Musings on Too Much Fiduciary Discussion at Board Meetings
An invitation to Babs’ good-time big thinking revival meetings.
If you have experienced any board coaching or governance workshops with me you know that I think that fiduciary responsibility and duty of care are a hoot. Throw in transparency and accountability and I’m ready to hang streamers and book a band.
For this post I am going to restrain myself and have just a quick musing on if perhaps fiduciary discussions are hijacking too much board time and may even be making board meetings dull. (Watch for an upcoming “Dear Babs” where a reader asks “why won’t anyone join our board?”).
If you sit on, or work for a board, you know that fulfilling fiduciary responsibility is a guiding principle of the board’s work. You may also know that it makes for very busy meetings where strategic discussions might be squished in and generative discussions rarely make the agenda. See this quick take on the three different modes (fiduciary, strategic, and generative) of governance. Heads up - unlike highly participatory governance, this useful read is a bit boring.
Side note. If your board is already having generative discussions stick around and see if there isn’t something in this post that might shed a fresh light on or strengthen your practice.
It’s frustrating. Everyone knows that a stellar organization is led by folks who think big and share ideas, and yet board meetings can become focused on financial and operational reports with maybe a line or two giving a nod to strategic outcomes. Boards need time to discuss impact, changes, ideas, big issues, emerging priorities, aspirations, and how they do their work (you know my thoughts on psychological safety*), particularly in building a trust-based relationship with the CEO / executive director. These are the generative discussions that fuel a team and organizational culture of innovation, flexibility, resiliency, and the ability to meet challenges and opportunities.
Nobody (well almost nobody) wants to have a board meeting drag on while folks express their opinions on the world**. But you and I both know that if your board is ready for awesomeness, carving out space within the current meeting time frame for relevant and engaging discussions that take the meeting from oh-hum-business-as-usual to transformative is not only possible, it is desirable.
As the Cat in the Hat once famously said, “if you're in a receptive state of mind I'll recapitulate”. Financial and operational reports are important; they let us know if we are on track with resources and what we said we would do. Do not sacrifice this fiduciary and strategic oversight responsibility for your hot take on Babs’ good-time big thinking revival meetings. Everything an effective board does is built on fiduciary responsibility and duty of care. Generative discussions build on and inform, not replace, the fiduciary and strategic oversight of the board.
If your board is ready for generative discussions, consider the following:
1. What items in our current agenda would be better reviewed by a committee that would then bring thoughtful and timely recommendations to the whole board?
2. What items in our current agenda can we put in the consent agenda?
3. What items in our current agenda are, or could be, delegated to the operational management of the executive director or CEO and have no place at the board table?
And then ask:
1. What is happening in our community and in the bigger world around us that may impact our organization? How do we want to talk about this?
2. What are our expectations and rules for generative discussions? Like any good party, we need to behave and know when to go home.
3. How will these discussions be useful to our fiduciary responsibility and strategic oversight? If they aren’t, then we don’t have them.
Let the good, as in effective, engaging, and responsible, times roll.
Babs
p.s. I will be away for a bit, but expect to see the newsletter return to its weekly schedule on August 6th.
Photo from Unsplash in collaboration with Getty Images
You can find out more about me and why and how I do my work as a coach and facilitator at the Courageous Leaders Project.
*I have recently received a shiny gold Master Certificate in Mental Health and Psychological Safety at Work. It means a lot to me.
**You are all using timed agendas right? Timed agendas don’t mean that speakers get rudely cut off or that times aren’t adjusted to reflect the need for additional information and the board’s duty of care. Timed agendas are part of planning a smooth meeting and provide an estimate of how long something should take. They are approved and respected by the board and deftly handled by a skilled chair who knows how to move the business along and when and how to be flexible for the sake of effective governance.