They are called to board meetings and the “quorum” is rarely reached .
They ask the same things every time.
They make suggestions that serve little purpose and almost always distract from the essential work.
In which a large part of the session is spent informing them about “what we are doing”.
Or they only discuss issues related to the lack of money.
In which there is rarely a full quorum, or if they attend, there will always be two or three who have to leave before the end.
In short, you as a boss are left with the feeling that the board is a waste of time and that it exists only to comply with the law. This happens a lot, no doubt, but it doesn't have to be that way. Let's say that it shouldn't be that way; beyond what the law requires, boards of directors play a very important role. The board:
Broaden the executive team's horizon by providing different points of view and a australia business email list longer-term vision.
They are a check, if not a real exam, of the team's plans.
They represent the final authority, and the one who, by not being so involved in day-to-day matters, can be more objective and serene.
This is the type of board that should be targeted. But what can you do as a manager to have such a board? Obviously, you did not choose the members of your board and you do not even have much control over the course of the meetings.
Below we give you some recommendations to achieve, from your position as a manager, improvements in the functioning of the board. But be careful that these tips can also be seen as a series of characteristics that the boards of directors of social organizations must have in order to be good:
1. That each director has a specific responsibility
Of course, you as a boss don't decide something like that, but you may have ways of requesting it or hinting at it; it may be because there is a specific topic that should be dealt with by only a few people, or because someone needs to be visited and it would be better if only a few people went; in short, you will know when and how to do it, but believe us, specific responsibilities greatly increase the individual commitment of managers. Responsibility is not diluted but concentrated on those in charge of a topic.
On the other hand, remind them whenever you can that the boards of directors of social organizations are not “by” but “for.” What does this mean? That unlike the commercial world where you are a director because you are a shareholder or because the owner appoints you, in the social world (you are a director) to fulfill a certain role in the institution.
And what could that role be? We say that the boards have to be TARAR (a mnemonic word). This means that there has to be a director of the:
Technical
Administrative
Resources Audit ( Evaluation )
Public
Relations
Is there a certain distribution of tasks within your organization's board? Can you outline something like that?
There is one caveat to be made regarding these specialty directors. And that is that they must not supplant or threaten the work of the manager. Having a particular responsibility does not mean that the ultimate person responsible for the organization is not the manager or the executive director. The board may help make plans for the specialty, recommend people, even carry out very specific tasks on the subject, but it must be very careful to recognize the ultimate authority of the manager. Anything that undermines hierarchical clarity is very dangerous.
2. There is one particular task: the audit (assessment) director.
Indeed, if we could point to a specialty of the board that requires us to dive into the very essence of the mission, that would be the task of evaluation. It is convenient for a director to undertake this task and of course it will involve him a lot. And, as this responsibility is defined as transitory and rotating, it turns out to be a very good way of involving the entire board after a while.
3. Create a directory information system
Boards of directors must have a set of regular information in which they are informed about the progress of the institution. In the commercial world, this set consists of sales for the month, production, collections, etc. In a social organization, what should the board of directors know about the day-to-day running of the organization?