Where board and staff collide
Clear division of labor is one way to hold the middle ground between rubber-stamping and micromanaging boards.
“Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame.”
—G.K. Chesterton
One of the most perilous intersections in a nonprofit arts organization is the place where board and staff responsibilities converge. Boards are supposed to govern. Staff is supposed to execute. But the blurry and entangled lines between the two are an accident waiting to happen.
Case in point are two extremes of board dysfunction: rubber stamping and micromanaging. A rubber stamping board accepts what the staff recommends without question or concern (aka, not doing their job). A micromanaging board questions and meddles in everything (aka, doing the staff’s job). Both boards are trampling over the rules and roles that make vibrant nonprofits work.
“Policy Governance” author John Carver confronts this issue by drawing an indelible line between board and staff (more specifically between the board and its “only employee,” the CEO). He insists that boards should determine the ends of the enterprise, leaving staff as much freedom as possible to determine the means (Carver 2006).
Among the board’s primary roles, according to Carver, is to define an ends policy that answers three questions for the enterprise (Carver and Carver 2006):
What results, changes, or benefits should come about?
For which specified recipients, beneficiaries, or other targeted groups?
At what cost or relative priority for the various benefits or various beneficiaries?
In other words, “what good is to be done for which people at what cost?”
With these ends defined by the board, the staff (again, in Carver’s view, exclusively through the CEO or ED) determines the means by which those ends are accomplished. The board keeps its mitts off the means.
But what about the many places where ends and means intersect? For example, what if the ends include or require full compliance with laws and regulations? What if they include or require risk-tolerant financial resources and reliable revenue that exceeds expense? What if they include or require equitable and inclusive treatment of staff, audiences, and beneficiaries? How can a board avoid these sandtraps without telling the staff what to do?
According to Carver, the board avoids the sandtraps by blocking them off, not by directing the staff’s action around them. In other words, the board sets executive limitations that “place off-limits those means that would be unacceptable even if they work” (Carver and Carver 2006). Instead of directing the CEO to treat the staff a certain way, for example, the board describes what’s out of bounds.1 Instead of defining acceptable action in financial planning, the board describes what’s unacceptable.2
By defining executive limitations rather than executive action, Carver suggests that a board and CEO can “find the optimal balance between empowerment and rigorous accountability.” No rubber stamping. No micromanaging. Both CEO and board staying in their lane.
Critics of the Carver approach suggest that it’s too inflexible and burdensome for already overstretched governing boards, and that there is no clear distinction between ends and means in the real world (Hough 2002). Both make productive points. However, rigid and context-free rules are often the best way to move from novice to proficiency, even when they aren’t sufficient to mastery.
Boards, CEOs, and staff who have a solid foundation of trust and respect can improvise a bit more than those who don’t. And evidence suggests that high-performing boards ultimately find a more nuanced and unique approach to the work (Hiland 2018). For boards and CEOs who are still on that journey, Carver’s approach offers a clear path to better practice.
As John Coltrane phrased that journey: “Master your instrument, master the music, and then forget all that and just play.”
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Governance
Governance involves structuring, sustaining, and overseeing the organization's purposes, resources, and goals (often through boards or trustees).
Framework of the Week: Levels of Mastery
The Dreyfus brothers' “Five-Stage Model of Adult Skill Acquisition” describes milestones on the journey from novice to expert. These *Levels of Mastery* can provide a useful lens on learning for yourself and your team.
Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash
Sources
Carver, John. Boards That Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Nonprofit and Public Organizations. 3rd edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2006.
Carver, John, and Miriam Mayhew Carver. Reinventing Your Board: A Step-by-Step Guide to Implementing Policy Governance. Rev. ed., 2nd ed. San Francisco: John Wiley, 2006.
Hiland, Mary L. “Effective Board Chair-Executive Director Relationships: Not About Roles!” Nonprofit Quarterly, August 29, 2018.
Hough, Alan. “The Policy Governance Model: A Critical Examination.” Centre of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies – Queensland University of Technology, July 2022.
Example from Carver and Carver (2006): “…the CEO may not cause or allow conditions that are unfair, undignified, disorganized, or unclear.”
Example from Carver and Carver (2006): “…the CEO shall not cause or allow the development of financial jeopardy or material deviation of actual expenditures from board priorities established in Ends policies.”