How to Build your Board with Mark Pfister

Mark Pfister. His popular book, ‘Across The Board: The Modern Architecture Behind an Effective Board of Directors,’ an Amazon best-seller with circulation in over 70 countries, has influenced a whole new generation of Board Directors.

Travis and Mark talk about setting up a Board, finding the perfect Board Members, and structuring a Board that will be successful.

Converation Highlights

{00:48} About Mark Pfister.
{02:47} Background on Mark’s Board and what it looks like.
{06:48} The size and structure of a modern Board without wasting bureaucracy.
{12:05} Being a Chief Executive Officer, and what Mark’s organization looks like.
{17:34} When you have top-level guys, especially on boards, working on something they have no business spending time on?
{25:02} Being challenged to ask uncomfortable questions, not being compliant.
{28:24} What happens when you are stuck with a sudden emergency that knocks you off your feet.
{31:19} Be open to feedback. Once you have your mission have you checked your impact on the community? Are you meeting your goal? Do you have goals?
{35:15} How do you structure awards intentionally, and make sure you are starting your board or recreating your board with the success that you want to have sure?
{40:58} Why having a marketing expert on the board is essential.
{42:03} Where do you find the perfect board members? {46:49} Planning for the future and picking board members that will spread your message.
{49:42} Why Mark has worked on over 800 Boards.
{55:18} Advice for Board of Directors, preparing for the eventual changing of the guard.

Full Transcript

Hey, welcome, everyone. I’m here today with Mark Pfister, the author of Across The Board. And he’s done work with more than 800 boards and board committees. Mark, how are you doing today?

Travis, good to see you and a pleasure to be on your show.

I love these things. I know that I probably get more questions about boards and board governance, and other than fundraising it’s the biggest area of questions that I get. Why don’t you give the audience a little bit about your background?

Sure. Sure. Well, the long story short is I come from a very technical background in science, engineering, and technology. And in my early career of being in that space, it was very noticeable that the leadership in those particular verticals, although they were extremely smart people, of course, very technical, the leadership commonly lacked in those areas. So for me, it was kind of a niche area that I started to work my way into. And that of course, over the years led through different titles and positions to seat level and then into the boardroom. And today, I kind of share that space as both a non Executive Board Director, but also one of my joys, I’ll say, a very fulfilling area is acting as a chief Board consultant for many of the nonprofit, private and public organizations that I consult and advise. So it’s been an interesting path. It hasn’t been the straightest of paths, as most people may think about in their careers. But it’s been extremely fulfilling. And my passion is in strategy and governance, which is a perfect fit for the board space.

Oh, that’s fantastic. And I don’t know about the people listening here, but I’m not a fan of the straight and narrow path, because there’s not a lot of learning and not a lot of growth, on that straight path it’s not to where you focus on one area, then over time, you become multidisciplinary. And when you start getting multidisciplinary, you realize how many similarities exist in all these different areas, which makes it easier to spread your reach and your value.

Now, I know you’re the author of Across The Board, which is a fantastic book that I’ve been reading over the last couple of days. And the insights in the first half aren’t really like earth-shattering, groundbreaking, but you give a lot of background, a lot of history of how you get like expectations of traits of a great board what that looks like, and then the history getting into like strategy, and a little bit of politics, not political sides. But like how that builds into what we have, as a board. Can you give us a little background on the board in general and what that looks like?

Sure. Well, the whole gist of the story or the background, and the teaching of this book, is focusing on what I view as the most prevalent issue and challenge for boards. And that is true of public, private and nonprofit space, and maybe even more so in the nonprofit space, which has to do with what I view as modern architecture behind the board, how the board is structured. I personally believe that the structuring issue of all types of boards or all types of boards, 90 plus percent of their problems or inefficiencies are due to the fact that they were not structured properly from the beginning.

So in my consulting and advisory world, I always joke I say it was like that movie Groundhog Day where every day or every board I got involved with, it started to always point back to the fact that it wasn’t necessarily the issue to solution that that board brought me in for or the cause of it was not necessarily where they think they pinpointed it, it always or very commonly came back to the fact that the board was not structured properly, or when I say architected properly from the beginning.

So in the book, it walks through some of the background and the history. And I’ll say the trending also of where boards are headed today. And looking back over a significant amount of time, I’m always a believer that you have to know where you came from to know where you’re going. So it’s extremely important to understand the trending and the evolution of boards over the past 50 plus years, or maybe even more. So, to your point, I also get into the background and history of strategy. It truly is a shame that today when we talk about boards, the initial word or what I call your parallel word that pops into your mind is governance. I actually think that should be the second word, the first word should be strategy. And then the next word, if you think about a board or a board director, the next word after strategy should be governance. And the reason for that is that you truly can’t govern something if you don’t understand the strategy which leads you also to the understanding of the goals. It doesn’t work the other way around.

So thinking about that, and this is truly the foundational issue with most senior leaders and board directors is that they step in with the mindset of governance. But they haven’t spent the time or the due diligence on understanding the goals and the strategy and how those are linked. And then the full circle of that, which is how are they going to oversee and measure those goals and those strategies. So very simply, the first portion of the book talks about those components and walks you back through the significant amount of time in the history, the development of governance and strategy, and brings you to this present day with all these challenges around that. That, to me truly, is foundational for a board director, they have to understand that to then move into why would they structure or architect their board in a certain way, it all leads back to that earlier trending and the evolution of where we’re at today.

So I think at the point, Travis, that you’re at in the book, right now, you’re going to slowly get into this structuring components that truly walk through this building of an efficient and effective board for any entity type inclusive of nonprofits.

90 plus percent of their problems or inefficiencies are due to the fact they were not structured properly from the beginning.

Mark A Pfister Tweet

You know, from my experience of working on boards, and being in the military, where everything’s run by departments, and you have meetings, and they’re pretty close to more like structure. If you don’t have a structure in place, if you don’t have that solid foundation, that architecture if you will, you’re really at the whim of the cult of personality, who’s the big dog in the room? Are they bullying and pushing people around? Is anything actually getting done? And is the bureaucracy and the rules written in the organization really preventing people in the organization from taking action, or making that board process really slow-moving? And in today’s world, especially with the digital age, with COVID, with all these things happening, I don’t think you can really afford to have a large slow board, but more a small agile board and reactive, able to move. What does that look like? And what is your opinion on the size of the board, or the structure as related to bureaucracy?

