Helping Your Board to Be More Effective

By Virgil R. Carter

Governance by an organization’s volunteer boards and leadership is the key to organizational success.  Effective governance helps make an organization successful and enjoyable.  Less than effective governance may make an organization dysfunctional and a true pain.  Thus, we all seek effective governance by our boards and volunteer leaders.  But where to start to help ensure and sustain effective governance? 

A critical starting point is to recognize what a vital resource time is. Recruiting new board members is challenging because volunteers are concerned about drains on their time. Governing well is critical because a board’s time together is limited. Thus, how you and your board use time really matters.

Boards that are forward-looking, focused on strategy, provide the maximum effective (and enjoyable) leadership when time is limited.  Strategic boards spend the majority of their time identifying broadly important outcomes, setting priorities, and monitoring the way the staff and other volunteers implement major initiatives.

Here are five steps volunteers may take for an effective, productive, and rewarding board.

1.      Define success. Establish and practice a shared definition of organizational success. No matter how well an organization may perform in any 12-month period, if it can’t perform effectively year in and year out, it can’t really be called a successful organization. Thus, success has a lot to do with consistency and continuity over time.

2.      Understand your core assets. Every organization has core assets.  Typically they include:  1) knowledge, 2) community, and 3) advocacy. These are the resources for an organization’s accomplishment of its mission.  Volunteers and staff must be strategically focused on the welfare of assets that cause members and customers to value the organization.

3.      Think the unthinkable. Ours is a rapidly changing world in which we face unprecedented competition. To remain both up-to-date and competitive, focus on and prepare for the unthinkable—both opportunities and threats. Effective boards consider the one thing that would most revolutionize their organization and the one thing that would most jeopardize it. Thereafter, boards focus strategically to realize the opportunity and head off the threat.

4.      Set priorities and monitor them. Resources are always finite—there are never enough. So develop strategic priorities and communicate what is truly important. To maintain a strategic perspective, boards must think in terms of what is important, not how to achieve results. The staff and others of the organization’s operational side are the ones to be held responsible for executing the action.  

5.      Establish a respectful staff partnership. The professional staff of an organization offer important resources—so important that it may be impossible for a board to be truly strategic without them. For example, staff members may have access to knowledge, contacts, and resources that may be unknown to a board. The staff is uniquely positioned to help develop and implement a definition of organizational success that’s built upon consistent performance, year after year.

Effective boards are both productive and enjoyable where it matters most:  achieving the organization’s mission year after year.

Helping Boards and Staff to do Better

By Virgil R. Carter

The majority of non-profit organizations are governed and lead by a board of volunteer leaders.  While their names may differ by organization—board of directors, governors, trustees, etc.—they all share the common responsibility for the achievement of the purpose and mission of their respective organization.  Thus, ensuring that the organization has a clear and achievable strategy is one of the most important functions and the ultimate measure of the effective use of organizational resources.  Yet, many boards remain mired in familiar challenges.

These familiar challenges include:

·         Time (most boards are limited to a set number of scheduled meetings each year);

·         Focus on routine annual matters (receiving committee reports and minutes);

·         Lack of first-hand experience and knowledge with the overall organization (individual board members tend to have specialized interests and spend their time in these occupational niches);

·         Limited time of board service (board members tend to serve a relatively short period)

The challenge for most non-profit organizations is that they are often impacted by unpredictable economic volatility, which is less calendar driven and more a situation requiring frequent and regular interaction of a broader group of organization executives.  To be effective, boards must with work with staff in this environment, in a respectful and effective team setting, ensuring that strategy and operations are clearly linked and effectively implemented.

