I heard the tale of a board of directors meeting that occurred yesterday and it reminded me of a story that never seems to go away. This particular board of directors spent over an hour debating and discussing how to deal with a specific procedural problem; a problem that should have been dealt with by the committee created to deal with that part of the Rotary program.
You have to wonder how anything ever gets done when the board of directors spends so much time doing what is obviously committee work. Somehow they seem oblivious to the idea that a board of director’s job is to consider policy and leave procedures and practices to the committee created and charged with implementing the policies they create.
The explanation for this particular malfeasance is the inability of the chair of this committee to deal with the problem for one reason or another. Maybe the chair is unwilling to adopt new ideas no matter how good they are or maybe the chair simply doesn’t understand what a committee and committee chair should be doing. Either way, the problem at hand is a leadership challenge. By going around the committee chair and the committee by doing their work for them may seem like an expedient and necessary solution. The reality is that the expedient solution simply multiplies the problem.
Leaders and members of the board of directors need to allow committee chairs and their committees to do their job. The need to define clear policies with reasonable expectations and acceptable limits; then they need to ask for updates on progress. By continuing to set and explain the expectations and limitations, they will eventually arrive at acceptable solutions to problems while creating stronger committee chairs and committees.
Everyone has a job to do and everyone is entitled to reap the benefits of doing their job well. Taking over someone else’s job in the name of expediency hurts the individuals involved and the organization. This is a simple story that provides a learning opportunity on why ‘policy governance’ is so important.