Well, we’re in this realm right now, which I find quite strange. I’ve always been a process-related person because I understand that process doesn’t necessarily have to be a hindrance to progress. And a recent article I wrote about this was that in certain organizations, the board is actually being pushed to the side when it comes to what’s called innovation governance. So a quick example of this is in Microsoft and a few other very large technology companies, they purposely have asked the board not to be involved in any of the governance or the strategic oversight of their innovation groups, because they view governance as a hindrance to innovation and to progress, which it’s beyond me how a board could actually be separate from that because what you’re basically saying is that the board no longer has any type of oversight or input into the vision, the future of what that company wants to be because they jettison the responsibility of even understanding what the innovation areas are doing.

So the board now becomes very laser-focused on the mission, what they do well now, but they have a very little view of the vision, which is what they want to do or enable in the future. So looking at that mindset, that a board is a hindrance, or in some way diminishes the effectiveness of an organization, it’s just unbelievable for me to think about not to mention the risk and the liability that it puts on a board director or a sea-level in an organization. So to answer your question, and this is that I’m a fan of having processes that act as guardrails, but not so much where it’s defining every single task. I mean, that never works. A great example of this and senior leadership, and I write a little bit about this in the book, is that a board that understands the goals of an organization are the what and the why, right? And then if you view strategy in those same simple terms, strategy is solely the how are we going to get this done?

So if you were to peel back my mind right now, and I was in a boardroom, and I was hearing a presentation or getting data or information from somebody that was proposing something that we were going to vote on I would think very specifically, tell me the what and the why first, which is the goal, can I match that to a goal that the board right now is overseeing or interested in? the what and the why is the goal and then I’m intently listening to how are you going to achieve that goal? With the guidelines of being in under the purpose of the organization and the values and the culture of the organization, of the course, you’re overlaying those requirements as well. But intently listening to the how is the strategy because there can be multiple hows and how you get to the support of your goals, and also the what and the why of the organization. And I think this is one of the biggest misses right now that a board is viewed as this hindrance to, to your question when they can actually by asking the right questions, they can guide leadership, whether that be the CEO of a private or a public organization, or the executive director or CEO of a nonprofit. Just by asking those questions, they are meant to elevate the outcome of the discussion period. That’s all it’s there for.

So there are a couple of principles I mentioned here. And it’s really about the thought process when you move from a sea-level into a board-related responsibility. To me, there should be a shift that happens in your mind where you say, I’m going to go from giving direction 80% of the time and asking questions 20% of the time, as a CEO or an executive director, I’m going to now put on a different hat, I’m going to ask questions 80% of the time, and give my opinion or my input, or my experience the other 20%. And I think that’s some of this, to answer your question, again, of why are we going down this path where a board is potentially viewed as a hindrance? And if these processes are in that board, does that hold us back? I don’t believe that’s the case. And you know, having worked with hundreds of boards, when they get that mindset correct, it clicks, they get it, and it’s unbelievable, the progress and the processes that are just, it’s incredible that the change in the productivity of those boards.

Oh, absolutely. And what I deal with as the Nonprofit Architect largely is startup organizations. So kind of idea through five years of operation. They’re trying to figure all this stuff out. And I talked to hundreds of small nonprofits. And I asked them a question or presented it like, oh, I’m going to have to spin that to your board. And I was like, Okay, I understand. That’s what you’ve got to set up. I’m offering you an almost no time, a no-cost, easily implementable thing to help your organization. And you’re telling me that you need to wait three months to run this by your board? Does that seem like there’s a problem in the way it’s structured? Like, are you the Chief Executive Officer? Or are you the chief ask the board everything officer? What is your organization? I know, you’ve seen this out in your world.

Yeah. And it really comes back to again, you know, a board director should very quickly be able to size up any request, or anything that could be valuable or detrimental to the organization, by simply going through a very talk about process, again, a thought process or a decision process that can start out with the values of the organization, which also sit with its goals, then moving to the plan to accomplishments of the organization and the board for that time period. So there can be very easily set processes. And these are many things I talk about in the consulting work that I do to help boards get to the point where each individual board member, they’re still operating independently, because you don’t want to lose that independence of their thought process or the diversity of their input, of course.

But it’s helpful for them to also have a vetting process of how they go through a question or something that’s been proposed. And if you can put that through a process that starts at a very high level, again, values of the organization, is that a fit? Yes, it is. Okay, let’s move to the next level of this, it doesn’t fit our future vision, yes, it does, then it doesn’t fit our mission of the organization, which is what we do well, or want to do well now. By doing that, and filtering those things through the organization, if each board director is able to do that, you’d be amazed at how quickly you can get to very valuable decisions that have been vetted. The due diligence is done quite quickly. And if it’s not a fit, you’re not spending days, weeks, or months talking about it, you already know it doesn’t fit one of those hierarchical components of your decision making. So until we either fix that, or we just say it’s not right for us, we’re gonna move on to something else. It’s more valuable to the organization.

But there’s this paralysis, Travis, it’s happening right now in decision making. And one last thing to mention about that is that there’s a concept out there right now, that talks about what I’ve named governance simultaneity. And the problem with this is that there are so many things happening at one time and COVID this whole pandemic has really brought us to the forefront where everything kind of kicked in at once. Boards were dealing with pushing the organization to do that digital transformation, which they pushed off for the last 10 years. And now they have to do it because of the remote nature of their workforce. Decisions of evaluations and effectiveness of workers that were historically in place and not remote and now they’re working remote or work from home. You know, so many things happened at once. And many of these boards were just not prepared for it. They didn’t have a way of systematically and effectively working through these challenges. And this governance, simultaneity just buried so many of these boards.

Oh, I can definitely understand then how that looks and what that looks like. I want to bring a quote from the book that I thought has real relevance and impact on the decision-making process. Roy Disney, it’s not hard to make decisions when you know where your values are.

And, you know, I challenge both executive leaders as well as board members to say, before you request the data, and you’re posed with a challenge, or a question, I think, first and foremost, to your own values and the organization’s values. And if you only base it on those components, what would your answer be right at this moment, Roy Disney was a master at this. He basically would take questions or problems that were brought to him and he tested this out for some period of time where he said before he even requested all the data and the other input. He says, If I had to give you an answer right now, based on the values of the organization, this is what I would say, and start down that path. And then I’m going to get back to you just as soon as I can, once I have the data. And he found out that almost 100% of the time that the values-based decision and answer that he gave, immediately, was, again, almost 100% of the time backed up later on by the data or the decision making of other folks that were also looking at the values the purpose, the culture of the organization, which to me should be the first areas that are looked at as part of decision making, not necessarily the data, or the things that you would Google, find information on, you know, it’s the culture and the purpose of the organization, it should be in the values that should be looked at first and decision making.