According to researchers Chinta Bhagat, Martin HIrt and Conor Kehoe, writing in “Tapping the Strategic Potential of Boards”, in a recent McKinsey Quarterly issue, there are three simple questions that board members and executives may ask themselves as they approach the development of strategy together:

·         Does the board understand their industry’s/profession’s dynamics well enough:  boards need time each year to more fully understand the structure and economics of the organization, as well as the ways in which the organization creates value

·         Has there been enough board-staff debate before a strategy is discussed:  board members should approach these discussions with an “owner’s mind-set”, with the goal of helping staff to broaden thinking by considering new, even unexpected, perspectives.  Staff’s role is to introduce key pieces of content—details of competitors, key external trends likely to affect the organization, specific strengths the organization can use for growth, etc.  The goal of the discussion is to develop a stronger, shared understanding of the skills and resources the organization has for producing strong performance, rather than merely moving with the tide.

·         Have the board and management discussed all strategic options and wrestled them to the ground:  Staff should formulate a robust set of strategic options, with an end state for each.  These can then be brought to the board for discussion and decision-making.

Having meaningful, high-quality conservations like these is a challenge, particularly if boards aren’t used to having them.  Success is often linked to the board chair’s ability to lead and facilitate discussion.  The goal should be for a participative, collaborative environment while maintaining a healthy energy, in which all can speak their thoughts without “score keeping”.  And the chair must neither monopolize the discussion nor fail to intervene strongly to redirect unproductive tangents.

Board-staff involvement and discussions introduces new voices and expertise to the debate and puts pressure on boards and staff alike to find the best answers, and how they can be implemented and measured.  Yet, when done well, this type of discussion and strategy is invaluable.  For the full member article, go to https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Governance/Boards/Tapping_the_strategic_potential_of_boards_3060

For Presentations, Half As Long is Twice As Good

By Virgil R. Carter

Leaders in non-profit organizations, as elsewhere in the business world, are expected to make frequent presentations on all sorts of subjects, in all sorts of settings.  It goes with the territory, right?  According to an article by Joey Asher, in Fast Company magazine, “most of business presentations stink.  Period.”  According to Asher, “(these presentations) are bloated PowerPoint-laden ramblings that ignore audience’s key concerns and fail to tell a simple story”.  Here are ways the author suggests to make your presentations the happy exceptions:

Half as long is twice as good:  Today’s attention spans are shorter than when Edward Everett, one of the nation’s great orators, spoke for two hours at Gettysburg.  The average contemporary YouTube video is just over four minutes, for example.  About the only place with audiences of any kind sit in one place for more than an hour is the movie theater.  Thus, presenters should “cut their presentations in half”.  Seven to ten minutes, before taking questions, is a good target.

Grab the audience like Spielberg:  We could all take a lesson in how to quickly grab the audience’s attention from Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Jaws.  It opens with a girl getting eaten by a shark.  The rest of the film is about resolving the problem of the shark!  Your presentations should start the same way.  Cut right to the “shark”, the key challenge that faces your listeners and your business.  That will grab their attention without wasting time.

Make the body of your presentation pass the $300,000 challenge:  Let’s say you’re about to give a presentation.  Before the presentation I offer you $300,000, saying you can have the money under one condition.  After your presentation, I will ask three people from the audience to repeat your key messages.  If all three can do it, you win the money.

If those are the conditions, you will limit your presentation to a few key messages and keep them short, repeating them many times.  Any good presentation should leave the audience with a few memorable messages.  So ask yourself, “What are the three things that my audience must remember?”

Leave lots of time for Q&A:  Q&A is duct tape for presentations.  It fixes almost everything.  Greater interactivity improves every presentation.  Want to simplify your topic for presentation?  Take the three questions that folks ask the most and put them on a slide.  Then answer them one at a time.  It will be a great presentation.

Minimize your slides:  Steve Jobs said, “People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”  Most good presentations need no more than five to ten slides.  Figure out how to focus your message on your audience’s key issues, tell your story quickly focusing on a few key points and take questions.  Lots of questions!

For the full article go to:   http://www.fastcompany.com/3004119/presentations-half-long-twice-good

Facing Burnout

By Virgil R. Carter 
Chief staff officers in nonprofit organizations are interface between an organization’s members, customers and staff.  Chief staff officers are always “on stage”, always being observed and often being evaluated by a host of volunteers and staff, each with varying perspectives and motives.  Sound familiar?  Year after year of this can easily bring a chief staff officer face to face with burnout.  Have you experienced burnout?  Do you know CEOs who have gone through burnout?  The continuous, never-ending burden of top leadership can wear anyone down.

