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Dec. 2006 Newsletter
Using
Monitoring Reports for Everyday Governing
We
have talked in earlier newsletters about the importance
of, for Policy Governance® boards, monitoring reports &
their use for monitor compliance with board policies.
(If you are not a Policy Governance board you get, not
monitoring reports, but, as they used to say about the
mail, whatever is delivered.) A responsive competent CEO
will strive to assure that his or her organization stays
compliant with policies - to achieve board-stipulated
ends (ends policies) while avoiding the prohibitions
(executive limitations). That is fairly straightforward.
However, monitoring is also the tool used to fix things
the board believes need fixing.
Let's say that a school board thinks (has observed or
has been told by two or more parents or other sources)
that something may be amiss that, when the board hears
of it, bothers the board. (Schools are about the most
transparent of organizations to their boards. There are
no secrets from a school board.) The board asks itself
the question, “Which of our values may be at issue (that
is, "What value(s) underlies our sense of concern?") and
which of our policies speak to those values?” This
process forces the board to explicitly confront and
express the link from knowing something and not liking
it - to knowing (explicitly) the value that is involved
- to the policies that speak to that (one or more)
value. Note that the board gets to know its policies
well; they are its governing tools. If the board takes
them lightly (or ignores them), management will be
tempted to take them as the board takes them!
The
simplest of actions for the board to take is to inform
the superintendent or headmaster what the board has
learned (become aware of) & that compliance with certain
pertinent policies may be at issue; "please provide the
board a monitoring report for those policies relevant to
this situation or incident." A responsive management
will waste no time in investigating, doing or redoing
its reasonable interpretation, and checking the facts
(against that reasonable interpretation). The facts will
generally speak for themselves unless the reasonable
interpretation is off the mark. If things are, in fact,
amiss, a responsive management will begin actions to
correct them. A wise management will so inform the board
as part of the monitoring report.
(If
this fails to satisfy, call in a third party neutral
auditor, not someone with an axe to grind. The board
should not try doing the audit itself; no matter the
outcome, it will irrevocably change the board’s
relationship with management, to say nothing about
tempting the board, or the investigators, to come up
with solutions that are invariably means to be imposed.
This is not to say that boards do not learn things
through directly encountering information sufficient to
reach a conclusion. Enough direct information and the
board could say, "This is out of compliance with any
reasonable interpretation of such and such policies. Fix
it.") |
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