How to Jump Start Your Board of Directors with Mark Buzan

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Hey, thanks for listening in today. I’ve got Mark Buzan on the hot seat. Mark, how are you doing today?

It’s great to be here. Thank you.

You know, we I always like to get people warmed up before we hop on and record. And I think if I didn’t stop you, we would just go ahead and tell war stories. For the whole time, we had a lot of that extra recording of it. So I was like, We’ve got to stop. We’ve got to get some of the stuff on tape so we can give it to the audience.

But you’ve fired up the society of nonprofit board directors. Mike, how did you get from your experience to where you decided that this is what you need to do? And what value is this bringing into the nonprofit world?

Thanks for asking that Travis, you know, there was a partial element there. I’m a firm believer, as many are, I’m sure you are, as well, that there are elements of entrepreneurship that need to be applied in the nonprofit world in a balanced perspective, but when I was starting up my association management company, our Executive Director, I was first and foremost trying to look to see where there was some opportunities where I could network and meet with other people who served on boards of nonprofits and associations, charities, foundations, it’s just whom I tend to serve. 

But I was also looking very earnestly from my own experience of having been, as I like to say, fired into success. As a former executive director, I’ve been an executive director, President, CEO of a national association, a number of years ago, I had literally just gotten on the wrong end of a disagreement with my board and didn’t and didn’t come out on the winning end of that.

And I got over that, just the way I am I really wanted to know, okay, what part of this story did I own? And what can I improve going forward in my career?

So I set out on a path of trying to figure out what I can network with? Who could I go out and talk to in an efficient way of people who serve on boards and not for profits and associations. And I was shocked, absolutely shocked that there was very little out there. I mean, I’m coming from an association world, I firmly believe that there’s really no better way to learn than from your, your colleagues, your peers, etc. But I was seeing that there are associations, trade groups, guilds and I like that.

For people who are executive directors, you have the United States and ASAE Association Society, the American Society of Association Executives, and you’ve got AFP, which is the Association of Fundraising Professionals. You’ve got even in the corporate world you know, there are corporate director societies, as well in on all continents around this world, but nothing out there for people who are specifically just minded, geared towards wanting to serve on a board of a non for profit and Association.

I was just flabbergasted by this. There’s associations for everything out there. And I thought from further down the path, the conclusion I kind of came to is no wonder in a way, charitable nonprofits, etc keep on repeating the same darn problem over and over and over again, because they tend to work boards and organizations work in their own respective silos, when if they only had the ability that’s to actually, board members, for example, or the more geared and like that had the opportunity to be able to network to be able to chat with and say, “You know, Travis had tried that kind of thing over there. And it worked on his board. And it worked really, really well.

Jill tried the other thing, I don’t know if we want to try that she learned from that experience, we’ve kind of worked from flawed thinking, I think, in the nonprofit world that if I’m in healthcare, or if I’m in Child Services, or if I’m on a chamber of commerce of some sort of the board there, I could never possibly ever have anything in common with any of these kinds of things. Nothing could be further than the truth. And in my years of experience, I’ve seen this happening over and over and over again, where usually it’s a variation of same darn problem being repeated over and over again, if they only had the sense to be able to come together.

And I mean, in my own experience, you only have to look through human history, there’s been hundreds of years of why we’ve had guild societies like this it’s because you learned from your brain, your peers and your professions, and with the importance that nonprofits have in our society, no wonder we haven’t made with the numbers, the millions. I mean, it was like 2.5 million, not-for-profit organizations registered in the United States, I think it’s probably growing in my country, it’s 25,000, you would think that by now, we would have solved some of the world’s ails? No wonder we haven’t because we keep on doing the rinse and recycle the same on people who are ill-equipped to not able to do this in terms of leadership,

I tell you, I love what you’re doing. As soon as you started talking, I was like, ah, Jay Abraham. Jay Abraham, if you don’t know, is really big in the business world. But he didn’t really get as big as he could have gotten right away, because he was focusing on his industry, his one specific industry that he was in, it wasn’t until he started consulting across various industries, across the spectrum, a multidisciplinary approach, did he get to be the guru that he is.

And it’s one of the reasons I love interviewing so many different people from so many different types of organizations and nonprofits in the business world, it’s because you get that multidisciplinary approach. You know, what was working in Canada in your case, might not have been tried in the US. But we don’t know. And we don’t know what that experience looks like if we’ve never been exposed to it, if we haven’t heard it, if we haven’t considered something else now. I mean, I’ve served on a couple of different boards, start-up board, and a board that was pretty well established. And the differences of just the two boards, even in Oklahoma City, both in different industries, were astounding. And you’re like well, why? Why serve on a board? Why even put yourself through the pressure? We were talking about this earlier? What is even the benefit of someone serving on a board? What did you find?

That’s an amazing question. Because this is where the entrepreneurial side of this is, you know, the entrepreneurs, we’re always trying to find out what’s the paying point and then you present a solution. board directors and this is my observation and of course, there’s always going to be exceptions so don’t write to me about this. But I think across the board, this is what I’ve observed.