I think this is one of the biggest misses right now that a board is viewed as a hindrance.

Mark A Pfister Tweet

You’d think this would be common sense being that anything you do with a nonprofit organization really must point back to meeting the mission. So it almost isn’t needed. But I think it’s a great small little snippet, a little piece of micro-content that reminds us exactly what it is that we’re doing. If you are running an organization and the desktop, screensaver, or a big poster next to your desk isn’t the mission and impact you desire to have, what are you really doing? Are you just doing the daily tasks, or are you just going through the wheel that you’ve created? You’re just a cog in the wheel? Or are you pointing everything back to that mission? That vision that impacts one and keeps you on task and on track, keeps your motives pure. And helps you avoid that mission creep that shiny object syndrome like, Oh, that looks interesting over there. Let’s go check that out. Well, in business, we might call that a distractor from dollar-producing activities.

How much time are you spending every day on something that’s not dollar-producing activity? Or if you’re in the nonprofit world, not related to governance, fundraising, or actual impact and you’re making your programs? If you’re not relating your activities to one of those three things then what are you really doing? Are you doing minutiae? Do you have your top-level guys working on something they have no business spending time on? What does that look like? What have you seen on the boards that you’ve come across?

Well, there’s a mix right now, I mean, the boards that have truly put the effort into the restructuring, or again, as I like to call it, the architecture, they’re fairly good at keeping on track, because they have the processes in place to allow for that. And they also have the culture on the board that basically states that they’re policing themselves individually, and they’re also policing the overall board. So many times on the board, individual board members are given that power. And by the way, they have to do that in a respectful way. It’s not just cutting somebody off, it’s saying that you’re allowing for discourse, you’re allowing for what I like to call respectful dissent, which is a way of opening up deliberation and debate in such a way where nobody feels like they’re being personally attacked.

It’s the idea that’s being vetted to come to a better outcome. And you know, boards that have some of these basic principles in place, they’ve discussed them, they’ve documented them as an example, and maybe even in their bylaws or in their operating agreements of how the board’s going to operate. Those boards, definitely, what they do are only the technical components of board operations. And they’ve added the personal or interpersonal type of aspects to it as well, which is most important for the communication. You’re never going to get a group of people, If it’s more than two or more people, you’re never going to get 100% of the agreement all the time. But if you’re focused and the folks on the board, which I like to measure for this, which is their EQ, their emotional intelligence, and their MQ, their mindfulness intelligence, you’ll get to that shortly in the book, Travis, by the way also, it’s a way of evaluating the maturity of that decision-makers ability to allow for discourse but not take it as an example as a personal attack on that.

It’s a way of, if you’re delivering a message if you’re challenging something, and you know, the board director next to you worked on this thing for six months, are you just dismissing it in terms of its theory, its idea and all the effort that’s been put into it? Or are you mindful of the fact of all the effort and the fact that it’s a passion of that person, but you still want to question it. So it’s a give and takeson both sides. The mindfulness isn’t your delivery. And the emotional intelligence side of this is how you receive things and then how you react to those areas.

These boards that are looking more deeply, you know, if I correlate this, Travis, back to the Across The Board book, you know, most boards focus very specifically on what I view is that the step one. Step one is what’s called a sphere of influence. It’s which people and what skill sets you have on your board period. Most boards stop there. The next step that I think is critical, which is more of the horizontal view of your board, which adds what I view as the character of your board is, have you evaluated or even trained the board to be more in tune with other areas of importance to the board? A great example of this is a board that has all of the same personality types in its people, which happens because everybody on the board is looking for people like them. So all of a sudden, you have all the same personality types. Whereas I immediately look for balance on a board. If I’m doing an evaluation, I’m looking for a balance of an analyst, a diplomat, a sentinel, which is a protector, and an explorer. If you’re missing any one of those personality traits, or one of those belief traits on a board, you’re going to make bad decisions. It’s not possible because you’re missing an explorer as an example, you’re possibly not looking forward enough, because that’s the explorer, they’re always looking at the next new shiny thing.

But that person by themselves in the decision-making capacity is not great, because they may not be focused on the mission, the current mission. So the current mission is going to be protected in most cases by the Sentinel, that wasn’t what we set out to do. It’s not in the bylaws, these are the types of comments you’d hear from the Sentinel. And the diplomat then, of course, is another viewpoint of looking at this balance on a board of saying, well, let’s make sure we hear everybody. And they’ll try to keep the discussion civil, and of course, get to the components that allow them to make a savvy decision. And then, of course, the analyst is the person that wants their data, they want to know that this is backed up in some way. But you can see the balance of those personality types really adds to the validity and the outcomes of decisions of any type of decision-making group, not to mention, of course, a board. So these are some of the balance areas to look to add the character to your board, which is where you get out of just somebody making a statement, or asking a very pointed question in their expertise area, there’s no depth to that there’s really no value to that.

I tell you, as you’re describing the different characters on a board, I immediately flashback to all the different times when I was each of those different characters, depending on what the situation dictated. I’m like, why are we not looking at the new things? Why are we just stuck with the status quo? We’re looking at this, like, it sounds expensive. We looked at the numbers on this. I understand that everyone has different viewpoints. And let’s take a look and see what everyone else has. And are you anywhere near the mission with this idea right now? Are we talking about changing our mission statement? And I’ve used a statement like that to really rein people back in. They were like, What are you talking about? That’s not what I meant. Well, it has absolutely nothing to do with our mission. So what are we talking about? Why are we spending time on this?

Most people do have an aspect of touching in their personality type in each one of those four areas I mentioned. But it’s my experience that most people have a dominant trait when it comes to either analyst, diplomat, sentinel, or explorer, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I just want to know, if I’m looking at architecting a board, I want to know if we have gaps in any of those areas because each one of those types is again, they’re instrumental in getting to not just a good outcome, but a great outcome in the decision making of that board. And if you overlay of course that process that I mentioned, that starts with the comparison of values, vision, mission, and then work from even down to the question of the operational or implementation capability of the organization. You know, these overlays of looking at those steps in slightly different ways, slightly diverse ways, it’s absolutely amazing when that decision making processes in place the outcomes you can get to and quickly, you know, there’s not just the effectiveness, but there’s the efficiency component of that process as well.

