A couple of thoughts. And I only have some experience working with boards, so take my anecdotes here with a grain of salt.
Even for-profit boards can be weird as you note (perhaps even more weird—the profit incentive might bring out more feelings). Some public examples (lots of details in Jobs’ bio and Bad Blood) are how Steve Jobs as the CEO reporting to the board basically fired many people from his board when he came back to Apple. Then there was (is?) Theranos—that seemed like an absolute nightmare. I guess where there is people there is drama. But Jobs and Theranos are likely edge cases but illustrate the extent to which boards can become weird.
Are board members compensated in non-profits? In for profits they are, so it feels natural to “put them to work.” I think it works well when the CEO is dealing with something difficult, to work alongside a selected board member, in a transparent way, to solve a particular issue.
Also, perhaps the board should demand from the CEO a time-efficient way for them to report continuous process. Like a high level take on progress on important work, the financial status, the biggest risks and opportunities , evaluation metrics and similar. This should be sent to the board a week or so ahead of each board meeting so board members can prepare to ask questions etc. As in they should demand something that makes them understand the main activities and context of the organization they are responsible for. And perhaps also for the CEO to send some material ahead of the board meeting to dive a bit deeper into a specific topic, e.g. the plan to raise more funds in the coming months. At least this seems to work well in the for-profit sector. i think if the board does not feel they know what is going on, that is a big issue and one should work to resolve this by focusing on the communication that works best for the board and the CEO.
On the issue of laid-back vs. micro managing, perhaps one should not aim for every board member to have the right balance, but instead have a mix of approaches in the board? And that the composition of the board and the CEO works well together—it seems to be a lot about personal chemistry (that is why I understood Jobs wanted to replace certain members of the board before coming back as a CEO—I think this is reasonable to some extent).
Again, just some observations from my very limited experience with for-profit boards only.
A couple of thoughts. And I only have some experience working with boards, so take my anecdotes here with a grain of salt.
Even for-profit boards can be weird as you note (perhaps even more weird—the profit incentive might bring out more feelings). Some public examples (lots of details in Jobs’ bio and Bad Blood) are how Steve Jobs as the CEO reporting to the board basically fired many people from his board when he came back to Apple. Then there was (is?) Theranos—that seemed like an absolute nightmare. I guess where there is people there is drama. But Jobs and Theranos are likely edge cases but illustrate the extent to which boards can become weird.
Are board members compensated in non-profits? In for profits they are, so it feels natural to “put them to work.” I think it works well when the CEO is dealing with something difficult, to work alongside a selected board member, in a transparent way, to solve a particular issue.
Also, perhaps the board should demand from the CEO a time-efficient way for them to report continuous process. Like a high level take on progress on important work, the financial status, the biggest risks and opportunities , evaluation metrics and similar. This should be sent to the board a week or so ahead of each board meeting so board members can prepare to ask questions etc. As in they should demand something that makes them understand the main activities and context of the organization they are responsible for. And perhaps also for the CEO to send some material ahead of the board meeting to dive a bit deeper into a specific topic, e.g. the plan to raise more funds in the coming months. At least this seems to work well in the for-profit sector. i think if the board does not feel they know what is going on, that is a big issue and one should work to resolve this by focusing on the communication that works best for the board and the CEO.
On the issue of laid-back vs. micro managing, perhaps one should not aim for every board member to have the right balance, but instead have a mix of approaches in the board? And that the composition of the board and the CEO works well together—it seems to be a lot about personal chemistry (that is why I understood Jobs wanted to replace certain members of the board before coming back as a CEO—I think this is reasonable to some extent).
Again, just some observations from my very limited experience with for-profit boards only.