rEvolutionary Governance Blog
Zen and The Rogue Board Member
“Is That So?” – a Zen Parable A girl in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who the father was. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone revered for living such a...
The Pitfalls of a Startup Association/ Nonprofit
The founding or startup phase can be one of the most exciting times to be a part of an organization – for those who thrive on chaos, have an entrepreneurial spirit and a dream. For those who like stability. process and clear direction, not so much. Startup operations...
Six Stages of Board Evolution
The beginning of governance improvement is to start where you are by identifying where your board stands on an evolutionary continuum. In our work, we've identified six stages of board evolution. Every board, regardless of how long the organization has been operating,...
Building Volunteer Bench Strength
Building Volunteer Bench Strength One of the biggest challenges all associations face is building volunteer bench strength. An item included on the Leading Associations Board Health Assessment is: "We have a deep volunteer leadership pool to draw from for future board...
Is Your Board Stuck in Operations? That May be Okay.
The more operational support a board receives from staff and/or operational committees, the less it is compelled by organizational demands to get into operations.
The rEvolutionary Governance™ System
A common theme we've observed in leadership literature in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors is an "institutional" focus. In the for-profit sector, most management and leadership best practice frameworks are built on the study of large corporations....
The Boilerplate Theory: Why Governance Restructure Should Be Easy
There are great books on governance that tell big boards to downsize; shift to competency-based, rather than constituency or geography-based selection system; be nimble, responsive and strategic; and select the best people for the job, not just those who “worked their...
Why Strategy Doesn’t Make it to The Front Line
Strategic mindset and intuitive alignment among the whole team can only come from ongoing conversations that create context around the strategic objectives, not simply handing people a to-do list and following up to see if they did it.
Root Cause Analysis of Dysfunction in Your Board of Directors
In part three of my series on Board of Director’s dysfunction, I want to discuss identifying the root cause of the issues within a board. The first thing to recognize is that the health of your Board of Directors is systemic and every domain affects the others. (What...
Leadership in its Truest Form More Likely Found in Non-Profits
There’s a perception among some that association/non-profit CEOs are less sophisticated than their corporate sector counterparts.
I believe the opposite is true. There’s a leadership skill more prevalent in the non-profit sector, which is leadership through influence. For-profit sector leaders could benefit greatly from honing this skill that is often overlooked in the corporate world, which tends to be driven more by power and position than influence.
Why Your Association’s Strategic Plan Can’t Fix Your Culture
Strategic planning is a standard exercise at many, if not most, associations/nonprofit organizations. So much so that many smart people mindlessly use it as a prescription for all organizational ills: “Having problems, eh? Do you have a strategic plan? If you do, when...
Lead from the Widest Circle First
I am going out on a limb, as I’m delving into a leadership topic that, outside of religious or spiritually-centered leadership, is generally avoided: namely, love. Certainly it’s nothing new from a human resources perspective to state that sincere praise, recognition,…