It’s interesting, I always find myself kind of being the guy that on the board is asking the uncomfortable question. I’m not okay with just casual compliance or whatever is being brought up. I want to know if this has been challenged. I want to know if this has been thought through. Is this something we’re just saying yes to because of a cult of personality? Or is this something that’s really going to have that positive impact on the organization that’s going to move us forward?

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, when we talk about the structuring of this, if we just add a little component to this, that eye view is another parallel type concept. If we talk about board committees as an example, you know, I can tell you firsthand that many boards if we go back in the nonprofit space, and we go back to this issue with the lack of true architecture or the effort put into the architecture, you see, a disparate mix of board committees, some have certain board committees, some organizations lack board committees. But there’s a trend, Travis, that I see in this, especially for nonprofits. And what this comes down to is that if I’m reviewing the structure of a board before I even look at the people on the board and their backgrounds, and again, personality types, or decision making approaches, whatever all those other components are, I want to first look at what is the structure of the board in terms of its committees, because that has a direct component of your decision making also.

So nonprofits that don’t have the following are equivalent of the following three committees. I can tell you, they are struggling now. And they will always struggle, and it’s the following: one is a program committee, which is, what exactly is it that this organization offers? What are the packages or the offerings of the organization? And is there a program committee that is overseeing that and understanding not just what they offer, but is it something that people want or is there a need for? A very simple question to ask, those types of things should be housed within what I call the program committee.

A development committee, this has to do with funding and grants, for nonprofits, or even just I’ll say, revenue streams or income type of streams for organizations. And when I mention these, Travis, I’m talking about not just the standalone committees, but the linkability or the linkages between those committees and how they’re working together. The third one is the Marketing Committee, or what I like to use the packaging committee. And that is, how is the program committee, what’s being offered to work with the development committee of how it’s going to generate revenue or income for the organization? How is the Marketing Committee then taking that and packaging up properly into things that are able to be understood easily and is a need, you package it in the way there’s a need for. Those three committees I mentioned are all interlinked. And if you’re missing one of them, or even a person doesn’t have that experience on a nonprofit board, I can tell you they’re going to struggle. You see, I’ve seen this across hundreds of boards, I work with it, they’re missing one of those committee areas or an expert on the board with that background.

I think this is one of the biggest misses right now that a board is viewed as a hindrance.

Mark A Pfister Tweet

It’s interesting. So we’ve got Program Committee, Development Committee, and Marketing Committee. I know that from my experience with startups, there are almost no marketing thoughts happening whatsoever. They have a passion for the organization, or the mission and vision, goals, impact, but they don’t want to share it with the world. And I point them to something like the Google Ad Grants where they get up to 10 grand a month in free Google ads, just for being a nonprofit. And I point them to my interview with Preston Cohen, but they’re still like, Yeah, but I don’t know what to say. Well, don’t let that stop you from trying, the best thing about marketing is you can put something out. And if it doesn’t work, you tweak it, and you put something new out. Just like dinner, people get hung up on dinner, what am I going to have for dinner? I don’t know, if you mess it up, you can just fix it tomorrow. Or the next day, you’re having another dinner coming up. It’s no big deal. It’s like this one meal is the end all be all. And so many ideas that come into the board, you feel like that way, you feel like that idea that comes in is the end all be all of the ideas. And then something like COVID happens and completely knocks you off your feet. And now you’re left wondering what are we going to do with this?

That’s right. That’s right. And, you know, knowing that those three groups are working together properly, allows for quicker pivots in the organization. I mean, many nonprofits had to pivot during this timeframe. Everything from available grants and donations to people getting involved and mainly not being able to do some of those face-to-face type interactions, which is usually where the trust is built and the connection is made. And that leads back into some sort of involvement or grant or donation from the personal aspect of somebody being involved with a nonprofit. But keep in mind that marketing components, I like to look and do a comparison often of again, the Program Committee, Development Committee, and Marketing Committee and understand if it’s working well or if they are not working well because there are misses in that structure. Is that directly correlate to the board’s ability each individual board member to raise funds? It’s commonly a requirement of a nonprofit board director to have the giver get right.

So interested in the trending in this is when there is alignment and progress. And in true effectiveness and efficiency through program development and marketing, the board directors are on average, more likely to be involved in the fundraising components because they know they have a backup, they’re not going to get caught in a scenario where they can describe what they offer in the program, how they go about getting donations and those things. But then they’re out in the cold because there’s no marketing material, nothing on the website they can direct that person back to to get that trust level, right? That’s a common thing.

Likewise, if the programs are not properly documented, or they’re disparate in some way, and it hasn’t been looked into to the level which the due diligence that’s required, a board director is not going to be comfortable in going out and representing that program, because maybe it’s not as impactful as it shouldn’t be. You’re not going to go and ask somebody for a few thousand dollars donation if even you as a board director don’t feel like the program or the offerings are as impactful as they should be. Right? This has so many ties to it. That also affects the operation of the board directors, not just solely the organization, it’s a much bigger thing.

I’m a huge believer that you have to have that feedback loop. I just published last week, so it’s the 16th of February we’re recording this thing. Last week, I published an interview with this girl and she was a recipient of services from a nonprofit that I’m familiar with. So often we talk about all the inputs, you know, what is the board doing? What is the fundraiser doing? What are the volunteers doing? Where were all these inputs? And we forget about the outcome and how that makes sense. And there’s no easier way to sell a product, a service, or your nonprofit, when you’re doing your impact, is it having those testimonials? What is the actual impact you’re you’re having if you’re feeding the homeless? It’s straightforward. It’s very simple. You show pictures of you all delivering food to the homeless, easy day. It’s a bigger impact than that, you actually interview someone to say that I wouldn’t have food without this program. The impact. No one cares about your mission, you have the best mission in the world no one cares. What are you doing with it? What’s the impact that you’re having?

You know, Colin Kaepernick did a great job of bringing awareness to the atrocities of some police departments across the US. Great. My problem with that is, what did he do once he had our attention? Not a lot, right? Regardless, of whether you think you should be playing in the NFL or not, whether kneeling was the right or wrong thing to do, I don’t care about any of that stuff. You got our attention? Great. What are you doing with it? And that’s the problem that I have with a lot of nonprofits. What are you doing? What’s your mission? Cool. How are you? How are you making an impact in your community towards your goal? And if you can’t answer that question, you really don’t have anything.

