Board Capacity Building
Don’t Unwittingly Turn Your Board Members Into Victims of Poorly Designed Structure and Process
A superintendent called me recently, asking if I’d be interested in presenting a governance training workshop for her school board. She explained that several board members were coming dangerously close to “micro-managing,” and she wanted them to understand the boundaries …
The Retreat as a Board Capacity Building Vehicle
Experience has taught me that a retreat involving your school board and senior administrators can be a powerful tool for building your board’s governing capacity and strengthening the board-superintendent partnership. But – and it’s a really big caveat – you’ve …
Virtual Board Standing Committees: More Than Just a Half-Way House
“Could our five-person school board be realistically divided into two, much less three, standing committees? Wouldn’t a committee with only two board members lack credibility?” I expected the question, which came right after I’d presented my slides on board standing …
Bake Your Board Cake First, Then Worry About the Icing
A sorely disappointed superintendent and I were talking a couple of months ago. She, her school board, and her senior administrators had gone through an intensive weekend retreat a six weeks earlier. She explained that it’d been put together to …
Kick Off 2020 By Updating Your Superintendent Governance Strategy
Preparing for a recent superintendent coaching session, I fine-tuned the process that I’d developed several years ago for updating the Superintendent Governance Strategy. All really board-savvy superintendents know that governance (encompassing the work of the board and the board- superintendent …
Southern Fairfield County, Connecticut Superintendents Discuss Enriching Board Composition
Earlier this week, I was privileged to facilitate a 1 1/2-day “High-Impact Governing Work Session” involving 15-some Southern Fairfield County, Connecticut superintendents – a group that meets monthly under the leadership of the New Canaan superintendent, Bryan Luizzi. We were …
3 Quick Fixes that Won’t Corral the Rogues on Your School Board
The April 4 post at this blog, “What About ‘Rogue’ Board Members?”, talked about tried and true approaches to reining in these trouble makers who march to their own governing tune at their own tempo, with little concern about the …
Board-Savvy Superintendents Use Ritual as a Board Team Building Tool
“The prescribed form or order of conducting a religious or solemn ceremony.” “A ceremonial act or a series of such acts.”
These are two of the definitions of “ritual” in the Second College Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary. In …
What About “Rogue” Board Members?
We were talking about building school board self-management capacity at the preconference workshop I presented at the NSBA National Conference a week ago – specifically, how a board can manage its own governing performance by setting performance targets and standards …
Two Barriers to High-Impact Governing Performance
This post is drawn from Chapter 3 of my forthcoming book, Building a High-Impact Board-Superintendent Partnership: 13 Critical Questions You Need to Answer, which describes several formidable barriers to school boards doing really high-impact governing work and examines proven …
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