Are there some ways to reduce or avoid burnout? 

A recent Internet article from LeaderPoint notes that while the weight of being in charge can overcome the most successful leaders, burnout is often a function of not delegating and working through others effectively.  Harvard Business Review blogger John Baldoni is quoted as stating that the “best way to overcome the drive than made (CEOs) successful in the first place—the relentless pursuit of perfection—is to shift focus from one’s own success to the success of the executive team.”

Here are some suggestions from the article to help avoid burnout:

--Lead through others:  Being a CEO widens the scope and increases the magnitude of the results to be achieved.  Assign others the significant outcomes so that the CEO is not the bottleneck, consumed with personal problem-solving.

--Knowing everything:  No CEO can do everything well.  Accepting that no one can possibly know everything allows one to ask more questions, learn more and allows the work to remain with those show should be doing it.

--Enabling others:  Motivating others is a challenge.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  Instead, focus on the work to be done, the desired outcome and assign these to key staff.  Big jobs with significant outcomes tend to motivate people.

The bottom line is about getting results, consistently over time.  It’s hard to do that without the support and assistance from others. One of the best ways for CEOs to achieve success is to drop their invincibility posture.  Successful leadership and successful organizations are not a solo act.

To read the article “Avoid Burnout by Focusing on Your Team”, by John Baldoni, go here:  http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/avoid_burnout_by_focusing_on_y.html#

Communications Planning

By Virgil R. Carter

How many of you have been ambushed in the communications trap?  I have and it’s often not very pretty.  For example, at a meeting of the respected Past President Committee, and esteemed member says, “This organization does a crappy job of communicating.  I never know what’s going on, except for my annual dues invoice!  What should I renew when this organization can’t communicate any better than that?”  Does this ring a bell?

Of course you have a beautiful 4-color monthly magazine, a wide variety of newsletters or a range of subject, you have a web site, a blog and monthly postings.  And you send emailed and snail mailed communications to members on a regular basis.  When you remind the speaker of this, the response is often “well, I never read any of that stuff”!  It would be funny if it wasn’t so true!

Communications are vitally important.  The challenge is that most associations have a wide range of audience segments.  These segments are interested in some messages (and media) and not others.  This is a case of “I want what I want when I want it (the way I want it).”  There is no simple, single solution for communications with diverse members and customers.  We are not all a size 6, living in one geographical area!

What to do?  One useful proactive tool is creation of an annual communications plan.  Conceived at the outset of each fiscal year, and modified as may be necessary during the year, the plan contains a small number of high priority messages for the year.  For example, the messages might focus on new technical information, strategic priorities, and/or association achievements which improve the value proposition for members and customers. 

A communications plan also includes a schedule of key events and appropriate media to reach desired audience segments during the year.  Your public relations staff can use the communications plan and schedule as the guide for creating messages, presentations and articles throughout the year for volunteer and staff leaders.

For an annual communications plan to work, it must have the understanding and support of senior volunteer leaders, senior executives and communications staff.  These are the folks who will be doing most of the communications during the year.  Volunteer and staff leaders must understand that their individual, personal messages are secondary to the consistent presentation of the important messages from the organization each year.   This is what makes for better, more effective communications which reaches more and more of your important members and customers.

Reaching your members and customers effectively is aided by repetition. Yes, I said repetition!  Repetition enables more audiences to become more aware of and understand important communications. Have you ever wondered why commercials are so repetitive?  One-time messages simply don’t have much impact.

  

If you want to improve your association’s communications, try working with your volunteer and staff leaders to create an annual communications plan, and update it every year.  And to ensure the plan’s effectiveness, consider an annual communications assessment process with members to see which messages are understood, which media may be more effective, and those that are not. 

An annual communications plan and a communications assessment process are some of the surest ways to reach members and customers—even the members who are challenging to reach and may not read! 

