By Harold and Susan Skramstad
This article was published in Museum News January/February 2003.
People decide to join a board of trustees for many reasons—some good, some bad. Service on a museum board gives a person a certain prestige within the community—an identity as someone with whom others wish to associate—and acquaintance with interesting people and activities. For some, it may be a nice addition to a resume or a way to make personal contacts with people who are influential in the community. For others, board membership may be primarily social, an opportunity to interact with like-minded people and be associated with an organization that is known and valued. For these groups, regular attendance at meetings and a deep interest in the concerns and challenges of the museum are secondary. But for most, service on a museum board is an important volunteer activity that offers an opportunity to make a difference.
A good board doesn’t just happen; it must be crafted carefully. Recruiting a good board begins with a real understanding of the museum’s purpose, value, and audiences, as well as its plans, priorities, and needs. It also requires a self-examination designed to identify board strengths and weaknesses as they relate to the museum’s current needs.
Once the board has recruited the right people to serve as trustees, it must work to keep them. Nothing will alienate a new trustee faster than a culture of hostility or passivity among the trustees, or board meetings that are long, boring, and about unimportant issues. If the board does its job right, new trustees will enter board service with energy and enthusiasm—they’ll want to get on with it. It is up to the board to ensure that this happens.
Board development is a continual and continuing process. Times change, people change, and boards, too, must change. The basics of board development should never be far from the minds of current board members. Naturally, a board is only as good as its members and leadership, its understanding of the museum and its priorities, and its understanding of the mission and how it is carried out. But organizing and disciplining the work of the board and the individual trustees will position any board to be the best that it can be—guaranteed.
We believe there are 10 areas that trustees should consider when working to improve board performance—a mission for the board, the board meeting, keeping board members busy with real work, committees and task forces, the culture of the board, motivating and retaining good trustees, terms of service, succession planning, the exit interview, and evaluating board performance. Several of these items are discussed below.
The Mission of the Board
While the magnet for all museum activities and for all staff and board activities should be the institution’s mission, the board also should have its own mission. A mission provides a rationale and a charge for the board’s work and may help to prevent misunderstandings among trustees. The board’s mission should clarify three things:
What the board states in its mission has real meaning and should serve as a guide for the work of the trustees. Mission statements are not easy to write, and board members should not expect to develop the perfect one after a few hours of discussion. We suggest that the development of a mission be on the agenda for three consecutive board meetings, beginning with a general conversation about the work of the board and ending with closure on the statement. The process by which the board arrives at its mission and the discussion that leads to its development are almost as important as the mission itself.
The Board Meeting
The board meeting, sometimes impolitely called “the bored meeting,” is where the real work of the trustees is carried out. That is where full discussion occurs, votes are taken, and courses of action approved. And yet, all too often, trustees either dread the thought of a board meeting—expecting an endless and boring series of reports—or look forward to a nice social get-together.
The board chair and the CEO, who plan and run the meeting, should strive to ensure that trustees look forward to the meeting and arrive ready to give their best. Questions the CEO and chair should consider during the planning process include:
What decisions will be needed at this meeting?
How will we handle board members who do not come prepared?
How will we ensure that everyone has a chance to speak?
Who will follow-up on board assignments to ensure that they have been completed?
A lively board discussion in which everyone participates, problems are solved, decisions are reached, and assignments are made will go a long way toward keeping the board engaged. The best way for the chair to discover whether the trustees find meetings effective is to ask them. We have found that a short survey following each board meeting—with questions ranging from “did the meeting begin on time?” to “did you feel comfortable speaking up?”—often aids the planning of future meetings. The goal is to use the time of board members to the best advantage; the moment they feel their time is being wasted, they’re gone.
Committees and Task Forces
Committees can keep an organization moving in the period between scheduled meetings of the board and allow trustees to use their time wisely. No matter what the board size, certain functions—namely, oversight of finances, development (raising funds), and board development (training and education)—are usually best delegated to standing committees. Many museums have a plethora of other standing committees, covering such functions as collections, exhibits/educational programs, and buildings/grounds, etc. Whether such standing committees will be effective tools for improving museum performance will depend on the size, membership, resources, and stage of the institution’s development.
In a small museum, the board may be called upon to take on or extend the skills that staff would be responsible for in a larger organization. In this case, committees function as volunteers to support, in a practical sense, and sometimes even do some of the staff’s work. However, while there is no question that board committees can bring a common-sense perspective and special skills to the oversight of staff functions, sometimes that oversight leads to micromanagement and counterproductive second-guessing of the staff. That, in turn, can cause severe tensions and morale problems. In thinking about what committees to establish, the board must be able to answer the following questions:
Do we need this committee, and why?
How will it improve the museum, or board, performance?
If there is no ready and positive answer to these questions, then there is probably no need for the committee.
An alternative to the semi-permanent committee structure is the task force, a fluid body that has a specific charge and a specific deadline—at which time it goes out of business. The advantage of this system is the mechanism for self-destruction that is built into the very nature of the work—a focused agenda, a limited time, and a particular product. The urgency of dealing with a pressing issue of importance to the future of the museum can be a great stimulus for good board members and can help spread the workload of the board.
