How do you Develop Strategic Boards?

With the publication of the College of the Future reports, the White Paper, and now the Skills & Education Bill receiving Royal Assent, it is quite apparent that there will be many and significant strategic decisions to be made on the purpose, place, and governance of post-16 institutions.

As a result of increasing recognition of the role colleges and other institutions are going to play in the post-16 education landscape, conventional and ceremonial Boards of previous times are necessarily being supplanted by increasingly active Boards that are asking more of senior leaders and taking a closer interest in their institution’s business and its stakeholders. Some CEO’s may find this shift worrying or indeed alarming, but if managed correctly, such a shift can have significant benefits to overall long-term institutional performance. We look at some considerations below that could facilitate the building of trust and confidence required to enable a shift that leads to more effective strategic decision-making.

Build individual relationships

As part of any review of governance (internal or external) that may be undertaken, time should be spent talking to senior leaders about their relationship with board members. Senior leaders can give important insights into if and how they leverage the talent in the boardroom – the individual skills, knowledge, and experience of each board member, to improve their own decision-making, reflecting and reviewing how and when has an interaction with a board member caused them to positively alter their way of thinking or working in regard to tasks they undertake or projects they are managing. Most commonly, CEOs and senior leaders interact with board members at board meetings in a formal manner. Yet by actively and selectively seeking board members’ input through asking for a different perspective, building individual relationships with them, and thereby understanding the skills, knowledge, and experience each board member brings, board members’ subsequent contributions can help senior leaders identify and avert issues ahead of time. It also satisfies the needs of board members to have closer links to the institutions’ business in a way that is acceptable to both parties. When a CEO leads on this active engagement, the likelihood of board members stepping into the operational in order to feel they are contributing, is significantly reduced.

Increase communication

When the Board reduces its focus on hindsight and oversight and instead turns its lens more to foresight, more frequent communication is often sought. The Board is no longer predominantly looking for past performance-based presentations at meetings, but rather, details on what is keeping the CEO awake at night, what is going well, what the risks are, and where the opportunities lie to create a stronger future.  Time spent by the CEO, senior leaders, and board members in discussions at meetings rather than information offloading, will provide the CEO and his/her team with useful opportunities to gain from board members’ knowledge and wisdom.  It will also help the Board to remain strategic rather than wandering into operational business discussions.  A regular newsletter from the CEO to the Board covering sector changes, new risks, opportunities, performance updates etc., can assist in keeping board members connected to the institution, abreast of its strengths and weaknesses, and thinking strategically.

Get greater strategic engagement

More traditionally, boards have looked to sign-off on strategy at the end of the strategic planning process, usually at a Board Strategic Away Day.  Nowadays, governing bodies are looking to engage at the start of the process. Defining organisational purpose and culture are now key parts of the strategic role that Boards are involved in, leading to an increased desire to be included throughout the strategic planning process. Not surprisingly, this shift can cause CEOs anxiety, perhaps due to poor past experience of perceived operational interference and board members lack of knowledge about the organisation’s business. This can be mitigated by ensuring the Board is involved early on in the big-picture planning, leading to options being presented to the Board for further consideration. This allows the process to remain firmly in executives’ hands at the same time as giving the executive valuable alternative perspectives from governors and allowing assumptions to be tested, resulting in early buy-in to a possible final proposed strategic plan.

In conclusion then, the strategic Board is likely to be more future focused, demanding more of senior leaders, and taking a closer interest in the institution’s business. Learning how to build effective relationships between the Board and senior leaders should be a priority.  A great way to do this is to take time out once a year as an opportunity for the Board and the organisation’s senior leaders, to discuss what they want from the governance dynamic, what their expectations are of each other, and how they are going to work together. 

As the focus on governance looks to shift and grow, ensuring these relationships are optimal will be a necessary part of ensuring all organisations in the post-16 education sector, become long-term, high performing assets, meeting the current and possibly future needs of stakeholders.