Collective Wisdom

Saturday morning we had our winter SpringHill board meeting which followed for me a furious week of meetings with SpringHill board members, staff and the leadership team.

Non-profit boards can be double edge swords for people in my position as CEO. They can be helpful on many fronts but they can also get in the way of the CEO and staff doing their work.

Admirably the SpringHill board is long on support and assistance and very short of getting in the way. As a matter of fact I can’t think of any situation in my ten years in this position where they hindered my ability to do my job.

What they’ve done and did once again on Saturday was:

1. Ask good questions that make us think.
2. Provide insights and perspective from their experiences that we don’t have. 
3. Encourage and challenge us to make corrections when necessary and to continue to do more on behalf of Christ’s Kingdom. 
4. Affirm what is going well and right. 
5. Assure we are “on strategy” meaning on mission, vision and aligned with our core values.
6. Provide reasonable and effective boundaries for us to do our work. 

What they don’t do and didn’t do on Saturday was:

1. Tell us how to run SpringHill. 
2. Restrict our ability to move forward on our goals and plans.
3. Get bogged down in the details.
4. Send us off on rabbit trails.
5. Have different agenda’s amongst themselves.
6. Send us mixed signals.

The results are having the right people on the board fulfilling the right roles and doing their work effectively. This has assured that SpringHill continues to fulfill of its mission and achieves its goals not just now but well into the future.