Getting to Strategic and Generative Governance: Beginning the Journey with Your Board

Getting to Strategic and Generative Governance:  Beginning the Journey with Your Board

We live in a time of profound change. Faced with shrinking budgets, rapidly evolving community needs, a hostile political climate, and ever more intense public scrutiny, nonprofits are finding that it’s not enough to simply update a mission statement or patch over a list of outdated goals. In order to meet the challenges of building long-term financial sustainability, weighing strategic restructuring options, planning for leadership succession, and more, boards need to think and act differently.

Some boards are already making the transition by applying the lessons of the book, Governance as Leadership. This leadership model challenges boards to engage in three modes of thinking and decision-making: fiduciary, strategic and generative. While all three are important, the third, generative thinking, is receiving the most attention. Thinking further into the future about new possibilities through generative mode thinking, can lay the groundwork for board leaders to develop breakthrough strategies that will assure increased mission impact and sustainable growth in the future.

It has been my experience that once nonprofit leaders begin to grasp the importance - and necessity - of strategic and generative governance, they want to know more about it AND they want to know HOW to do it. They ask: what tools and activities will help us begin to govern strategically and generatively?

Interested in Enhancing The Capacity of Your Board for Strategic and Generative Governance?

We offer a number of training and consulting programs to help you do this. These offerings will provide a practical introduction to strategic and generative thinking and offer concrete ways to apply this approach in your board. As a result of these programs, you will:

·         Gain knowledge of the Governance As Leadership framework with emphasis on strategic and generative mode thinking;

·         Grasp the implications of strategic and generative thinking for the design and conduct of future board, committee and staff meetings;

·         Leave with a toolkit of activities, methods, and practices for incorporating strategic and generative thinking into the ongoing work of your board and committee structure;

·         Develop an initial action plan to apply these tools in the coming year.

For more information, contact us at FrankMartinelli@createthefuture.com. 

Check out my latest LinkedIn blog post on: Tapping The Connection between Scenario Thinking & Mental Models

In preparation for a recent Board Of Directors Retreat, we engaged in two activities that have been shown to increase the capacity of board leaders for strategic and generative thinking. The results of these activities fueled the move to increased strategic and generative governance on the part of this board and others with whom we have worked. To learn more, check out my latest LinkedIn blog post on Getting to Strategic and Generative Governance: Tapping The Connection between Scenario Thinking & Mental Models at http://tinyurl.com/qa7hgwl

Boards that think, plan and act strategically

So how do we nurture board leadership that will think, plan and act strategically? By creating a long-range plan for the development of such board leaders. In contrast to the typical short-term recruitment process that focuses narrowly on filling anticipated nonprofit board vacancies for the current year only, boards need a long-range plan for developing future-focused leadership. Such a long-term leadership development plan centers on the following questions: Who will be serving on and leading the board over the next three years? What is our plan to scout board leadership talent for the future? How will we go about fostering and developing future board leadership? Key elements of this approach include:
· Replace the nominations committee with a board development committee. This committee will use the key questions listed above to devise an ongoing process that includes prospecting, recruiting, selecting, orienting and training, and performance assessment of board directors.
· Link board development to your strategic plan. Identify the new skills, knowledge, personal contacts, and other attributes future board directors will need to possess in order for the board to do its part in advancing the strategic plan. Based on this analysis, develop targeted board recruiting priorities.
· Develop a written board director job description that reflects the future needs and expectations of the board.
· Direct the executive committee to design board meeting agendas that focus attention on the ultimate ends of the organization and monitoring progress in implementing the strategic plan.
· Conduct an annual evaluation of the board that focuses, in part, on how well the board is maintaining a strategic focus.
· Develop a just-in-time board orientation program to speed up the learning curve for new board directors so that they can hit the ground running in their first meeting. Again, it is important to link this advance program of orientation and training to the strategic plan.