Some basic questions I’m curious to get data are: what are the sizes of the boards you’ve been surveying? And how do board sizes compare to team sizes? How often do boards meet? Outside of meetings, how often are there other comms (email/Slack/etc)?
Boards vary in size from 2-9 people, although some organisations had no governance board (that’s one for another post!) and some had more than one board (eg governance, advisory) and multiple sub-committees (eg finance, risk).
I haven’t properly compared board vs staff size but my experience is that boards tend to increase in size as perceived risk and complexity increases (driven in part by organisations scaling their operations). Something that I’ll expand on in a later post is that I think many people underestimate the risks of under-governance (or don’t recognise the ways in which good governance can mitigate against general org risks) and default to “no/small/informal board = fine” longer than they should.
On meeting frequency and communications—I’m afraid that there’s so much variation between organisations that it’s difficult to generalise!
I’m excited for the rest of this sequence!
Some basic questions I’m curious to get data are: what are the sizes of the boards you’ve been surveying? And how do board sizes compare to team sizes? How often do boards meet? Outside of meetings, how often are there other comms (email/Slack/etc)?
Thanks!
Boards vary in size from 2-9 people, although some organisations had no governance board (that’s one for another post!) and some had more than one board (eg governance, advisory) and multiple sub-committees (eg finance, risk).
I haven’t properly compared board vs staff size but my experience is that boards tend to increase in size as perceived risk and complexity increases (driven in part by organisations scaling their operations). Something that I’ll expand on in a later post is that I think many people underestimate the risks of under-governance (or don’t recognise the ways in which good governance can mitigate against general org risks) and default to “no/small/informal board = fine” longer than they should.
On meeting frequency and communications—I’m afraid that there’s so much variation between organisations that it’s difficult to generalise!