The best ones tend to be rather humble individuals that want to go and make a difference. And they want to feel like they plot it out but they’re not going to be the type that’s going to go about and grandstand that’s they’re actually the type five level personality it’s identified in Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great, we talk about that type of person.

But the challenge with that type of individual is that more often than not, they’re not necessarily always aware of why they do it, per se, it’s just ingrained in there. They’re too humble or maybe not wanting to maybe speak up about that. What was that personal gain, you have to almost corner them in a safe environment, which I do. Don’t call me a stalker, but they’re like this, I really want to know this and say no, seriously, because why do you do this? Why do you take time away from your family, your career, your business, to sit around a boring board table and eat stale doughnuts and drink coffee on a Saturday, for example, we’ll talk about financials

I have a real passion for taking board meeting minutes for you, and I want to write the minutes for these people. That’s why I want to be the best but that’s not true at all. 

That does not happen often, so why that gets to that and that led me down with you know some, maybe that was inspiring you to do some formal research on this sometime there but asking board directors over years of asking them of interviewing them of surveying two fundamental class two groups of fundamental questions, the first being, why do you do this? Okay, why? What would make you do this, and it comes down to many of them, they say, I feel like I want to be part of something bigger. I want to feel like I’m part of something that I’ve done my little part. And I can put my stamp on this. And I can feel really good about that.

Or as some other board members said to me a number of years ago “Mark, I do this because I want to feel like I’m surrounded by people smarter than me.” That particularly knocked me on my, on my derriere, frankly, to be able to say, Wow, that is one of the most profound that’s still to this day, stateswoman most profound comments I’ve ever heard. And it makes so much sense isn’t that much more enriching? To be around a room of really smart, really engaged people where you come to a while at this, and literally, your mind is blown, like, Wow, man, that was amazing. That was like, I’ve got new realizations, I hadn’t learned that. I would love it. 

That’s the kind of experience that I would look forward to, to being part of a really interesting and smart discussion. That’s the first reason why they do this. Then the second part of the question that I asked them there later on said, what frustrates you, and what would it take for you to get to leave. And that is something that it’s a bit of a taboo, I think, and in the nonprofit world, we just don’t seem to really put a lot of effort. And we put a lot of effort, in my opinion in the paid world in the corporate world, for keeping good employees, really good employees, but no intention for keeping good volunteers and good board leaders, particularly leaders. And the answer was two things. I get frustrated when I don’t see progress on the mission. And I get frustrated and I eventually will leave when I just feel that my time and talents are not being respected.

Oh, that has a direct impact on me, considering my next few years, I’ve got more than 20 years in the Navy, I’m trying to decide when I’m going to move on to the next phase of my life. And one of the things that pops into my head is if I consider myself to be unhappy with my current situation, it doesn’t come down to the paycheck, it for me, it really comes down to utilization. If I’ve got the talent and the passion for these things, and they put me up on the shelf, or they keep me on the sideline, why would I dedicate any more of my time to not being utilized and not being called upon and not being engaged with what we do? It’s a big conversation that you have with board meetings, people in the nonprofit world, are the board meetings, or are they B O R E D? Are they boring?

So how do you even get a board engaged and give them that impactful feeling? And let them feel like they’re being utilized? Do you just take someone and you say, Alright, you’re gonna be the treasurer? Or do you figure out what talents they have? And where to plug them in? How does that work?

It starts first and foremost, that yeah, this is an excellent question. I think it starts really at the beginning to make sure that you’ve got the right as Jim Collins says, you got the right people on the bus, first and foremost, get the right people on the bus. And then you worry about the next thing is putting the right people on the seats in the right seats on the bus. He talks about that. I think that that was just fantastic the way he wrote that. But that was the first thing. But not only that, I think this is so important. Executive Directors, board chairs, boards themselves, we have to stop, we have to challenge this preconception, that it’s your obligation, or that orange bar, as Dan Pallotta puts it, that there is only one possible accepted reasoning for why somebody should volunteer and that is benevolence. That is the only acceptable reason why somebody should do this.

That is the only acceptable reason why somebody should do this. Now, hear me out on this when people say, oh my god, what are you saying people want to get like self-gain out of this? Well, hold on a second. Why would somebody know you have to Yeah, why would somebody take time away from their friends, their family, their career, etc? Like this just to contribute? Compensation doesn’t always have to be financial. I’m not talking about ever I would never comp I would. Look, there are folks out there who say that, you know, boards should be, you know, compensated. I can’t go that far. I’m not on board with them there but I do think it’s reasonable that this should be a fair exchange. This house should be fair. It’s a two-way street. You have to check in with your people just as you would do in a company like that. Check-in then say, How’s it going for you? Are you happy? Or is this working out? Are you having some problems? How can we, you know, adapt or change and make this a more inclusive environment for you the whole kitten caboodle when we talk, we hear about this forever.

