[Community-Discuss] Evaluating Performance of the Board

[Owen DeLong]

[offlist because it may be repetitive to what I posted already]

You still missed Randy’s point and I may not have been enough clearer to get it across.

Measuring the success or likely success of the goal is a measurement that doesn’t
tell you anything about the quality of the board.

The board is not responsible for achieving the goal, they are responsible for selecting
the correct goal.

If you achieve the wrong goal, then your CEO and Staff have done very well, but the board
has failed.

If you fail to achieve the correct goal, then it’s possible that the CEO and staff have
failed while the board is actually very good. However, in this case, the board has the
responsibility to address the issues with the CEO and staff, so the board still failed,
but indirectly.

If you achieve the correct goal, then the board _AND_ the organization are functioning well.

So to measure the quality of the board, we need to measure the quality of the goals that are
selected for the organization and not the success or failure of meeting those goals.

Owen

> On Dec 28, 2015, at 23:42 , Chevalier du Borg <virtual.borg at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 2015-12-29 10:43 GMT+04:00 Randy Bush <randy at psg.com <mailto:randy at psg.com>>:
>>>>> I also like to know, what are the thing used to measure whether a
>>>>> board being effective?
>>> i am interested in the simple weekly rituals board engages in to makes
>>> sure that priority will be attained and/or if it should be adapted.
>>> 
>>> very rough example:
>>> 
>>> priority: i want to publish a book by 2017
>>> 
>>> a good indicator (predictor?) can be: how many words do i force myself
>>> to write every day/week
>>> 
>>> logic being if someone is consistent in writing a 500 word every day,
>>> they are more likely to achieve the goal of writing enough for a book
>> 
>> your analogy confuses the board with the executives and staff.  a board
>> sets, monitors, and approves policy, not makes widgets.
>> 
> 
> :-) ... analogies can do that when out of the writers head. the lesson
> i want to bring out from the analogy is that:
> 
> for any entity that has a goal, there is something (action, outputs
> etc) that happen in small enough time increments that can predict
> likelihood of success at meeting the set goal. (i think this are also
> called leading indicators)
> 
> i think your clarification just give me the word i'm looking for: monitor
> 
> That policy that board sets and approves, the effect can only be know
> after 1 or 2 years. Now we can't wait for 2 years only to find the
> policy was bad, therefore the need for monitoring at intervals is what
> tell the board and us that the policy is having desired effect or not.
> 
> Thank to your input, I just realise that those things that board
> monitors is what I am looking for. Making these public on a website so
> the community can see will address the concern and improve confidence
> in the board.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Borg le Chevalier
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> "Common sense is what tells us the world is flat"
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