Your board is set up to fail.

Some months ago, I was talking with a CEO about nonprofit board dynamics. She said:

“I think there is something fundamentally wrong with boards. They're more set up for failure than they are for success in the very nature of how they've been created.”

Bingo.

This CEO leads a very large nonprofit, and chairs a board of another sizable nonprofit. And I’ve looked under the hood of over 310 nonprofits alongside the CEOs, as well as served on a couple of boards myself. Together, she and I marveled at what is taken for granted in our sector. 

Why do we think we can have people come in just four or five times a year and give strategic direction and oversight for complex international efforts? 

What a weird structure…

I’m thinking about what might be done about that, talking to CEOs that seem to have different ways of navigating this. 

But this structural challenge is not the only issue. How CEOs experience their boards is also a significant related issue. You inherit the board. You report to it. You try to build it. You recruit people for it. And when they join the board, your relationships change. 

Another CEO of a large organization put it this way:

"As soon as you bring a person on the board, they're your boss. And so if it's a bad bet, you've just let that person into your house, and they're a monster. I don't know anybody who would tell you the truth…because they're too scared."

So smart CEOs do the rational thing in this irrational structure: they try to manage up, presenting competence to their board. 

You start to dance.