Board Culture
Every board has a culture—or what we might call “the personality of the board.” Think about your own board for a moment. Is it stimulating and exciting; functional and efficient; dysfunctional and chaotic; or just not very interesting? Are board members lazy or are they high performers? Do all trustees participate in important board discussions or only a few? Is the board cliquish or culturally inclusive, reflecting the community that the museum serves? Do trustees engage in lively debate or passive acceptance? Do staff or board opinions dominate, or is there a productive exchange of ideas and good partnership between the two? These are all culture issues. What is important is to ensure that the board’s culture—the way in which it routinely does its business—is a positive one in which the right work is being done in the right way.
It is difficult to explain how a negative culture becomes embedded in an organization. It often begins with one or two very strong personalities who want to control the discussion, deal with staff as little as possible, communicate nothing, and run the museum, in some cases by going around the CEO. Or sometimes it begins with a weak chair; little information before meetings, which consist solely of staff and committee reports; tolerated absences and lateness; and very little of significance accomplished. The interesting thing is that after the strong or weak trustees have left the board, the culture remains as an unwelcome legacy. And people just accept it.
There is almost always at least one person in the room who knows when things have gone awry. More often than not that person remains silent. That is why bad things don’t change; no one raises the flag; no one pushes; no one says, this isn’t right. But while negative perceptions of the museum or its board must remain within the museum—trustees, above all others, must speak only positively of the institution to the outside world—they must be discussed openly by the board. Listening to other opinions is the only way to grow.
Succession
The constant motion of trustees on and off the board makes it very hard to plan effectively for succession. Consistency and continuity are extremely important to the effective functioning of the board, however, and boards should think more about succession planning than they do. There is no value in the haphazard elective process that often brings in a new chair, and certainly none in the practice of a short term for the chair. How would boards like it if the museum’s CEO left every year, or every two years, the most common terms for board chairs? That kind of “herky-jerky” leadership makes it hard to take the museum where it needs and wants to go.
The chairmanship of a museum board of trustees is a powerful leadership position and should not be given to someone who is unprepared; the leadership must be passed smoothly so the work of the board can go on without missing a beat. That argues for a formal succession process, built into the procedures of the board itself. In addition, every member should be on the lookout for potential leaders from the first day a new trustee appears on the board. It is the responsibility of the chair to develop leadership when he sees it; it is the responsibility of the other trustees to acknowledge and promote it.
Exit Interviews
Don’t miss the opportunity to interview board members when they leave the board, whether they are leaving because their term is up, for personal or professional reasons, or because they are being removed. The exit interview will provide you with invaluable information that will help ensure that the board is operating to its potential. A retiring, resigning, or fired board member may have a great deal to say, which, because of the board culture or his own personality, was difficult to say before. Take advantage of this opportunity; the exit interview should be an ongoing activity of the board, closely associated with board development.
It also will provide you with an opportunity to encourage the trustees’ continued involvement in the museum. Former board members should be considered a part of the institution’s family, kept informed of museum activities, and involved in the actual work of the board, when appropriate. It goes against common sense to let all that experience drift away.
Evaluating Board Performance
Every board, from the smallest to the largest, from the newest to the most sophisticated, should evaluate its own performance annually. This is something few boards actually do. Trustees know that they are required to review the museum’s director annually and examine the performance and progress of the museum. And, for the most part, they are eager to do this.
Many boards, however, are reluctant to establish goals for themselves, analyze their own performance, and look for areas that can be improved. The idea that the museum’s director and others outside the organization might give a candid assessment of its service seems to strike terror into the collective heart of even the most seasoned board. But if the annual review of the museum director is an opportunity for an honest exchange of ideas, an opportunity to learn and grow, why would such a review be a less significant opportunity for the growth of the board?
Conclusion
Service on a museum’s board of trustees is a privilege that carries great responsibility. It provides an opportunity to make a real difference to the museum, to the people who use the museum, to the community in which the museum is located, and—if the board and staff are truly successful in developing an innovative and engaging museum experience—to the museum field.
The people who agree to serve on museum boards of trustees generally have a deep sense of civic and cultural responsibility; they understand and value the trust that is given to them and begin their tenure willing and eager to serve. But all too often this eagerness turns to disappointment, and new trustees become disillusioned as the real culture of the board is revealed. Some choose to leave the board and use their talents in other ways; some stay on, frustrated but accepting, until their terms end. In neither case do these people stay involved with the museum after they leave the board.
It is the responsibility of all trustees to ensure that this description does not represent their board. Our basicmessage is to use the time of the trustees wisely and well,
but, above all, to use it. Trustees have agreed to serve;let them serve.
We encourage you to evaluate board performance and individual trustee performance on an annual basis. It is the only way to know whether the board’s service to the museum is organized and efficient, and, more important, whether it is valuable to the museum and its CEO. That requires an act of faith on the part of the CEO and the board, but without trust between these two parties, not much will happen. Given that there is trust, an open and honest evaluation of the board’s performance will be extremely helpful to the board.
Trustees expect the CEO to get the best out of the staff; the CEO should expect the best from the trustees. And the trustees should expect the best of themselves.
Harold Skramstad, president emeritus of the Henry Ford Museum &Greenfield Village, Dearborn, Mich., and Susan Skramstad, former vice chancellor for institutional advancement at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, are consultants to nonprofits on issues of change, planning, fund raising, and board and staff development. This article is adapted from their forthcoming book, A Handbook for Museum Trustees, available this spring from AAM.
