to succeed. Give them information, have them practice their story telling. Make sure they understand what success looks like for their board service. Number three, feed them, and not as my friend Vu Le jokes, with hummus. I’m talking about board meetings that are engaging, enriching and in which board members understand what incredible work your organization does.
You will always have board members who are not up to the task. But look at all of them as individuals, and I’m sure you’re going to see that some of them are gems. Committed and passionate folks. Okay, I bet there are at least 10 people you know who complain about their boards. Let’s share this video with them. Let’s give them this reality check. Because if you assume you’re going to get crickets, you know what you get? You get crickets.
But if you assume you have champions around your board table, guess what? They’ll deliver for you. Your board members will be happy, you will be happy and your organization will be on the express train to thriving. Try showing your board a little love. I bet it goes a long way.