But in the nonprofit world? Well, that’s a poopoo thing to discover. We can’t know and possibly can’t possibly talk about that. No, you know, compensation can also be, you know, what? A little bit of recognition, compensation can also mean, are you finding this engaging our compensation, are you developing professionally and personally, as a result of this. Speaking of that, the board director I talked about earlier said he wanted to be surrounded by people smarter than themselves. Do you feel that you’re learning and growing as a result of this? I don’t think, I’ve been wrong about this, but putting that perspective, I don’t think that’s controversial, that shouldn’t be a controversial political conversation. It’s just checking in with somebody you say, How’s it going for you?

But in the nonprofit world, we’ve got this Puritan mentality around it that there’s only one sort of way it’s like Dan Pallotta, his books talk about the reason that charitable donations were kind of set up in the Puritan age because it was the individual, the self was viewed as selfish as corrupted, no, like, this isn’t. The way that you compensated was to give money, not because you genuinely wanted to help but because you wanted to feel you were doing better.

Compensating your penance right? Your penance is guilty of being selfish and taking care of your family first. And it’s heartbreaking to talk about that and what that looks like. And I talked to so many startup nonprofits, especially veterans from nonprofits, that refuse to talk about compensation for staff members. They’re focused on this volunteer-only mentality. And it was like, why on earth? Are you working so hard? To try to ensure that you continue the pain that you’re on, and it’s a penance? I call it martyr syndrome. I’ve talked about it in a few episodes, but it’s not often martyrs. They’re paying their penance, getting their 40 lashes that they’re giving themselves before they go out and spread cheer around the world. Because unless they’re going through personal pain while they’re doing this, it’s not making a real impact. And I just think that’s a garbage statement. But why do you think there’s such a distance between the organization as a whole with the CEO or the executive director and the board as an entity is like this thing that’s on a pedestal? What’s the gap from why does it exist? 

That’s an excellent question. And that led me down to my understanding of this. And this is so proud. This is so so important. Because from the executive director’s point of view, I think a lot and I was guilty of this. I was guilty of this, folks, if you’re doubting me, I got canned because I was not in tune with this. I went down my own path. And I thought that, Gosh, darn it, why can’t they see the value of what I’m doing? They just got it all wrong. I hear about this, you only have to read some of the nonprofit subreddits or the discussions about executive directors. Sorry, I find this particularly amongst, you know, in the states where it’s a bitch fest. It’s a bitch, they’re bitching about, I don’t get paid enough. They don’t respect me. They overwork me. I want all kinds of things.

And maybe that’s true. I’m not denigrating that. But then it ends up being like an adversarial relationship with the board. That’s not helpful. It’s not, you’ve got a piss poor attitude. Hold on a second. What’s that? Oh, there’s somebody who’s told me something. I keep telling this: be careful when you point a finger at somebody because there are three fingers pointing back at you. Yeah. You know, there’s another side of the coin to this nonprofit stuff. You’re living it every single day.

So I get that I celebrate it like this, the role of the board is there to watch out for you, to give you guidance to say, hey, because you’re in the weeds, you have to be in the weeds. It’s really hard to see the picture when you’re in the frame. The board’s role is to be that frame for you to say, Have you thought about this? Considering? Are you watching out for what the community is? Are we actually making progress on the mission?

I thought they were supposed to tell me how much I can spend on paper clips. I thought that was the whole deal of the board.

Don’t get me started on that. That’s a whole other issue right there and we’ll talk about that some other time. But I mean, that’s the role of it there. Now, take off your executive. This took me a long time, frankly. So I’m not unsympathetic to executive directors that are listening to this because I’ve been where you are twice, you know, down the staff side and now contracted out to do Executive Director roles. Board Directors do this because they desire to feel they want to get back. Maybe they’ve achieved a certain degree of success in their career, their life went like this. And they feel like they want to be able to embark upon this.

Let’s address the big white elephant in the room. Some of them want to do it because they feel that they get a little bit they want to get a little bit of recognition, it makes them feel good. God forbid, we should try to celebrate those are prima donnas. What’s that old thing I think, General Patton once said is you got a prima donna, celebrate them, celebrate them, they will do amazing things, put them up on a pedestal, they do all of this as well, from the corner of their desk, they’re not in this, nor should they be full time like you are, trust me, you don’t want them in their full time like this. They don’t want them out there you trust me, you don’t want to trust me what I’m saying you don’t want that that’s a good place for them, frankly, for them where they occupy.

So think of it from your perspective. Now you invest, get to see a very top-level high-level view of where the organization is going. And maybe a monthly, sometimes bi monthly. I’ve seen some boards meet quarterly. How can you honestly expect, I’m putting this out to executive directors now. Can you honestly and fairly expect? Are you being fair with them? To expect them to understand the whole undergoing of your organization or your job that you’re doing? Of course, you can’t do that. They have a rule to look out for the whole of the organization. Now, I’m not going to get into the whole aspect of where boards can go and then remember, I’m going to send complaints. Oh, yeah, but my board they get in the weeds. That’s a whole other topic there. I didn’t get into that there.

