THE BOARD AND THE CEO

For an organization to thrive, a healthy Board-CEO relationship must be at the Centre. Creating a healthy relationship between the board and the CEO not only affects the two entities involved, but flows down to affect staff members, clients or the beneficiaries and all the organization’s stakeholders. Due to our human propensity to drift, the Board and CEO’s relationship must center on and routinely return to a shared commitment to the mission. Otherwise the organization runs the risk of bending towards the interests of individual leaders as opposed to the mission.  Healthy Boards and CEO’s understands that mission is what matters most and should never let personal ego undermine the potential of their organizations to succeed.

It is important for any organization to provide clarity on the roles and responsibilities of the Board and the CEO. This way everyone becomes more productive since the Board and the staff members are not spending time doing another’s work. The relationship between the Board and the CEO might be best described in terms of the relationship between the coach and the quarterback (captain). Both have a shared agenda: win the football game. There is clarity on the goal and each one of them knows they do not have the same role. The coach selects the quarterback and creates a strategy, but on game day, no matter how involved the coach is on the sidelines, you’ll never see him or her step into the playing field. The coach can shout use signal language, direct the overall play, run around but can never hit the ball. For better for worse, the field is the quarterback’s domain.

Similarly the Board functions as the coach. They select the quarterback (CEO), make game plan (set overall direction), and then empower the person to play his or her role. The Board doesn’t and should never engage in the day-to-day affairs of the organization. If the CEO is consistently not meeting performance expectations, it is time for the Board to either empower or find a new quarterback. Like this basic analogy the core roles and responsibilities of the Board and the CEO do not need to be complex but they do need to be distinct and clear.

Reflection
But all things should be done decently and in order.- 1 Corinthians 14:40

Mary Kamore is the Lead Consultant M_OliveS Mentors

Borrowed from the book; ‘The Board and the CEO by Peter Greer & David Weekly