Why commission an externally-facilitated board review when an internal review will probably suffice?

Externally-facilitated board effectiveness reviews can be a major commitment in terms of time and money and therefore need to deliver a commensurate return on the investment made.

Internal reviews are often quicker, cheaper and still able to confirm whether or not you’re compliant. They’re also likely to be undertaken by people who know your organisation and understand how and why things are done in the way they are.

But therein lies the problem.

At Pragmatix Advisory, we believe that thriving, successful organisations are outward looking and constantly on the search for new ideas from their own sector and comparable organisations in other sectors to improve their ability to deliver the value their stakeholders demand.

The Board sets the tone for this and so should be a role model for the rest of the organisation in asking itself ‘how can we be better?’

Our approach is based on four stages that take place over a six week period and are undertaken within a loop of continual engagement and learning.

Stage 1: Inception (weeks one and two)

The inception stage is where we work with you to co-create the survey, book the interviews in diaries and then start to review the agendas, minutes and papers from Board meetings held over the last year. If possible, we would also seek to observe a meeting of the Board to help us understand the dynamics. Co-creation is critical for us: it enables joint ownership of the process and quicker relationships based on mutual trust to be established.

Step 2: Survey (week three)

At the end of week two we will ask you to send the agreed survey to Board members for completion by the end of week three. The survey will be short: no more than 25 questions comprising a mix of likert scale questions and open text box questions. It will also be specific to your context and sector: we don’t do generic surveys.

Step 3: Interviews (week four)

We prefer to run short, intensive interview programmes via Teams or Zoom. The discussion guides will be bespoke to both your organisation and the role held by an interviewee, and will be based on the emerging topics from the survey and our analysis of the board papers. Interviews are confidential and only ever be scheduled for 45min: we know how busy your board members are and ensure we focus on the most important topics.

Stage 4: Report writing (weeks five and six)

By the end of week six, you will have a robust, graphical, powerpoint-style report and evidenced, pragmatic recommendations that will enable you to improve the effectiveness of your board’s decision making and oversight responsibilities. Where requested, we are always happy to present our findings to the board and discussing our view of the next steps to be taken on your governance journey.

The papers received by a Board or its committees set the framework and foundations for effective decision making. It is therefore essential that they are clear, succinct, well-written and relevant to the role and responsibilities of the Board.

We know from our own experiences that organisations can fall into the trap of just passing slightly edited versions of Executive Team papers up to Board committees and the Board itself.

We understand that Executive Teams are often hard-pressed for time and there can be a feeling of needing to ‘feed the governance machine’ at the expense of running the organisation and implementing its strategy. Sometimes there is a fear that Board members will ask difficult questions and so papers are produced that are much longer than necessary in an attempt to answer every possible question that might arise at a Board meeting.

However, this results in the papers often not getting read until the meeting itself, which hampers effective decision making and considered debate around the board table.

We can analyse your Board packs and the papers considered by its committees with a view to ensuring board members are not overly burdened with irrelevant information or detail. This will include a review of your Scheme of Delegation to ensure that the Committees and Executive Team are appropriately empowered.

We also run report writing workshops for the main authors of your Board reports and papers, helping them identify what’s needed and then write in a professional, succinct and persuasive way.

Are Boards teams?

If the definition of a team is ‘any group of people with a common purpose’ then, yes, they are... And yet they’re often treated as just groups that come together on a regular basis.

We believe that a cornerstone of the effectiveness and performance of a Board is how well it operates as a team, and how well it is is led as one.

The best teams value diversity, of skills, of backgrounds, of personalities and harness it to become stronger and better performing than the sum of their parts. They actively seek out ways of filling gaps in critical skill areas in order to be more effective, and operate in ways that enable constructive challenge to be their modus operandi in driving change and performance.

Often, however, Boards do not see themselves in this way and neglect their own development beyond updating their knowledge of the organisation and its external context. Meetings can be driven by the most vocal voices, not the voices with the most important points to make, and many board members can avoid offering criticism for fear of offending.

All of this can be a significant anchor on the effectiveness of your board and how it is driving the organisation forward.

From providing some ‘grit in the oyster’ in your strategy development and/or review workshops through to working with our team development partner to secure a greater understanding of the attributes and preferences of your board members in a way that helps you maximise their contributions, we can help.

We don’t just walk away at the end of an assignment with you.

As a valued partner, we believe that our relationship with you goes beyond the final invoice. Every engagement has a built-in six month period of pre-agreed support that will start once we’ve presented our findings and recommendations back to you.

This could include a ‘dipstick test’ of how well the recommendations are being implemented, or follow-up review after six months to see whether the Board is operating more effectively. It might simply be providing advice and support by email over the period for key board roleholders.

Ultimately, our aim is to help your organisation thrive and succeed by having the most effective board it can. Please do get in contact: we’d be delighted to hear from you and understand how we can help.