Where Boards Go Wrong--Diagnosis From The PBG Bible

John Carver's book, Boards That Make A Difference, could easily be called "the PBG Bible." Originally published in 1997, BTMAD explains the PBG model in great detail. It's a valuable tool for any church trying to implement PBG and therefore, worthy of many conversations at PBG church!

In chapter one, Carver diagnoses "What Goes Wrong" with many boards. See if any of these observations sound familiar. . .

"Time on the trivial. Items of trivial scope or import receive disproportionate attention compared with matters of greater scope or importance. . .

Short-term bias. The "time horizon" about which a board should make decisions is more distant at the governing level than anywhere else in the organization. Yet we find boards dealing mainly with the near term and, even more dysfunctionally, with the past. Last month's financial statement gets more attention than an agency's strategic position.

Reactive stance. Boards consistently find themselves reacting to staff initiatives rather than acting proactively. Proposals for staff action and recommendations for board action so often come from staff that some boards would cease to function if called upon to create their own agendas.

Reviewing, rehashing, redoing. Some boards spend most of their time going over what their staffs have already done. . .

Leaky accountability. . . Having established a CEO position, the board members continue to relate in their official capacity with other staff, either giving them directions or judging their performance.

Diffuse authority. It is rare to find a board-executive partnership wherein each party's authority has been clarified. A vast gray area exists. When a matter lies in this uncertain area, the safe executive response is to take it to the board. Instead of using this opportunity to clarify to whom the decision belongs, the board simply approves or disapproves. The event has been settled, but authority remains as unclear as it was before."

Does any of that sound like your church's board?

Making Staff Meetings Support Desired Outcomes

After we moved to PBG, it was clear that our staff meetings would need to be re-worked a bit. Right away, we realized that unless the Board's four desired outcomes became a regular topic of conversation for our staff, they would be quickly forgotten.

Here's what we've decided to do:

All of our ministry staff develop plans for the upcoming year built around the four desired outcomes of the Board. Throughout the year, ministry staff meet together weekly to discuss the plans and their on-going implementation. We cover one desired outcome each week, so over the course of a month, each of the four desired outcomes gets reviewed.

We go around the table and have each person briefly review their plans as well as what's working and not working. Before we move on to the next person, we take a moment for the other staff to give feedback to the staff member who just shared.

Typically, the entire meeting takes less than an hour.

I'm sure we won't do things exactly this way forever, but for now, it seems to be working for us.

How is your congregation using staff meetings to support PBG?

How To Develop A Board Policy Manual

As I've studied PBG churches, I've noticed two distinct approaches to developing a Board Policy Manual:

Approach #1--Start on day one with a single policy in force, usually something like this:

"The Senior Pastor shall not act in a manner that is unethical, imprudent, illegal or inconsistent with the Constitution, Bylaws and Governing Policies of the congregation."

The Board then develops additional policies as they go.

Approach #2--Start on day one with the above policy in force, along with many, many others that have been pre-drafted for the Board. Usually this includes many pages of specific polices about financial matters, personnel, reports the pastor must provide the Board and more. The Board is free to change any of these policies at any time, of course, but they start on day one with a large number of recommended policies in place.

My congregation decided to start our journey into PBG using approach #2 and in hindsight, it probably had to be that way. The detailed draft policy manual helped our congregation understand better how PBG would work and it gave them confidence that all the bases were adequately covered. If we had tried to go with approach #1, I'm not sure our congregation would have been willing to adopt PBG at all.

However, as we've continued our journey into PBG, I've seen some definite down sides to approach #2:

Down side # 1: It tends to bury the Board in minutia and prevents them from focusing their time on the big-picture leadership that they alone can give the church. The role of the Board tends to become "policy enforcement" instead of "visionary leadership."

Down side # 2: Boards tend to be reluctant to eliminate policies already in place, even when they seem to be unnecessary. ("Let's leave it there--it must be there for a reason!")

Downside #3: It's hard to remember and follow all the policies when there's so many of them!

As I look through our rather lengthy policy manual today, I often wonder how many of these policies would still be in place if we had decided to follow approach #1. My guess is that it would be a lot, lot shorter!

Which approach did your congregation use? What upsides and downsides have you experienced?