And look, I mean, in many cases, the expectations also for nonprofits have not been set to the same level of serving as a board director as compared to private and public organizations. So you’ll get to a point shortly in the book, Travis, where I talked about what’s called a board pitch book. And a board pitch book basically is many of the things I’ve talked about already in our discussion today. Structuring decision making, where that person fits if they are to join the board, these types of things are called out very clearly in what’s called a board pitch book. It shows basically, that this board is about something right? Values, vision, mission. This is how we’ve structured it, this is why you will be so important to the board, this is where you fit. This is the committee you’ll serve on or lead. And this is how everything fits together, those board pitch books. And this is again true for any entity type. It really makes a difference.

If you’re approaching someone I view it very similar to if someone’s applying to college, or if someone’s graduating high school, and they have their safety schools they’re applying to and they have their reach schools. And some in between on that right? Well, a board pitch book allows you to go out to all those different groups, even when I call your reach group folks that you would never in a million years think would join your board. But when they see that you put the effort into creating this pitch book that talks about structuring where they’re going to fit the time commitment, as an example is another huge misalignment for nonprofit board directors, right? When all that’s defined, it’s impressive. And all of a sudden, the people that you thought were your reach people to join the board, they’re all of a sudden all saying yes, and you’re trying to figure out how to manage all this now. It’s pretty amazing. But you know, it just comes back to that preparedness in a way that shows that you have either put discipline behind not just the organization but also discipline behind how you’re structuring the board and how you’re going to make it as effective and efficient as possible and a board pitch book is a great way to do that.

20% of the time, as a CEO or Executive Director, I'm going to now put on a different hat and I'm going to ask questions 80% of the time and give my opinion or my input 20% of the time.

Mark A Pfister Tweet

That sounds very similar to something I put together for one of my clients. It was really just a board questionnaire. And some of the questions in there that really had people thinking is, do you have 10 hours a week to dedicate to this board. And it’s not about the 10 hours, per se, it’s not like you got nine and a half, and you’re looking at firing a board member, it’s not about that. It’s understanding that there’s going to be work to be done. And that you’re saying yes, that you are going to make time out of your weekly schedule to have an impact on this organization. And my client was looking for new board members, and she was hoping to get like maybe 3 people interested, she got 12 people interested. And just like to your point, those reach candidates, all five on five, so they were interested in being on her board and providing that mission, vision, goals, impact, all that fun stuff. And she was blown away, she called me immediately. She’s like, I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t care what you’re doing, stop what you’re doing and listen to what I have to say. She was so excited about the response that she got. But what I really want to know is how do you actually structure a board intentionally? What are the things you look at? How do you align that up to make sure you’re starting your board, or recruiting your board with the success that you want to have?

named areas. One is what’s called the board’s sphere of influence. And before you think of an individual person’s name, before you think of somebody who will be great for the position, eliminate all of that and just go to what are the requirements of this particular board in terms of skill set? What do we need? I mentioned a moment ago, that balance between Program Committee, Development Committee, and Marketing Committee. I can tell you that every nonprofit needs someone who’s an expert in marketing, they need an expert in development, which is grants and donations in those types of areas. And there is a skill set for that, and also need someone that has had experience in developing programs for institutions or organizations. That’s the key right now. So the sphere of influence is focused on that it also looks at the level or ability of leadership. And then also, if I look at this in concentric rings in step one, I like to also understand what level of operations experience the board as a whole or each individual board director has. And those components form this wheel that I call your sphere of influence, which is truly the first step in understanding what expertise we need. So that’s the vertical considerations of expertise.

Then we move into something I mentioned earlier, step two of the construction or the architecture component, that’s called your plains of congruence. And this is the area that’s viewed as horizontal it could span across the entire board, or have components that are looked at by individual board members. And this is what builds the character of your board. Some examples of this are evaluating a board member’s maturity and EQ, emotional intelligence, and MQ mindfulness intelligence. Are they great communicators? Is this someone who’s going to take somebody not agreeing with them as a personal challenge or a personal attack on that? These are all underminers of getting to where you want to be. Another great example, as I mentioned, for your planes of congruence, step two, is your personality or leadership type traits, which is that analyst, diplomat, sentinel, and explorer, and I look for personally in boards that I architect and work with, I want to know we have deep experience with formal governance and formal strategy, not just you had a title. And of course, I’m good at those things that, don’t cut it anymore. There is a discipline for governance. And there’s a discipline for strategy as it applies to organizations and their size and their growth. So those are just some examples of this. You could have diversity components that add character to your planes of congruence, right?

At least 30% of women on your board, at least 30% are fit, you know, you’re aiming for 50% of previously underrepresented populations within your board makeup. Those are all character components of your board and your planes of congruence. And then thirdly, what’s called coverage and balance of the board architecture, proper board architecture, is looking at some level or degree of overlap of the knowledge areas of the board. So number one, I’m looking for a subject matter expert in each one of the areas we defined in step one, your sphere of influence, your expertise areas, I want to know that I have someone who’s an expert in each one of those particular knowledge areas, but that’s not good enough, right? Because that person and a great example of this is somebody who’s brought in a board with cybersecurity knowledge and they’re brought there for specifically that reason. Nobody else on the board commonly can challenge that person and what they propose and what outcomes they’ve come to. So, you have this bubble of decision-making in one area. I look for coverage and balance in this which is okay, I have the expert now, but who else on the board has some level of knowledge or expertise? Who knows there may not be a subject matter expert.

But if that person that’s leading that technology and cybersecurity committee has someone else that has some level of knowledge that can challenge them, now you’re having a deliberation and a debate, right? It’s not just someone saying it, we all nod our heads because we don’t have experience in that space, right. That’s the coverage and balanced type of view. And those three components create the depth of the board, by the way. We said your vertical component creates your expertise, that’s your sphere of influence. The horizontal component is your planes of congruence, which create your character, and then your coverage and balance that I just mentioned, create the depth of the board. If you can get those three areas balanced in some way, these boards are absolutely unstoppable. And the value they bring to the organization is incredible. So I know I talked to your ear off there, but those are the three and they’re very easy to implement, you just have to have a plan for it. This is what the book goes through, that repeatable roadmap of how to do that.

This is fantastic. I hadn’t considered having a marketing expert on the board that I’ve been a part of. Boards that I’ve been a part of that hasn’t been in consideration, but maybe based on the discussion that we’ve had, that’s not only a no brainer, but that’s also absolutely a must-have to have someone, I mean, skills of talking to the public, if nothing else, like how do you get your message out there?