I’m not talking about boards gone badly. I’m talking about the dynamic of their executive directors, I’m gonna put that challenge out to you. If I got time for an anecdote, I’ll tell you why this kind of goes wrong there. Okay. One classic example. We talked about counting paperweights or doing minutes or something like this. I spoke with an executive director who she had some 25 years or something like that experience in 20 years experience as a CEO, very bright lady, very, very bright lady would run this organization with a very small staff and more of a working board kind of model.

And I told her about the things that would cause them to be frustrated, and she got really kind of defensive. She says, Well, we have somebody who has a social media and marketing agency on our board. And we put him in charge of our social media accounts and he did nothing. We thought he was passionate about this. Okay, yeah. Let me ask you something. What did you ask him? What was he responsible to do? He was supposed to put the tweets out? Okay. This guy runs a marketing agency, how many staff? And you asked him to do the tweets? How enriching? Do you think that that is what this guy does? You just asked him to do what his intern does. Oh, yeah. It was just, he likes you. But he just wasn’t that into you when it came to that.

Had you not thought of maybe leveraging his experience, and maybe getting him to do a live stream as a board member about his experience, we could pump it up and talk about the organization, you think that he might have been a little bit keener to work towards that, he would have adjusted maybe a little bit more towards his interest level and what he is. That’s the problem I think that we come across, it’s a slap and roll up there where boards are viewed by too many as kind of a well, it’s something that we have to tolerate and put up with rather than something that’s leveraged. And that’s actually another area of frustration for many board directors, and I’ve talked about this, they asked me, but the staff doesn’t really want my opinion anyway, not really.

You bring up some interesting points. I mean, did it never cross her mind? I don’t know this person, right? I don’t know the situation. But the first thing that pops into my head, if I’ve got a marketing guru who runs an agency on my team, is hey, what would be the best or the coolest way to leverage our social media for what we’re trying to do and get them engaged in something that they’re passionate about? You take the passion of the organization, you take their zone of genius, what they deal with, their full-time career, and you see where they can cross over and you let that person create something new. We’re so stuck on what a board should be, that we can’t ask a question and reframe it 

or rather worse sometimes working boards it’s merely about plugging holes and that is a waste. And we wonder, Travis, why we haven’t made more progress in society? I mean, the goal of most charities should be to try to put themselves out of business. Exactly. Well, so we choose polio. What was it like 60-70 years ago? I mean, I remember it being sort of active, but it’s nowhere near what it used to be. And then we’re fine with that.

I just got done reading through Dan Heath’s Upstream. And what that looks like to take care of problems before they start, are there people that are going to be homeless, that are going to need services? Yes. But if we never go upstream to figure out how they got there, we’re never going to be able to solve the problem for most people. And when you get through the dissections of this book, I don’t know if you’ve read or not. There’s actually organizations out there that have solved homelessness in the US in like a dozen major cities. And it wants to know how to do that. And the multidisciplinary approach where you’re working with a coalition and different areas of nonprofit work of the government of all these different things working together, like, oh, that’s gonna lower our fundraising, how great is that to needless funds to take care of the things you need?

There are more societal problems to take on trust me

Absolutely. They walk you through how to get the functional zero. And I love the concept, I posted a review on the book, and I’ve gone out to a couple of people that I know that are working in the homelessness sector, or veteran homelessness or whatever. And I asked them, I was like, Have you ever considered working with a coalition or group or someone else interested in working on the same problem you are? And I got a resounding majority that said they hadn’t even considered it as like, do you know that there are cities out there right now that aren’t Functional Zero, there’s more housing available than long term homeless people in their city.

And they’re like, that’s not possible. And they haven’t even opened up the thought to says, the thing that I’m trying to solve, the people that I’m trying to help you get to that hero syndrome, right, because they’re in the trenches, they’re solving the problem, and not working on preventing the problem in the first place. And not only do they not even consider it, but they also haven’t read it, they’re not even interested until they hear some kind of outside story. That it’s even possible.

And you see much of that. I don’t know these organizations that you’re speaking about there. But I’d be willing to bet that the dialogue around those board tables is far different than the ones that you said that they hadn’t considered? Absolutely. I’m going to go out on a limb here, they very likely put a lot of effort into getting the right people on the bus, putting the right people in the right seats on the bus. And I’ll go one step further than Jim Collins there, from his book there. But regularly checking in to say, How’s it working out for you? And we got the right kind of culture that’s working out for you in this. Are you getting something in and then as well, I would also be willing to bet because that kind of culture creates one itself where it’s self Enriching is that people start asking about where are we moving on the mission? Are we actually making a profit? What are some of the big grand strategy challenges what do we need to include in this conversation? 

I don’t know about you, Travis. But that kind of a conversation fires me up that would be, wow, I would look forward to going there I would drive to the other side of the town or get on get on a plane and go to a meeting like that because I would find that really mentally stimulating. That’s a reason why my online board members do this. They will tell you that because they’re a humble bunch, the most of them there. That’s a bit of a frustrating thing. They won’t tell you that upfront, because we’ve got a cultural kind of a thing where, oh, you’re just doing this for self-interest. Yeah, so?

We just do everything out of self-interest at some level. 

