Strengthening Governance Practices

Whether a small not-for-profit, a hospital, or a partnership, governance is a big job.  More accurately, governance is many big jobs: understanding the charter...setting vision, mission and direction...hiring, evaluating and preparing for the CEO's departure...creating policy...overseeing policy implementation...ensuring accountability to appropriate standards, employees, and the community.

Helping board members perform well requires the right processes.  These processes include member prospecting and selection, orientation and ongoing education, visioning, and performance monitoring.  Yet, every board is different.  So the processes and tools for strengthening governance must be customized for and with the individual board, while respecting the busy schedules of board members.

Key Benefits of Strengthening Governance

Our Capabilities

Richard Bogue and Affiliates helps organizations' leadership teams examine their governance challenges and create opportunities for improvement.  Click on the topics below to learn about specific services.

Governance Models, Trends and Evolution

Building capacity for making judgments is a key to governance excellence.  Examining alternative models of governance, how governance has evolved, and where governance appears to be heading can be an excellent component of a board retreat or an educational session for board members and leadership teams.  Considering one's role in the larger context of Governing Models, Trends and Evolution can be especially useful for newer board members and for boards that are undergoing change.

Visioning Workshop

Every board should examine the vision and mission periodically.  This helps the board focus on its role, and allows the board to concentrate on policies and procedures that help management to move the mission forward.  A Visioning Workshop should engage the board members.  Planning a Visioning Workshop starts with understanding whether the leadership is really ready to re-examine the vision and mission at this time.  It is not always the right time for this kind of workshop.  A Visioning Workshop involves phone interviews with key leaders, review of core documents, development and review of draft and final workshop designs, and a half-day, highly interactive, semi-structured workshop.

Ongoing Board Education

Ongoing education is the path to effective governance.  A board education plan systematically engages the board in the areas they need to understand.  A good plan also integrates orientation, coordinates with performance monitoring and strategic planning, and takes place mostly within the time constraints of regular board meetings.  Richard Bogue and Affiliates designs an approach to Ongoing Board Education that will work for your board.  We can also help implement the approach you adopt by identifying resources, helping prepare board members to assume leadership in their educational programming, and delivering parts of the education. (Click Board Education Calendar to see an example overview)

Board Self Assessment

One of the board's main functions is to ensure performance that aligns with the mission.  The Number One board job to ensure performance of the organization or partnership is to ensure their own performance.  While most boards conduct some kind of self assessment, assessments can often be improved by engaging the board more actively and using better measurement methods.  Adult learners prefer active engagement.  Better measurement enables objectivity and accuracy.  Board Self Assessment begins with a review of how the board has been assessing its performance.  Phone interviews with the CEO and board chair ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of the old assessment methods, as well as values to be examined with the new method.  Typically, a questionnaire is completed by all board members and then analyzed in advance of a half- or full-day workshop that includes revisiting the core functions of governance.

Strategy Retreat

As board members usually serve on a part-time basis, preparing them to be strong participants in strategy and direction setting can be the most daunting task of striving toward excellence.  A one and one-half to two-day intensive, Strategy Retreat can help you meet this challenge.  Often, the best starting place is to clarify the board's touchstones.  Early in the retreat, we set the stage by clarifying how the values, vision, mission and key practices of the board align with each other now.  (Click Aligning Board Practices with Purposes to see an example based on national data).   It is often useful to review market and environmental factors early in the retreat as well.  We help you identify and contract specialists to make presentations on more technical topics of current strategic interest, such as an emerging line of business, or legal issues surrounding impending changes.

(Click Barnstorming for Rural Boards to learn about a cost-effective approach rural organizations).

Evaluation of Governance Functions

When an organization or partnership is new or undergoing rapid change, an Evaluation of Governance Functions can accelerate and improve emerging governance models.  An Evaluation of Governance Functions takes place in the context of the vision and mission, the experiences and expectations of the leadership, as well as the needs of the future entity.  An Evaluation involves a review of documentation,  interviews with board members and other leaders, and analyses comparing the documentation and the interviews against better governance practices and plans for the future entity.  An Evaluation of Governance Functions resolves after a presentation and report on the findings and recommendations for new governance models and key processes to support this model effectively.  Among organizations for which Richard Bogue and Affiliates have provided this service is the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Panamá. (Click Ministry of Health to see a Spanish-language newspaper article resulting from this service)

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