Accelerating Strategy and Execution Through Board Leadership

I often talk to not-for-profit organisations looking to create greater agility and strategic alignment to deliver on their strategy.

As the complexity of our operations, regulatory environment and change agendas increase, it seems this is often delegated to a multitude of projects and agility gets lost in a sea of bureaucracy.

Along with the big ticket items of reviewing operating models (particularly information and decision flows), organisational and service processes and investing in technology enablers, there are simple mechanisms that can create better organisational alignment and decision making speed.

These existing mechanisms and processes can be fine tuned to deliver more effective outcomes. Many of these may be familiar but they bear repeating as these are infrequently optimally implemented.

The following forums and processes are often the areas that can act as organisational reflection points, decision making catalysts and action-rallying points without significant investment or change.

• Decision-making forums - Board and Executive meetings

• Processes – program management, business management, risk management

The one I will focus on in this article is unlocking the potential of the Board.

Leveraging the Board's experience, expertise, external relationships and information flows

With their increasing compliance role, it is easy to forget the potential for Boards in their oversight and direction setting role to spark strategic thinking and support agile decision making. Too often, their agendas are heavily weighted to the important functions of financial, compliance, risk and touch strategy in a piecemeal manner, primarily through updates on key projects or opportunities. Strategy days maybe undertaken annually, although they often serve multiple functions, including Board professional development and stakeholder engagement.

So, how might we promote greater agility, strategic thinking and alignment?

• Create regular discussions with Executive members on the strategic challenges, the risks and opportunities faced by their business units, their preventative measures and adjustments required to the overall strategy.

• Provide opportunities for Board members to provide feedback on what they are seeing in other organisations, competitor moves or political trends.

• Encourage discussions on strategic scenarios as part of reporting on strategic progress, organisational performance and business cases.

• Schedule regular more frequent in depth discussions of key strategic issues, highlighting signals of change in the external environment, potential ways forward and questions for the Board’s consideration. Adjust the strategic direction and investment decisions regularly in response.

• Maximise the Board’s input into the tough strategic discussions with clear decision-making frameworks and, depending on the complexity of the decision, independent facilitation.

• Integrate the discussions of strategic risks and progress on strategy to enable more informed Board decision-making and adjustments.

• Build a Board culture that fosters respectful, constructive and informed challenge that supports the Executive to share early ideas, experiments and failures.

While these practices are enhanced by the ease of information flows that can be achieved through Board software, dashboards, automated reporting, these can be effectively undertaken in a low tech environment, with no additional investment.

The Board's continued focus on the strategy and its execution and their openness to regular adjustment are key to creating momentum and supporting an organisation’s agility.

Dr Estelle McDonald is the Founder and Principal at Growth Seeds Consulting and specialises in growth, strategy and execution for nonprofit organisations.