But that’s a bit of the dysfunction. And that’s sort of what led me and what drives me with the Society of nonprofit board directors is breaking down the silos, creating opportunities for board directors, the most motivated ones that were not for everybody. If you’re content with the status quo this is probably not your thing. For them to be able to do some cross-pollination and say, You know what, we tried this in this organization, this worked really well, or to break it down and democratize the information about how to be a better board director, how to continuously improve, how to do Agile Governance, all these kinds of things, so that you’re constantly moving forward and that this is an enriching part of your life. I mean, we only do how many spins around the sun that we do in our lifetime, make the most of it. Why would you settle for something like this? I mean, anyway, that’s just my view on things and what we try to strive for.

See, I know we were talking beforehand, and then we’re talking about people that are just kind of, they’re just kind of being on the bus just going along with everything. I’m kind of a pain in the butt. I am a questioner, I want to know why we’re doing it. Why this is the best way we’re doing it. We’ve always done it this way. Well, has that way you’ve always done it always been successful. What would it take to try something new? Why are you willing or unwilling to try something? And sometimes, I’ve learned over the years that that’s not the best attitude to have. It’s just being a pain. But as I’ve gotten more mature in my approach to these things, it becomes like, oh, we really didn’t consider that before. I was like, Well, would you be interested in having a documented discussion on this or kind of put together some reading material on this before we talk about moving forward? Because the same ideas are not going to get you to new places

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And, you know, I keep on referring to Jim Collins, because I love his book. But he said it in the social sector. He’s got a social sector version of that book, he said, to be effective in the nonprofit world, and you probably are witnessing you kind of described a little bit of your own evolution on this. You can’t approach it like you’re a king, rather much more like you’re a senator. And you’ve got to be a very astute politician to know how to push, know when to lay off the brakes a little bit, know how to get the right people on board there. Do you build something like this? Because decision-making processes in the nonprofit world are extremely decentralized.

I had a staff member before, you know, he joined my association management firm and he’s just really detail-oriented really good like this, but he would get incredibly frustrated by how long it took them to do things, and Ron’s, you know, to remind you, yes, it’s decentralized, it seems a little bit messy. But in the end, you actually end up with better decisions. So I think that that’s something to be said about because everybody’s bought into this. But the challenge there is that not everybody perhaps is as tough as you, Travis. Some will, unfortunately, the really good ones will just say, You know what, screw it, screw it, I’m gone. 

Yeah, they will just leave. And you hear this all the time, the turnover rate for executive directors, or CEOs, or fundraising professionals, and sometimes quality board members. The numbers are astounding, you’re looking between 8 months and 20 months. So less than two years, we’re just cycling through these people. I was an aircraft mechanic for a number of years before getting commissioned in the Navy. And if you keep using the same tool over and over and over again, and sometimes you start using it, like a screwdriver, then you know, it becomes a hammer and you know, using things for something that wasn’t designed for? Well, you’ll end up wearing that tool out.

And it’s the same thing that we find in the nonprofit world where you get an executive director and you expect them to do everything, or you get that fundraiser and you run them through the wringer, their zone of genius is networking and putting together big collaborations. But you’re bogging him down with administrative paperwork that can be done by any intern, any VA, any first time guy, but you’re burning them out on the minutia, or you’ve got a great couple of volunteers that love what you’re doing. They love the power of the organization. That is their zone of genius, and they love you for it. But then you never give them any recognition.

Or you give the other marketing agency guy, you gave him the tweets to put the tweets out?

I mean, that would be like someone asking me, as a nonprofit podcast host and a consultant, former board member, volunteer, like, hey, we’d really like you to show up to the event. And could you set up tables? Not only does that not utilize my skill set, but it’s also almost insulting. Now if I’m there, and people are putting on tables, I’m gonna go pitch in. But if you brought me there, just to set the tables like dude, you completely missed the bus.

What I was saying about the number-two reason about why one or two reasons why they would leave. And the worst part about it is most of them won’t say they’ll just say, oh my family or time requirements have changed and I’ve got to move on. And unfortunately, in the nonprofit world, we kind of just take that and say, Okay, well, sorry to see you go. I challenge you to dig a little deeper. Dig a little deeper into that, folks, you’re gonna get some interesting information.

I had a question come up in one of my Facebook groups this week. I like this question came up, I was frustrated with some of the responses I was getting from founders and executive directors, like, oh, yeah, this is great and all, but I’ve got to go ask my board, like, the question I posed in these groups is, Are you the Chief Executive Officer? Or are you the chief I gotta go ask the board everything officer? And what does that look like? And I’m not talking about, you know, them signing off on a $20,000 package, I’m having them sign up to do something that cost the organization $0, that can be done very, in a very short timeframe, that has the potential to make them, you know, a couple of thousand dollars a month in recurring donations? Well, I gotta go ask my board. Great. When does your board meet next? Eight months from now? What are the chances that you’re going to sell it to them as I sold it to you? What are the chances they’re going to be on board with this? Are they just going to say no, because they don’t want to be bothered with doing the new thing?

