Although it may be implied,
it is certainly not clear how a board might go about improving its
governance once it has implemented Policy Governance. There are two
areas to consider as a board approaches improving its governance. The
first is to compare what the board has said in its policies and what
actually happens, and the second area is opportunities for improvement.
Most of the Policy
Governance literature makes a strong case for board to conduct a
self-evaluation on a regular basis. That recommendation goes as far as
providing feedback every meeting by creating something like a
board-observer role. This is an effective way to increase a
board's awareness of when they are out of compliance with their own
policies. However, this doesn't address what the board wants to do
about being out of compliance. There are two choices. The first
is to redraft the policies so that they match what the board does. The
other is to change the board's behavior to match the policies. For
many compliance issues, the awareness of the behavior is enough.
However, for those behaviors that continue even after they have been pointed
out usually have other factors that work together, making them difficult to
change. Having Policies and desiring to follow them isn't necessarily
enough to create complete compliance. To create the necessary changes
boards will have to become more systemic in their analysis and solution
development. They will have to look for the causes to the resistance
to change.
Policy Governance does a good job of providing a rationale for a board to
hold itself accountable to its own policies, but says little about more
general improvement. Some of this is attributable to Policy Governance
itself. The delegation process of Policy Governance
leaves what is unspoken in
governance
to
the board chair.
If a board has not spoken to more general improvement efforts in governance,
it is left to the discretion of the chair. The other piece is that
Policy Governance tends to be non-prescriptive. It leaves the choice
of pursuing general improvement efforts up to a board's discretion based on
that board' values. This leaves two opportunities to move it that
direction, but it takes a decision to do so because general improvement
is not inherently part of Policy Governance. In fairness, it is not
part of pragmatic governance either, and probably even less likely to be so.
To move ahead with improvement, a board or a chair will have to be
intentional about the effort.
Some suggestions, taken from the
Policy Governance Board
Excellence Assessment Manual and the
Assessment Board
Guide, for areas to seek improvement are:
- Relationship to Owners
- Ends Development and
Review
- Board Planning and
Self-Management
- Executive Relationship
- Board Level
Relationships
Further assessment of a
board's approach in each of these areas should provide a list of
opportunities for improvement, which a board can use to continue it's
growth in governance excellence. Return
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