Shoulder To Shoulder

A couple of times a year, I come across the notion that a board of directors is an antiquated fossilized structure designed to mimic a top-down hierarchical corporate culture. Or something like that.

Yet to my way of thinking, the opposite can also be true.

With the right kind of energy spent on their care, boards can be the means to keeping our organizations porous – responsive of and to our publics, constituents, fans/critics, stakeholders. Boards are what keep us beholden to and drawing from our communities – they take us out of our silos and put us in the mix.

Sometimes I have the image of the board and staff standing in a circle holding hands – the organization within and the world without. And the hand-holders constantly shifting perspective from facing in…to facing out…to facing in…to facing out…

So why isn’t board service more like this poetic image?

Let me start by acknowledging how stressful life is. We simply don’t have enough time, those of us who’re trying to manage jobs, families, and volunteer save-the-world interests – to do everything well.

And so we triage. But not with equanimity – with guilt.

And board service is one of the places we can shrink back, thinking “the executive director can/will handle that.” But we know, in our heart of hearts, that that isn’t right. So we snap at someone, or don’t answer emails, or fight over turf, or in some other way let our frustration leak out that we can’t step up to the plate in a way we know we ought to.

Taking the weight off Atlas’ shoulders – and carrying it together.

It’s a radical, collectivist notion, this idea that boards are what position us as shoulder-to-shoulder – and keep us honest.

Try it on for size.