And what I’d say to that Travis is probably that that’s an onion with multiple peeling like this, behind that, what the reason it is, and that’s just my nature, as to why I believe we’re really digging into this. Here’s my observation on that. The first thing, it goes to what I was saying earlier, that this whole structure of nonprofits themselves, it’s a very decentralized, power base and decision-making process in itself. But there is a culture that we create where executive directors, I’m gonna say that they’re either chicken, or they’ve had the fear, maybe at some point in their career, and I was getting some of this, you had the fear of God put into you by a board, because God forbid, you know, you might do something and you’re gonna get, called out like this. 

I remember some board meetings and the team was like walking the gauntlet. They’re trying and trying to walk the gauntlet. And then at the end of it, my staff was like, Oh, God, we survived that one. Because on the board and of side of things, we just do a horrible job of recruiting, we do a horrible job of training, and we do an even worse job, an abysmal job of making sure that we’ve got a congenial professional culture that’s being flourished on this now. But we’re gonna have a lot of stuff that’s going to be you know, nodding on this, because I’m not saying anything that people haven’t already said, there’s a lot out there. But the thing that’s really important in all of this, to keep in mind is that, in my observation of things, what we do for recruitment of board members is flawed. 

Because we have a tendency of taking the first warm body rather than no wait, I remember very clearly being CEO of one there, we had a board member for God’s sake, that guy knew three months prior we’re gonna have strategic planning retreat. And then after that, like we know more often than that, we had a big cocktail reception. It was a networking industry thing. It was the thing you did not miss in the industry. It was the big thing people flew in for that there. The dude showed up and missed that strategic planning thing, but then had the gall to show up for the cocktail.

Oh, the thing that benefited him most he was there for.

And he flaunted it literally, he was like what are you gonna do about it? And I remember I had drinks with the board chairs, and he was just frustrated and angry. And I said you’re right. I agree. This is unacceptable. This is totally on us. What are you going to do about it. Like you need to do something, oh but we can’t get rid of them. Because if we do that, well, then who’s going to be occupying that seat will be empty? And I said, and?

it’s empty if he doesn’t do any work anyway.

And? literally, I said And? and he said I guess I never really thought of it that way. Yeah, yeah. But then came the question of the courage there because he didn’t have a culture there were expectations were put up. I firmly believe in a lot of this. And I have this conversation with other nonprofit chairs I counsel and I say if you expect little, you will get little.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. lowering the bar only gets it to a place where people can trip over it.

And then the most motivated people don’t respect you. 

Well, the people that are the right people that are on the bus, let’s go back to Jim Collins here. You get the right people on the bus or in the right seats on the bus, but then you allow someone on the bus that doesn’t pull their weight, that gossip that’s not on time that wastes your time. And then that person is then not appropriately disciplined in whatever they It looks like the good people that you have on the bus, the right people that are doing amazing things, they’re gonna lose confidence in their leadership, and they’re gonna leave. Because if they’re holding themselves accountable, and they’re holding everyone else accountable, and everyone’s moving on the same page and working together, but this other guy is kind of being a pain for whatever reason is not held accountable, then why would they waste their time in a great organization if the organization doesn’t have these standards and it’s not raising the bar and holding people to high standards?

And that’s true, but the second, that’s the first part of it, but the second problem, and this is my, my assessment of things is that reviewing a lot of the dialogue that’s out there about this conversation, you’re gonna get a lot of people telling them that, you know, this isn’t revolutionary, a lot of people are shaking their heads. And I agree, I agree, I agree. But that which is put out there, for board directors, in my opinion, tends to be coming very much from the perspective of former executive directors, staffers, or consultants who used to be executive directors, and nothing wrong with that. I am one of those guys there. Their perspective on things is very different.

And it comes from almost a punitive kind of Charlie Brown teacher they’re at, they’re saying, you know, thou shalt do this. Nobody joins a board or volunteers their time to follow rules. They do it for the inspirational thing, and you get them first on the inspiration. And then you create the culture and they self-govern themselves, and the training that you provide has to be presented as well, in an inclusive fashion from the perspective of the receiving end of things.

If you give somebody like a lot of the stuff that’s out there about governance training, in my view of things is very much you need bloody well, a PhD in governance and corporate governance and law to be able to understand or make out what that means. When again, this is not their full-time job. I want to repeat that, again, repeat this always to yourselves, executive directors, this is not their full-time job. Understand that it’s not, it’s not reasonably expected, you’ve got to be able to break it down into bite-sized pieces that make sense, that is practical, that is easily adaptable for somebody to be able to quickly get. And that is where I think the biggest part of the problem that we’re trying to address, at least with the society of nonprofit board directors, is to break it down into a fashion that’s not overwhelming. That’s agile, and it’s adapting. But it’s also from the needs and the perspectives of board directors, which are different than the staff.

