I was appointed Chair to a school with 1,500 students which was losing $500,000 a year, with a book deficiency to fund teacher entitlements, poor staff morale, and complaints from students, teachers, and parents alike.
Board meetings were dysfunctional. Once a month starting at 7.30 pm complete with wine and food, and annoying chit chat largely about nothing. 12 people made for slow cumbersome board meetings. The people on the board were great.
We had all the personality types; the John Wayne alpha types would storm into the board room like pushing aside the doors of the local town saloon you see in the classic Hollywood westerns. These guys would never read board papers but almost always had something to say. We had the quiet ones like Lilly Onakuramara from Pitch Perfect who would agree with the majority views. Then the diligent, positive, and useful contributors, down on the detail, an amazing investment of personal time. I can’t forget the fellow who reminded me of the Dude from The Big Lebowski, casually bringing an overall calmness to the discussion. A good mix.
I soon found myself as acting chair after the incumbent Chair, who was a judge, was appointed as a Chief Justice. Within 6 months I appointed a neutral to observe my board meetings. We surveyed each board member about board meetings, their roles, contributions, processes, and documents and sought views from the individual board members about my performance as acting chair.
I also asked the board to reflect on the type of board we wanted to be. Did we want to be an accountable board where we just tick the boxes, make sure we meet the numbers, make a profit, and get good academic results or do we want to be a strategic board, spending our time discussing what next? In a complex environment such as a school where the keeper of knowledge was turned on its head thanks to Google, getting to what’s next was critical.
We decided to be a strategic board. To do this we needed sub-committees to do some of the grunt work, to tick those boxes and report to the board on any emerging issues. I then tapped people on the shoulder to see if they really wanted a seat at the table. Within 12 months, the board numbers were reduced to 7, and meetings occurred once every two months starting at 6 pm (no wine nor food – must get home) with sub-committees working in between board meetings. Meetings took 90 minutes where we spent 60 minutes discussing expert reports on what’s next. In 2010, for example, this board considered how we would manage a pandemic!
Every 3 years we undertook an independently assessed cultural audit of the whole school, parents, students, teachers, and the governance models. The use of outside neutrals was fundamental to the board’s success. Complaints were often, but escalation of disputes were rare when we understood the cultural shifts from primary to secondary to graduating school classes. Teachers were tapped on the shoulder too. We introduced an annual school forum open to all parents about what the school was about. The first forum resulted in about 50 people. Over time the forum built to a key school event.
Now, not all small businesses have these resources, but not all small businesses are as complex as a school. A simple 1 on 1 neutral to attend to business owners and work through issues is not expensive and would be a powerful tool.