I mean, remember, marketing isn’t solely just someone who’s creating ads, right? What I’m saying with marketing is that a marketing person can even educate the individual board members on what the programs or the program committee came up with, how they’re being packaged for development, and then how you as a board director can talk about it, right? Even talking about something is marketing. And these are amazing gaps on nonprofits, nonprofits, at their heart, they are still, this is true of every organization, I believe every organization, Travis, is truly at its core, they’re a technology and a marketing organization period. If you’re missing those components, it’s almost impossible to stay in business today, you have components of those two areas in everything that’s done.

The maturity of that decision-maker's ability to allow for discourse, but not take it as an example as a personal attack on them.

Mark A Pfister Tweet

Yeah, absolutely. So where do you find all these magical people that fill up your board that you need all these magical requirements and things? Where are these people located? I mean, is it like a unicorn phone directory, we go through and figure out who these people are there?

Yeah, I mean, there are organizations you can reach out to, I like to think that we’ve moved away somewhat from this friends and family type of board appointments. But in all honesty, your best candidates are going to be those that you know, or have worked within some way, or you have the personal experience of seeing how they operate. Commonly, it takes a little bit of time, to be with somebody to understand their values, to understand their purpose, right, that doesn’t always come out just in one or two, or three or five interviews. It’s really when you start to get into the nitty-gritty of the organization that you truly see someone’s character and what they’re about. And if they’re adding to or undermining the culture. Of course, that usually comes out later, unfortunately, but there are, of course, placement organizations. Nonprofits don’t tap into placement organizations as often as private and public organizations. But, you know, I like to think that you’re looking for folks that have some sort of discipline and background. LinkedIn is a great place to do searches. And I’ll tell you whether these large placement organizations or executive search organizations admit it or not they are using LinkedIn more than you may think. So it’s important to have your profile properly done and represent yourself properly for this.

And just maybe it’s a great point to bring up right now, Travis, and this is that you’re looking for, people that have a balance in the board director, vertical, the following areas, they have the expertise, which is what they know, they have experience, which is how they’ve applied it. And then the third one is overlooked, but it’s getting more traction now is what I like to call proof or certification. And there are certifications that I view more as horizontal board certifications that are out there right now. I’ve got a bunch of these myself, it shows that I view board directorship as a discipline. But it also shows that I’m into continuous learning, and you’re looking for board directors that don’t think that they reached the pinnacle of their career, because they’re board directors, right? If anything, the amount of learning that’s required is exponential to your previous non-board-related role, because of the responsibilities you have. So remember, it’s expertise, what you know, experience, and how you’ve applied it. And then the certification or proof, which is showing that you view this as a discipline, and you’re getting yourself educated and certified in those areas. So if you’re looking for board members in the nonprofit space, don’t think that that’s only for public and private type boards. Look for people that understand how to operate in a board environment, because you not only don’t have to teach them to do those things, but they are elevating the rest of the board by bringing in that knowledge and that discipline to the board.

I’ll tell you what you brought up continuing learning there and as someone that’s in the military that’s in business as in nonprofits, it is like one of my pet peeves that people aren’t taking ownership of their learning. And I’m not just talking about formal courses or reading a book, even though I can recommend a great book, by a great author, listening to a podcast. If you’re listening to this show, I’m obviously not talking to you, because you’re listening to a podcast, reading audiobooks, or having those discussions like do your friends actually add value? When you have a discussion with your friend do both of you walk away feeling elevated, like you’ve learned something, like you’ve been held accountable. This is what real friendship is and so many of these startups, they’re just in the business of doing, they’re not in the business of administering, they’re not in the business of learning, they’re in the business of doing, which is fine for a period of time. But there comes to a point where you don’t have enough money because you’ve never learned how to fundraise. There comes a point where your programs need to change, but you haven’t learned anything new to deliver, you haven’t made new connections, new relationships, or someone to bring more value into your organization. And you’ve stove-piped and everyone has the same personality on your board. I’m looking for people that are going to challenge me, or that are strong in areas where I’m weak.

There’s a lot of me, huge parts of me that’s detail-oriented, but some of the stuff I just don’t want to do, I’m going to find someone that’s got those admin skills on lockdown to make sure that we’re keeping track and keeping on point with all of the things that we need to have done. And if you’re in the nonprofit world, you’ve got reports to do to the IRS each and every single year, that you want to make sure you’re following those compliance guidelines. Maybe you are the admin person, but you need someone to go and shout from the rooftops about what kind of organization you have, what kind of impact you’re delivering, and what you have planned for the future. That’s where you need that marketing guy, that person that can go out there and help spread your message. Maybe you are an introvert and you have a hard time talking to people. Well, you better get an extrovert on your team.

Or at the very least be given the tools to make the discussion easier, because even an introvert if they have the right tools from a marketing viewpoint, it can be a very short discussion, but they’ve generated interest. And just in doing that they further the needs of the organization.

A board director is not going to be comfortable going out and representing a program, that is not as impactful as it should be.

Mark A Pfister Tweet

If you are on your board, and you can’t easily answer the question, what is it that you guys do? If you’re searching through the Rolodex in your head trying to figure out how to say it, then you have no business speaking on behalf of your organization, if you can’t speak on the behalf of the organization, what are you doing there?

That’s right, one of the telling indicators, or observables I use and I’ll wrap two of these concepts together. One has to do with just quickly going back to the learning environments. I do that as one of the prime, what I call board observables, to see the maturity level of that board, and boards that enact those types of behaviors that are positive to the learning environments, they may include a guest speaker coming into their board every quarter, every month to find some topic that they need help with, or want to learn more about. So that’s one aspect. The other aspect of this has to do with looking at the components again, just jumping back to the marketing components. They’re a very telling question again, another board observable you can use in your nonprofit board especially, is asking each individual board member the following two questions, what is our mission? And what are our values? And you will be amazed when I asked that question in my consulting realm. How many people don’t know that, and some of them have been on these boards for years. The problem with that is that it goes back to there can be no mature decision-making process by not understanding first and foremost, the values. And secondly, of course, the vision. And then thirdly, the mission of what you’re doing well now. It undermines the whole process. So I would say that every decision to that point to date is suspect because the areas that you would compare against haven’t even been considered your values, vision, and mission.

That is phenomenal. And those two easy questions can really help you evaluate if your board is on track or if they need some prompting.

Yep, try it out at one point with your listeners as well. You know, pose that, start the meeting off and ask if anybody can recite the mission or maybe start with all three values first, vision second, and the mission third. See how many people can do it, you’re gonna be surprised, not in a positive way.

