Acronym

I'm at the Exceptional Boards program for CEOs and their incoming board chairs in San Francisco today. One of the early questions that presenters Nancy Axelrod and Paul Greeley asked was what was the single most important governance issue that they were facing. There was a myriad of answers, but one of the recurring answers was board engagement.

A little later in the presentation, Axelrod described the work of David Nadler as written in the Harvard Business Review in May 2004. He described board engagement on a continuum. On one side is the "Passive Board" -- the rubber stamp board that doesn't really deliberate at all. Next on the continuum is the "Certifying Board" -- one where the extent of board activity is fiduciary and other executive functions. In the middle is what most people think is board nirvana -- the "Strategic Board," which is engaged in strategy development, then steps back and lets others do the tactical things. Moving on the continuum is an "Intervening Board," which can be seen at organizations in crisis mode, to an "Operating Board," which does the work of the organization.

As Axelrod pointed out, while there is a lot of talk about having a strategic board, it's important to think about what you mean by that. In practice, different situations call for different levels of board engagement, and one is not necessarily inherently bad. Greeley later added that, in fact, most boards are probably operating at all different engagement levels even at a single board meeting.

I was wondering what readers think about the idea of differing levels of board engagement depending on what the board is working on.