How Nonprofit Boards Can Make Good Decisions -- Part 1 of 7

You've probably heard the saying "A camel is a horse designed by a committee"? Does your nonprofit's Board exemplify that cliché?

A lot of boards that I have seen and worked with over the past 10 years certainly have engaged in processes that have strange-looking results as their outcome.

What's the dynamic that's operating in these kinds of situations? Why do groups of people, many with the best of intentions, and some with considerable governing experience, turn out decisional products that are convoluted, multi-faceted, illogical and hard to administer?

Essentially, the heart of the problem is the "Psycho-dynamics" that operate in groups. Boards that don't function well inevitably have some dysfunctionality because it is almost impossible for any group of three or more people who get together relatively infrequently to do any kind of productive, deliberative thinking.

Why? Because every member of the group, often unconsciously, has tons of other agenda they're trying to accomplish for themselves, personally, that simply overrides any agenda they have for the nonprofit.

You might ask, "Would Board members of a nonprofit organization really do that? Would they really have their own agenda that would override consideration of the agenda the Board is supposed to be working on?"

Sure they would... and do; regularly. Yes, even these stalwart pillars of the community who are brought together to govern a public trust, which is what a nonprofit is; they can and do bring their own agendas into the meeting and press those agendas, in some cases, to the exclusion of all else.

And your reaction may be "But wait a minute, John, I've been to lots of Board meetings and the people on those boards are quite serious and down to earth and ready to help. After all they're volunteering their time to help the nonprofit. How can you say that?"

Back to "Psycho-dynamics." This isn't something they necessarily do consciously. They don't come into the meeting and purposively give the charity's agenda short shrift. They are intelligent, for the most part well-educated, frequently very well motivated and dedicated people. They don't really set out to sabotage the work at hand. If you asked any person around the table, they would stoutly deny that there's anything untoward going on in their heads. But here's how it works.

On looking closer, we discover that there are some sub-conscious questions any person in any group of people is asking.
1. "What do I think of myself in this group, how do I see myself, what is my image of myself in this context?" Each person around the table has a set of self images upon which they draw, depending on the group they're in, the role they have to play, and what they want from the group.

2. Every Board member around the table is also very interested in the question "What is the image that the other person (each other person at the table) has of me? How do they see me? What do they want/need from me?"

3. Every Board member at the table is also internally asking "What is my image of that person – what do I think of them? What do I know about them? What do I think they want of me, what do I think I can give to them?"

4. Every Board member is sub-consciously going to go to the next level, which is "How can I either alter that person's perception of me, or confirm that perception? What do I need to do or say to bring my images of myself, my image of what that other person thinks of me, and what I think about that other person into some kind of harmony that I can accept?" And this goes on around the table ad infinitum throughout the Board meeting.

This internal mechanism of assessment of others and behavior adjustment to that assessment goes on at either a subliminal level or, sometimes, at a more conscious level. It depends on many factors operating in the particular Board member's life at that moment. But this assessment and adjustment mechanism continues operating nonetheless.

Given the fact that this kind of internal psycho-dynamic is operating in each and every Board member, and in every staff member around the room, is it any wonder that there is little room left to engage in "deliberative thought" about matters that concern the nonprofit? Each person in the room is busy sorting out and finding ways to act appropriately for their own benefit as determined by their assessment of the group context in which they find themselves.

Now, what do we mean by "deliberative thought" in this situation? Basically we mean the logical, orderly, reasoned progression of thought that solves problems and creates solutions. If you will think back to your school days, it's the "scientific method" as applied to problems of governance, planning and fundraising for the nonprofit organization. It is the steps of data gathering about a problem, stating a hypothesis about what could solve the problem, testing solutions, gathering data about what works and what does not, then evaluation of the best model and drawing a conclusion, often expressed as a policy or procedure in the board context.

What we're saying here is that this kind of decision-making is practically impossible in the nonprofit boardroom situation. In fact, people in groups of three or more persons can only do two things well: they can brainstorm and they can tell stories; but they cannot do deliberative thought.

I am indebted to my mentor in organizational dynamics Dr. Paul Dietterich, who for many years was the founder and executive director of the Center for Parish Development in Chicago, for having expressed the phenomenon that way.

But here we have a situation where we expect, and we have set this up in society, that groups of volunteers are asked to come together as "governance boards" that are given charge of a public trust: governing a nonprofit charitable institution. Yet their heads, by nature, are so jammed with the psycho-dynamics of interpersonal relationships and communication that their best productive activity is reduced to brainstorming and telling stories.

And, if we look at the story-telling process, we find that it, too, is just another, perhaps more sophisticated, version of brainstorming. It links together a series of remembered, imagined or invented thoughts to form a story that is amusing or delivers a particular point to one's audience.

Ah, but I know you're looking for more content about "deliberative thought". And there's more to be said about internal agenda in board members that isn't necessarily very subliminal. We'll take that up in the next few posts on this subject. So stay tuned for more.