Striking the Balance: Engaging Your Board with the Right Information

Balancing how you provide information to college and university boards is a delicate task for presidents. The goal is to ensure board members are well-informed to fulfill their fiduciary duties and engage in strategic thinking without inundating them with excessive detail. Here are practical strategies to achieve this balance:

1. Executive Summaries

• What to Do: Provide concise executive summaries for all reports and documents. These summaries should highlight key points, decisions required, and implications for the institution.
• Why It Works: It allows board members to grasp the essentials quickly and decide where they may need to dive deeper.

2. Focused Information Packets

• What to Do: Curate pre-meeting packets focusing on strategic issues and decisions at hand. Avoid including overly detailed operational reports unless they are directly relevant to the board's decision-making.
• Why It Works: This ensures that board members receive only the most pertinent information, facilitating a focus on strategic governance rather than operational minutiae.

3. Dashboard Indicators

• What to Do: Develop a dashboard of key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to the strategic plan and critical institutional functions. Update this dashboard for each meeting.
• Why It Works: Dashboards provide a high-level overview of institutional performance at a glance, enabling board members to monitor progress without getting bogged down by the details.

4. Pre-Meeting Briefings

• What to Do: Offer optional pre-meeting briefings for board members who wish to delve deeper into specific issues. These can be conducted via conference call or web meeting.
• Why It Works: It allows interested board members to ask questions and gain a deeper understanding of complex issues without requiring everyone to process the same level of detail.

5. Use of Visual Aids

• What to Do: Incorporate charts, graphs, and infographics in reports to illustrate trends, comparisons, and critical data points visually.
• Why It Works: Visual aids can convey complex information more efficiently than text alone, making it easier for board members to absorb and retain critical information.

6. Strategic Issue Framing

• What to Do: Frame agenda items and accompanying materials around strategic issues or questions the board needs to address. Provide background material that directly supports these discussions.
• Why It Works: This approach focuses board members' attention on strategic decision-making and the broader implications of their governance role.

7. Limiting Pre-Meeting Material Volume

• What to Do: Set a guideline for the maximum volume of pre-meeting materials (e.g., no more than X pages), forcing content prioritization.
• Why It Works: A limit encourages brevity and relevance in materials provided, respecting board members' time and capacity to digest information.

8. Feedback Loop

• What to Do: Regularly solicit feedback from board members on the usefulness and manageability of pre-meeting materials. Adjust based on their input.
• Why It Works: Continuous improvement of the information delivery process ensures that materials meet the board's needs and preferences over time.

Conclusion

By implementing these strategies, college and university presidents can effectively communicate with their boards, ensuring members are well-prepared for meetings without being overwhelmed. The key is to provide concise, strategically focused information, and tailored to facilitate fiduciary responsibility and strategic deliberation. This approach respects the time and capacities of board members and enhances the quality of governance by focusing attention on what matters most for the institution's success.

Robert (Skip) Myers, Ph.D., directs Casagrande Consulting's Board Effectiveness Practice and provides advice and counsel to college and university governing boards seeking to optimize their performance.