Well, I think it’s a great place to kind of regain where you’re at as an organization and as a board. So this morning before we hopped on maybe about 30 minutes before an interview, I posted on Facebook. I was like What would you ask someone who’s worked with over 800 boards what are your burning questions about boards? And I only got two people that want to know like, why on earth did you work with 800 boards? Do you have any energy left in your life? And, you know, why did you dedicate yourself to working with boards?

Well, I mean, for me, what drew me into that realm truly had to do with if you want to make the biggest impact in an organization, that should truly be at the board level. Now, that’s not always true, I came to find that over a decade ago that that belief was somewhat flawed when you start to drill into somebody’s board areas. And I’d probably add to that now to say that it’s not just the board, but it’s also the relationship between the board and the CEO, or the board and the executive director, and the nonprofit realm. So when those relationships are working properly, and they’re good, or even great for that matter, the strategy and the governance components can fall into place a lot easier. But it’s really to be the area where you can make the biggest impact, whether that be as a board director, or in my case, as a board consultant, in addition to being a board director. It’s incredible the impact you can have on these organizations, and what I think is a fairly short amount of time, you know, if you’re looking to make a change in an organization, or transformation, in many cases, you’re looking at a much larger group of individuals. Employees throughout the whole organization, their leadership to the sea level, and then to the board. That’s a big undertaking. But the board usually is confined to maybe 8 to 15 individuals. And you know, it’s more corralled, I’ll say, you’ve corralled everybody into one room. It still has its challenges, of course, but it’s a smaller group to work with. And in many cases, they do have the emotional intelligence and the mindfulness intelligence to really drive everything forward.

That’s perfect. Another question from Facebook. My board is unengaged and they’re hardly doing anything that’s asked. How do I reinvigorate and re-engage my board of directors?

One is, I like to say that you have to have some sort of catalyst that kicks this off, right? So to me, it’s usually a reminder, or a reiteration of going back to their values, vision, and mission. But then you have to make that real. And the easiest way to do that is, in my mind, in my opinion, and having done this with so many boards, is to go back and revisit the structure and the architecture of that board. By doing that it allows you to say, do we have the right people, many of the challenges you’ll see on boards that have undermined the camaraderie of the board, or even the motivation of individual board members have to do with the fact they don’t feel effective, they don’t feel impactful, right? To me, bring that back now to say, Are we structured properly, first and foremost, to make progress, to make an impact, and make a difference? By doing that, you can also define the responsibilities of the board. You can start at the overall board level, talk about time commitments, talk about focus areas, then you can move that to understand to go back to the sphere of influence components of the expertise, correlate those back now to the committees that you’re going to have on your board. What are those committees? And what are they responsible for? Create the charters, list it out, I don’t even care if it’s just pretty simple bullet items, right? The bullet items can list out very specifically what the responsibilities of that board or that board committee are, and then correlate that to their involvement with a goal setting and the strategy.

First, the goals, the what, and the why, the strategy, which is the how. And then very simply, this is all at the same time, building the governance component. The governance component is now that we’ve decided our goals we’ve discovered our how, let’s go into the measurement of these. The measurement of that now truly is your governance, pick a few milestones that each one of the committees is going to be responsible for. And it could be 5 or 6 or 10 for the entire year. And during their reporting or their governance, they’re talking about they’re on track, or they’re not on track to make those rolled-up tasks into the milestones, very easy way to look at this and to kick it off. But usually, most boards are striving for some sort of structure to know that if they do it, others are going to be doing it as well, which offers up the repeatable processes. It’s a very easy way to show the progress of what’s being accomplished. And then, of course, that in itself raises the camaraderie and the feeling of that board making a difference. So it’s amazing how I go back to the process again, it makes the board feel real. It’s not just Well, I’m donating my time to the nonprofit. So you’re gonna get from me what I think I can give you, right? That’s not the way it works.

The expectation has to be set, you can use your board pitch book for that, which by the way, it likely is going to require the change in a few people on a board that just either can dedicate the time that’s required or simply don’t want to do it, they’re going to view it as too much work. You have to be willing to say that those particular people may not be a right fit for this board, but have a plan on how you rotate them in and out or create a meritorious board that they can roll off into where they’re still involved. You haven’t lost their connections and their contacts and maybe their love of the organization, but they’re not hindering the decision making and voting body, the board itself, because of their lack of time commitments or even what would you say their lack of love of the mission or the vision of the organization potential.

Three components create board depth. The vertical creates expertise Influence. The horizontal, planes of congruence that create character, coverage and balance create the depth of the board. When these are areas balanced, these boards are unstoppable.

Mark A Pfister Tweet

Oh, that’s perfect. I like that. What would you tell a board of directors, how do they get prepared for the eventual changing of the guard at either the board president level or at the executive director level?

There’s some work in that, I like to think that most bylaws for nonprofit organizations if you’re talking about the chair of the board, specifically, or the incoming chair, that has to be someone that served on the board for X number of years before they can take on that role. So hopefully, you know that person by them, and you have some sort of background of how they operate, how they interact, their demeanor, going back to what type of leadership traits they have, and if they’re an analyst, sentinel, diplomat, or explorer, so you have that understanding. But when we talk about succession planning, there is a lot of work in this. And this is not just true of nonprofit organizations but in the private and especially the public sector. I would use the globally accepted time frame to start that process, believe it or not, as five years in advance of someone leaving their position, whether it be as a CEO, or as a board director. Now, there are other things, of course, to play into that because you know, certain time limits, and mandatory retirement ages, if term limits are set for certain board members, I get that. But, you know, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a pipeline of folks that are lined up, at least for the next Incoming Chair of a board.

Now, I would even expand this, Travis, to say that it’s not just the chair of the overall board that’s going to make or break that board, it’s going to be the chair of the committee areas also that makes or breaks that board because the committees are the workhorse areas of the board. I see many boards that maybe they’re lacking true in-depth leadership at the board chair level, but they have phenomenal leadership in the board, and committee chair areas and those boards do extremely well, because they have that structure, and they know what they’re supposed to be doing. I’m not saying that the chair shouldn’t be well versed in their role and involved. That’s not what I’m saying. But, you know, it’s really the combination of those areas. So that’s succession planning, there has to be a plan behind that. I get involved in much of the succession planning of the clients I work with because it’s so important to them. And the amount of strife that can cause in an organization is amazing. I mean even just the stress that can cause if it happens to be too quick or too short a timeframe where that transition, can cause major disruptions in organizations. So you want to have a plan for that. Even if we go back to the marketing of that.