You said something in our pre-interview that really kind of brings this home that like the board is there to prevent nefarious law-breaking activities, A, and B is what you’re doing, making that impact moving the needle forward, doing what the community needs to do. And I think if you can answer those two things, and understand what the mission is, then you’re at least doing your base level job as a board member. Yeah, you know, I don’t. I don’t know what kind of impact a board is going to have if they’re not trained. You have me as a consultant, then you probably have the same thing. You get frustrated when you talk to someone. And again, I’m in the military. And I always end up going back to this stuff. If you’re in the military, you spend serious time, serious money on training and planning. That is what you do unless you are boots on the ground, airplane in the whatever, you are training.

And then you get into the nonprofit world or I’ve read veterans that started nonprofits. And they have never considered training, putting aside a budget for training. Like are you training your CEO of your organization, your nonprofit, like the money that would be spent on a CEO of a for-profit organization? How about the department heads for your program managers? Are they training? Or is this your board getting training? Do you have a chunk of money in your budget, to enrich the lives of the people in your organization for their own personal professional development and to do a better job for your organization and for your mission to ultimately impact the community that you serve?

No, I completely agree. But also developing the training in formats that are easy to digest. Because I’ve also had my chats with a number of board directors and like this and say, I think if you come at the heavy and hard with you’re going to know this you got to know this and particularly or you’re you got to know not to do that not to That’s hardly inspirational, a job predicated on what you’re not supposed to do is hardly inspirational. And I think we lose people on the front end, good, qualified people who would go into and do amazing things in the corporate world in leadership roles and do amazing things and be great people to work with. We lose out on them as leaders, because of what must have been said, it’s been the training out there it is too voluminous. It’s too complicated.

And I think in many ways, we have to simplify it and bring the board rule down to its bare bones at the nonprofits for what it’s really supposed to be like you said, it’s to watch out, which is really frankly, only a small part of things most boring, but I do believe most nonprofits are, are well run in many respects and probably better run than for-profit entities. But utilizing the best of our society’s leaders to solve our society’s ails. And you do that by constantly checking in and saying, How are we making progress? What are some of those roadblocks? And how do we put our collective, that’s the whole point of having a board and a group of people, going to put our collective heads together and say, how do we tackle this darn problem? Are we making movement on this? Not to literally rehash or have the executive director rehash the report of everything that they did the last week. send it to me in an email, if you must, I’ll look at it. And if I have a question, I’ll take it up with you there. But don’t utilize my time. I mean, on board meetings, sometimes where it’s like two bloody hours of reports, I was on one meeting there recently, where that two-hour meeting, 10 minutes of which we were talking about discussions about some strategy.

I say send me the reports, and I read ahead. And if I have questions, I’ll follow up in an email before the board meeting, like, Hey, this is a little confusing. Can you explain to me either in an email or, you know, sometime after the board meeting, that’s not what board meetings are for but, you know, when I look at organizations, I think that they don’t really give their board a direction. They’re just there, especially if they’re young. And I noticed some people like, you know, Chuck Loring out there that say that you’ve got to have your board members be three things ambassadors, advocates, and askers. And if you haven’t asked potential board members if they’re willing to do these things, then chances are you don’t have the right person on the bus.

I’ve got a coaching client over the last year, we’ve been working on her bylaws and some different things. And, you know, she made one of the mistakes that a lot of startups make, and they had really absentee board members just people sign a piece of paper. So they can incorporate in this not encouraged at any level. But it was like, Well, it’s time to recruit board members that are going to make an impact. And you know, one of the things I always have them do is like, do you have five hours or 10 hours a week or sometime a week to dedicate to this job, because people I think will weed themselves out whether they have the exact time or not. But, you know, put it out there, see what you got. And we came up with a board questionnaire and stuff. And she was maybe thinking she was gonna get two or three people interested. And I was like, now you’re gonna get 10, or more interested, she had 15 highly qualified individuals that were knocking on her door when she put that out there to try to be on her board.

He doesn’t want to people who want to be part of something but don’t have the passion to start a nonprofit, and something that you want to serve. And it burns in you so much that you have certain organizations do this, to then think that no one else has the same passion. They might not be as intense as you, right, but there’s people out there willing to serve, darn hear a thing that you’re going to come up with, but you have to ask. And when she went out there, she called me immediately, she said, I cannot believe that I got this many people involved. I was like, that’s actually right around the area that I thought would be interested in she’s like, really, I thought it was gonna be this. And I was like, Why do you think so little of yourself and your purpose? And she wanted to say I don’t but she was like, I do think that it’s not that important. It’s like, no, that’s not true.

Based on the amount of stuff that you put together based on stuff that you’re dedicating your life to this thing. Your events are off the chart, I see nothing but great reviews in your social media group. People are engaged in what you’re doing. And what part of that do you not feel like you’re enough, you’re more than enough. And the type of leader that you are the type of visionary you are, people are going to surround you. And this is evidence that you’re doing the right thing. So get them on board and get them interviewed, and make sure you know what you want your board to do. Like, oh, their board hasn’t been doing anything. Have you told them what you would want them to do? Have you talked to five people a week about your mission? Maybe share every social media posts if that’s an expectation you have, have you told them?

