Leadership transitions should not mean an end, and they should never be hard. Quite the opposite in fact: they should be a wellspring of evergreen beginnings. After 13 years as a trustee, with the last five years serving as a board chairman, this year I transitioned to the most coveted role of any board service: immediate past chair. The following are a few passing thoughts on governance, plus a book-end challenge for those trustees and boards in a leadership transition.
Mission Is Mission-Critical: Clarify your mission statement so it can be repeated in passing conversation. Board service is about surrendering to the team (more on this below), and the team must have a galvanizing North Star. Grounding generative, fiduciary, and strategic board discussions in your mission statement snaps a chalk line upon which a board can build. Without it, you invite chaos. Humans are insufferably human, and there will be times of emotion and tension. The ultimate baseline for all key decisions is the guiding question, “Is this aligned with our mission?”
Make Governance Easy: Build your governance architecture for the roles and responsibilities, not the personalities and desires. Re-examine your board’s committee structure to make sure it expedites your mission.
Your nominating committee should keep a multi-year list of potential candidates who can fill the roles your board needs and then weave the service cycles. Well-functioning committees should never be echo chambers: diversity of opinion makes good committee policy, even if it involves some serious sausage-making. Hit a wall? Go back to the first bullet.
Process, Then Substance: Like an amoeba, your community’s substantive issues change daily, mostly in the carpool line, so boards must have a clear process for dealing with major issues dropped on the campus. Otherwise, you will always be at the whim of some proxy third party in policy-making if you are mired in the firefight of facts.
We had a self-effacing, ongoing meme during my board tenure: There is no interest like self-interest. Trustees must be independent from the fray in order to exercise your duties of care and loyalty to the institution you serve. Those are your legal duties, by the way. It’s hard when you also wear the hat of a parent, alum, or concessions volunteer. For this, the business judgment rule is your friend. If you are a trustee and do not know what the business judgment rule is, then contact SAIS immediately.
Surrender to the Team. Be loyal to the chain of command and ruthlessly separate governance from operations. The board has one employee: the head of school. The head of school manages all other employees at the institution. As a trustee, you should never, ever, and I mean never, sabotage that chain of command. Let everyone do their jobs.
Now, for a little hyperbole: 127% of parent issues brought to trustees are parenting issues, not policy issues. In all seriousness, most issues are indeed operational issues for the school staff to handle, not trustee policy-making matters. While trustees should always be accessible, they should be proficient traffic cops at directing any operational issues to the head of school who can then delegate to the appropriate staff member. If it is a policy issue, then a trustee should take it immediately to the board chair and the appropriate committee chair.
This may sound like I am in the weeds, but I promise you that following this rubric will save hundreds of emails and hours of time you can never get back.
Succession Is a Formula: For board chairs, select qualified committee chairs, and then make this their very first assignment: pick your successor. The next board chair should come from your executive committee, which should be comprised of proven committee chairs. If you build the architecture for roles and responsibilities (see above), engage your wider community in non-trustee roles to qualify them, and keep an ongoing multi-year list of candidates in your nominating committee, then succession is easy and predictable.
I mentioned a book-ended challenge on transitions, and here is the spoiler: Boards are always in transition.
Now, for the hard part. As my board tenure draws to a close, it does not mean I will love the school I served any less tomorrow. My volunteer role changes, and I have to give the trustee role back for someone else to rise and make the place better than I could imagine.
For the transition, though, I’m asking myself and encourage other transitioning board members to consider this as well: “How does your school or board capture the institutional knowledge that leaves your board when a trustee cycles out?”