Should Committees Report to the Board?

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Note: At the end of this year I will no longer be posting here at The Hourglass Blog. To see my reasons why click here. To keep following me on my new blog, go here.

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I've been thinking a lot about this question lately. It's a question, I know, that never even occurs to leaders in many associations. "Should committees report to the board?" they might say. "Of course they should. Who else are the going to report to?"

Well...

How about the chief staff executive?

I've suggested just such an idea before, and the looks I get back from chief staff executives and board chairs alike can only be described as incredulous.

But hear me out.

There are some committees whose jobs clearly relate to the governance of the association. The Finance Committee. The Nominating Committee. The Executive Committee. These are all bodies appropriately appointed by the Board to help it do its job better.

But there are other committees whose jobs relate to the management of the association. The Education Committee. The Membership Committee. The Marketing Committee. These are all bodies designed to infuse the management practices of the association with the expertise and wisdom of association members themselves.

If your association is an association of widget manufacturers, then you might want widget manufacturers on your Marketing Committee to help you decide how best to market your association to other widget manufacturers. If your association is an association of physicians, then you might want physicians on your Education Committee to help you decide what kind of education to deliver to your members. In most associations, this type of industry- or profession-specific expertise does not exist at the staff level, and the synergistic fusing of member knowledge with staff functional expertise can spell great success.

But in all of these cases, the functions of these "program" committees are not related to how the association is governed (i.e., the purview of the board). They are related to how the association is managed (i.e., the purview of the chief staff executive). And if that is the case, shouldn't these committees "report" to the chief staff executive, the way other members of the staff do? In fact, doesn't having those committees report to the board put the board in the position of having to manage the association, usurping the position and authority it has specifically delegated to its chief staff executive?

These are the thoughts I think about whenever I sit in a board meeting and find myself trapped in a discussion about the details of some committee report. Committee X wants funds to produce a new marketing brochure. Committee Y wants approval on the venues it has chosen for next year's educational sessions.

I can't help it. As a board member, my first question when faced with these requests is always: Why are you asking me? I don't manage this association. The chief staff executive does.

And I'd prefer to keep it that way.

Let Them Know You're Working Long and Hard

I blog in my spare time. Like a lot of other people, my professional responsibilities keep me fairly busy, so in the course of my day, if I stumble across something that piques my interest, I often just flag it (or email it to myself) for later reading. This means my blog posts are sometimes inspired by items that hit the blogosphere months ago, and dozens of people have already had a chance to weigh in on it. But I don't view that as a bad thing. Sometimes reading what other people have to say before weighing in yourself helps keep you sane.

Here's a case in point. Michael Fertik posted Managing Older Managers: A Guide for Younger Bosses on the HBR blog back in August 2010. In it, he offers such sage advice as:

Let them know that you are working long and hard. Even accomplished, self-motivated senior colleagues won't work harder than you will for very long. Send emails early and late. Invite meetings on weekends and at odd hours. Be in the office or online all the time. Dial into meetings at insane hours during overseas travel. Understand that managers older than yourself may have families that require them to live by different rhythms from yours — they may need to be offline from 6 to 8, for example. But expect them to be working long and hard, whenever it is, and make sure you are always doing more than they are. Because you have less natural authority when working with older people, reinforce your "moral right" to demand hard work by showing that you demand even more of yourself.

Honestly, my initial reaction upon reading this was that I thought it was insane. Or maybe some kind of joke. I like reading certain authors on the HBR blog in part because I'm interested in exploring the application of for-profit management models in the association environment--but this one struck me as something right out of a Terry Gilliam movie. Remember that scene in Brazil when Sam Lowry and Harvey Lime have a tug-of-war over the single desk that extends into both of their offices? Just the kind of organization you want to work for, right?

And it turns out I wasn't alone. By filing the post away and getting back to it later, I have the pleasure of reading all 54 comments the post generated, many of them taking Fertik to task for the same reasons I would. "Mike" said it first and perhaps most succinctly:

Being inconsiderate of people’s work/life balance is a surefire way of losing any employee, old or young.

Here, here. Isn't that something all the generations can agree on?

Managing by Collaboration

The recent blog posts by Joe Rominiecki and Jamie Notter on collaboration got me thinking. Like a lot of blog posts I read, these didn’t prompt any profound conclusions (my fault, not theirs), but they did get me thinking about collaboration and how I use it as a management tool in the workplace.

Then I listened to this podcast from HBR, where Peter Cappelli is interviewed about managing older workers.

First of all, Chuck Nyren would love the podcast. If you followed the discussion he and I had in the comments to my post Don't Forget the Baby Boomers, you know he's all about the vibrancy and continuing cultural influence of Baby Boomers. And the podcast makes many of the same points. Boomers still have a lot to contribute and will be with us in the workplace for years yet to come. In singing their praises, Peter describes older workers as being better at just about everything than younger workers--except maybe taking SAT tests.

And one kernel of wisdom I found in Peter's comments had to do with management style, and how the “manage by expertise” model of previous generations is and must start giving way to the “manage by collaboration” model.

Yesterday’s boss was likely older than you. He had been around longer and knew more than you did. That’s why he was the boss. He had the technical expertise and he used it to manage you. It was his job to tell you what to do and it was your job to do it.

But today’s and increasingly tomorrow’s boss is likely not older than you. As the workforce ages and as more younger workers move into management roles, your boss is likely to be younger than you. You probably know more about what to do and how to do than she does. She doesn't have your expertise, but that's okay, because her job isn’t to tell you what to do. Her job is to coordinate what you do with what other people on the team do, to set objectives for team and individual performance, and to hold people accountable for success. In doing so, she won't tell you what to do like yesterday's boss did. Instead, she will collaborate with you, and foster collaboration among you and all the other team members. She needs all of your individual expertises and everyone's active collaboration to do her job. She can't determine the right boundaries for successful performance without it.

It's the way I work and the way I manage (or at least try to). I do it with my staff, but I do it with our volunteers and Board members, too. I'm the boss so it's my job to set the objectives, but in order to set objectives that are achieveable I have to collaborate with people--and many of those people are older, more experienced, and more technically adept than me.

Hey, Peter? I wonder if that’s something else younger workers might be better at than older ones?

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