Yeah, yeah very much. Well, with that said, I said before, expect little you will get little expect a lot of stuff you will get a lot. But I would say congratulations to her. But I would say she probably would have even gotten more out of that. If she had even taken a step further and said, and just like any job description, the good ones, they have a little paragraph about what you can get what, why you should join our company. No board postings I’ve ever seen said what you’re going to get out of this. None of them. I’ve never seen one yet. I hope I see one of these days. But I personally have never seen that, where they actually said, This is what you can get out of this experience and why this is important.

Because I’ve never seen one either. And usually, in the business world, you want to pitch something like the benefits? Or what’s in it for me.

Like if you got a business, you want the best candidates because it’s your people that make your organization be what it is, right? So you want an amazing pool of resumes coming in? You got to pitch it a little bit. Yeah. But we don’t do that in the nonprofit world for your most important advisors. What’s that saying? The best? Do you want something done? Get a busy person.

Absolutely. My big thing is holding people accountable. When people first meet me, they often say that I’m generous and kind, but they don’t usually say that I’m nice, because holding people accountable is apparently not nice. How do you know that one’s ready to be held accountable, and I don’t blame them. But how would you encourage an organization that is maybe struggling with their board interactions, to have their board held accountable for the things that they said they were going to do?

Well, that kind of sounds again, against the Code of Conduct there. But if you set it out clearly from the process that the best way in my book about ways to vet and recruit better board members, I said it’s your best way of creating the right culture is maybe it’s cutting it off at the past, to begin with. Now, if you’ve got a bunch of bumping logs already on the board, that’s a whole lot of problems you’re going to have to work through that. But your best way right from the beginning is to start setting up expectations on one hand, but yes, also, to attract those right types of people we can’t just always goad things out with the stick, you got to offer a little bit of the carrot on this.

You need the stick, you need the stick, you need the carrot and the carrot of that is why we think we’re amazing. And this is why I think you’re going to get something out of this, and why we need really good leaders like yourself, 

Mark, I love everything we’ve talked about today, I wanted to give you a chance before we cut it off here to talk about what you have on the horizon. 

Indeed, indeed, look what I’ve learned over the years has not been easy. Frankly, as I said, I can say that five years later, a little bit, you know, tongue in cheek, I was fired into success. I learned a lot of the hard ways about what makes for a good board. What good makes for a good dynamic, what makes for a good relationship between an executive director and their board. What makes board members, the best board members to want to be involved to be engaged. And that’s what then the emphasis largely behind the society of nonprofit board directors where we’ve created this environment like this.

And what we’re doing now, February 26th to 28th is the nonprofit board Summit. So you can go to nonprofitboardsummit.org. This is a two and a half-day intensive conference, where your board, a board chair, and your board members are going to get everything they need to know about what’s going to be made for a personally transformative volunteer leadership experience, how they can be much more effective, how they can be much more strategic, how they can move themselves on in terms of recruiting better, how they can get themselves out of the weeds, understanding how to have a better relationship with their CEO, all of which what makes this so pure, so wonderful, is that this is not a conference program that was made by me. I wish I could say I was the smart guy behind it.

No, July, August of 2020. We put out a call to board directors and hundreds of them and asked them, What frustrates you? What do you want to learn more about there? and the responses we got were overwhelming over 50 responses and the program that we have at nonprofitboardsummit.org is reflective of their comments as well. So if you’re a board director, and you’re not content, simply just with playing easy you want to make 2021 a year of impact. I challenge you, and encourage you to go and check that out. Check out the thenonprofitboardsummit.org and also nonprofitboarddirectors.org as well.

If you’re an executive director, this isn’t specifically for you, but I’m going to put this out to you, this is an advantage to you take it from me, your best boss, your board is an informed one. Okay? The best bosses are the ones that know their stuff, they know their stuff, they’re a joy to work with, it’s far more effective, far easier as well. And probably with you know, spending limits to get a board member or a few of your board members in as well. Wherein you can get them trained, for a week, they can connect and learn from others as well as what works. So in the end, as a result of them going to this you’re going to have a better boss and a better worker, they’re there and you’re gonna enjoy coming to work. So certainly hope that you know, as many of you come out there and register, we’ve got an amazing faculty of speakers that are just amazing. And check it out again at nonprofitboardsummit.org.

Thanks for that Mark, who’s going to be your headliner this year? Who’s your top speaker?

Yeah, our keynote speaker, her name is Margie Worrell. And Margie Worrell, her whole talk is about bravery, bravery, and assuming a role in terms of leadership. And I think that this, is so I’m so excited, frankly, for her talk in particular, because often enough, change really only happens in nonprofits. When you’ve got that right person who’s got enough gumption to say that’s it. I’m doing it. Damn the torpedo’s full steam ahead. We’re doing it. We’re doing it. That takes a lot of guts that takes courage. And Margie is going to tell you a little bit about how you can find that little bit of red badge courage in your board and any single organization to be able to take it to the next level.

Hey, I appreciate that. Mark, thanks so much for being on my show today. I’m looking forward to the summit.

Thank you very much.