There’s a marketing component to that. You don’t want major donors or those that are involved in your nonprofit organization to say, Well, I had a connection with the previous chair, I don’t have it with this one. The marketing plan for that should be an introduction by the current chair to the incoming chair. Do overlaps in that. Maybe you have a year overlap where a three or four-year term is a chair, the first year is an overlap with the previous chair. And the last year of that service is an overlap with the incoming chair. That creates this level of not just understanding, but calmness in the board and the overall organization. So succession planning, to your point, Travis, is extremely important. And there are processes you can put in place. As I mentioned, I do that as one of my consulting advisory offerings.

I’m sure we could have a whole discussion just dedicated to that one area. What does that look like for a board that is seeing the changeover of the executive director, the guy that’s doing the work that’s on the battlefield, so to speak, I know the average executive director is on board between three and five years if they’re only on board for three years, it doesn’t give you five years of planning.

Well, if you look at one of the main top three board of directors’ responsibilities above and beyond, of course, their more generic duty of care, the duty of loyalty, and duty of obedience. If you break that down now and say what’s one of their major tasks, it’s to select and evaluate the CEO and/or the executive director of the nonprofit organization. So to me, that should always be top of mind, in front of mind. If you’re talking about an agenda, there should always be something that’s happening within a committee area that’s being reported to the board for input, oversight, agreement, disagreement, right. Where are we at in that process? Currently, even if you have the strongest executive director in the organization, there should be discussions about what is that process? Should we need it overnight? If God forbid, that executive director has some sort of health issue, passes away, whatever it may be. I’ve been working with boards where that’s happened. And where are we in the life cycle at all times? Are we looking both internally and externally? Potentially for someone that could take that role? Do we have an interim pool of folks we can pull from right? There are interim executive directors that are their sole role for nonprofits. They can come, they can be brought in at a moment’s notice.

And be that interim director Executive Director for the time being, or is there someone that’s acting and has the role and title of an assistant executive director that can fill that gap in the short term? This all has to do with not just the success of succession planning, but disaster recovery and business continuation planning. that to me should be integral to the responsibilities of the board of directors for any organization inclusive nonprofits.

This has been a jam-packed hour of fun here, Mark. Where can people get a hold of you, and where can they find your book?

Sure, well, I mean, all of this, whether it be links to LinkedIn because I love connecting with new people and following their content, there are links for my book from my website as well. It’s pfisterstrategy.com. I will spell that out because my last name is a little strange. It’s pfisterstrategy.com. Again, P F I S T E R strategy.com. You can see my offerings there, you can get a link to pick up my book. I have hosted and recorded webinars on there, there are certification courses, and you can do a whole bunch of things that are specifically related to the board space. I like to think that this is the culmination of my career right now. And you can use this as both education as well as furthering some other areas of knowledge from my website directly, so I welcome you to visit there.

Thanks again, Mark. Really appreciate having you on the show.

Travis, thank you, have a great day.

Mark A. Pfister Bio

With a strong focus in Strategy, Governance, and Technology / Cybersecurity, Mark A. Pfister is CEO & Chief Board Consultant of M. A. Pfister Strategy Group, an executive advisory firm that serves as a strategic advisory council for executives and Boards in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. He is also Chairman & CEO of Integral Board Group, a specialized Board services and consulting company.

Mr. Pfister is a ‘Board Macro-Influencer’ and his success has been repeated across a wide range of business situations and environments. He prides himself on being a coach and mentor to senior executives and directors.

In Board Director circles, Mr. Pfister has earned the nickname ‘The Board Architect.’ The overarching theme throughout his career has been his aptitude in leadership positions, passionate focus on people, unique governance models, and ability to create value for stakeholders through innovative business strategies and operational excellence.

Michael Lorelli, Executive Chairman of Rita’s Franchise Company, has said, “Mark’s unusual combination of excelling at a macro and micro grasp of business, genuine interest in Governance, and ability to coach and mentor a Management Team make him a terrific Independent Director.” Mr. Pfister is a certified project management professional and frequently serves as an expert Project Executive, consulting on global projects in their initiation and operational phases, as well as programs requiring remedial focus to bring them back on track. He has deep knowledge and experience in Board design & operations, strategic planning, business transformation, technology implementations, decisioning processes, continuing education programs, executive coaching, and governance models.

Previously, Mr. Pfister was CEO of Pro4ia, Inc., an international consulting and professional services company specializing in a wide range of technology solutions utilizing formal Project Management as a proven and repeatable delivery method. With a Fortune 50 client list, Pro4ia was Citibank’s Nominee for Crain’s Magazine ‘Entrepreneurship of the Year’ Award in 2005. He simultaneously served as CEO of Onit, Inc., a national sourcing company specializing in placements for all levels of technology skill sets.

Mr. Pfister was also the National Program Office Leader for American Express leading some of the largest technology transformation initiatives in the company’s history. He served as a Licensed Engineering Officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine, holds a B.S. from the State University of New York Maritime College in Facilities Engineering, and completed Harvard Business School’s Executive Education Program for Board Directors.

Mr. Pfister is the creator of the ‘Board as a Service’ (BaaS) engagement model, an industry he is credited with inventing. He is a Master Speaker and conducts national speaking tours, lectures, and seminars focused on effective leadership, strategy, Board architecture, becoming an exceptional Board Director candidate, professional project/program management, and entrepreneurship.

His popular book, ‘Across The Board: The Modern Architecture Behind an Effective Board of Directors,’ an Amazon best-seller with circulation in over 70 countries, has influenced a whole new generation of Board Directors.

Mr. Pfister is a proficient Board Director and CEO with experience across multiple industry verticals. He is typically the Chair, or a member of the Strategic Planning Committee, Governance Committee, Technology & Cybersecurity Committee, and Nominating Committee. Mr. Pfister’s experience as a renowned Board Consultant, having guided and coached hundreds of Boards, Board Committees, and Board Members, additionally offers up unique and informed viewpoints to the companies he serves.

He holds an Executive Masters Professional Board Certification through the American College of Corporate Directors (ACCD), is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) through the Project Management Institute (PMI), holds a Global ESG Certification through Competent Boards, and holds a Certified Cyber Intelligence Professional Board Certification (CCIP) through the McAfee Institute.

Mark@PfisterStrategy.com