Emerging Markets City by City

By Virgil R. Carter

Many organizations considering a global growth strategy consider a national or regional view when formulating their growth strategy.  But another, alternative strategy is taking shape—focus on fast-growing urban areas!

A tremendous wave of urbanization is fueling growth across the emerging world.  It’s said that this urbanization trend will create an over four-billion-strong global “consumer class” by 2025, up from one billion in 1990.  Nearly two billion will be in emerging market cities.  Few organizational leaders, however, focus on the importance of cities when considering global growth strategies.  Researchers Richard Dobbs, Jaana Remes and Fabian Achaer, writing in a recent McKinsey Quarterly issue comment that “fewer than one in five executives makes location decision at the city (rather than country) level”.

“Our research indicates that 440 emerging-market cities…will account for close to half of expected global GDP growth between 2010 and 2025”, the author write.  “Crafting and implementing strategies that emphasize such cities will require new attention from senior leaders, new organizational structures that take account of urban rather than just regional or national markets, and potentially difficult choices about which activities to scale back elsewhere to free up resources for new thrusts”, they say. 

In addition to supporting geographic priority-setting, a city-level view can help companies sharpen their marketing strategies.  For example, non-profit organizations in the math, science and engineering fields would want to study demographics to find those cities where universities are located, where there is a growing research and manufacturing base and where young professionals in these disciplines reside.  These demographics, combined with a study of household incomes and spending patterns will help organizations to sharpen their global strategies.

As significant global economic activity shifts to developing nations, non-profit organizations should be aware of the growth dynamic taking place in cities.  Giving an organization’s growth strategy a global dimension may enable non-profits to be positioned to allocate resources more effectively and to more readily seize global opportunities.  For the full member edition article, go to https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/Globalization/Unlocking_the_potential_of_emerging-market_cities_3015

Boss or Leader?

By Virgil R. Carter

For existing and aspiring CEOs, it’s always good to ask, “Do you aspire to be a boss or a leader”?  What’s the difference?  It’s an important question.

In a recent article, author Terry Starbucker took a look at this question.  He notes that “in a fast paced, high stress business environment, it can be all too easy sometimes for leaders to slip into what I call “Boss Man” mode.”  In other words, stop being a leader and start acting like a boss.  

A boss tends to be someone at the top of the hierarchal, command-and-control type of organizational structure.  And Starbucker says, “A boss supervises a staff, the staff report to the boss like it says on the organizational chart, and, of course, the staff does exactly what the boss says, because, of course, “he’s the boss!”

The downside of “being a boss” is that “a leader, at any level, can become a not-so-pleasant person that creates a not-so-pleasant work environment, and brings progress to a screeching halt”, according to the author.  So how can you tell what type of person you are, whether you are a boss or a leader?

Starbucker identifies “the 15 most significant differences between Boss Man syndrome and real leadership, as follows:

• A boss only sees things in black and white, while the leader also sees the grey
• A boss likes to tell, while the leader prefers to teach
• A boss likes being on a pedestal, above the fray, while the leader likes to be among those they lead
• A boss gets lost in the details, while the leader keeps the big picture
• A boss rules by fear, while the leader inspires with trust
• A boss displays great hubris, while the leader shows quiet humility
• A boss likes to talk, while the leader prefers to listen
• A boss wants to dictate, while the leader would rather collaborate
• A boss outlines the “What”, while the leader also always explains the “Why”
• A boss thinks first about profit, while the leader thinks first about people
• A boss gets lost in process, while the leader gets absorbed in performance
• A boss is a disabler, while the leader is an enabler
• A boss criticizes, while the leader coaches
• A boss manages to an end, while the leader serves for a purpose
• A boss demotivates with impassiveness, while a leader inspires with caring & empathy

The author concludes by suggesting, “Keep this list handy, or better yet, post it on your personal bulletin board as you continue on your leadership journey, so you can recognize any Boss Man tendencies and stop them in their tracks.

Be a leader, not a boss!