When I was a relatively new nonprofit Executive Director 15 years ago, our leadership team had a great idea for Board Development. (WARNING: Before you read on, please know that this approach had exactly the opposite result from what we were striving for.)

The great idea: Reduce “regular” board meeting frequency from once per month to once per quarter and form a highly empowered Executive Committee to provide monthly oversight. We thought that reducing the number of meetings would help us engage busy C Suite directors by making it easier for them to meet the requirement. Boy did this backfired.

Our new format communicated a message to Board members that said, “We don’t really need your input – it isn’t all that important for you to be here, so we’ll only ask you to attend every now and then.” That unintentional message had the effect of making it easy for our C Suite members, and everyone else for that matter, to put a higher priority on just about everything other than attending our Quarterly Board meetings. Results:

·      Meeting attendance dropped drastically over the next 2 years

·      Committee participation dropped at a corresponding rate

·      We lost the benefit of diverse points of view and diverse experience in our strategic thinking, strategic planning and decision making

·      Our “at-large” Board Members lost their passion for our mission and slowly dropped out

·      The small Executive Committee became increasingly overburdened

In our enthusiasm to bring on strong leaders, we neglected to consider why we wanted those leaders on the Board in the first place: we needed their wisdom, their experience, their connections and their influence to help us achieve our strategic goals. But our restructuring did not encourage them to contribute any of those things. It instead enacted a double whammy that led to disengaged Board Members.

·      Members at large understood that the powerful Executive Committee would do all the “real” work of the Board.

·      The infrequent meeting format meant that Members at large were less informed, less able to advocate, and frankly, just didn’t have the program front of mind.

Course correcting was difficult. We were a worthy organization with a worthy mission, but we had changed the expectations and the culture of the Board and it took some heavy lifting to make up for that.

In the years since my personal experience with this failed strategy I’ve seen a number of other organizations try the same approach for the same reasons… and in each case the results were not good.

Lesson learned: Help your Board members understand how important their active engagement is by setting high standards, and by holding each other accountable to them. The right Board members, with the right expectations, effectively engaged in the business of your organization provides the foundation for everything else your organization needs to accomplish.