Thoughts and ideas on people and technology.
September 3, 2024
Have you heard the phrase “death by committee”? The idea being put forward by the phrase is that a project or task is doomed to fail if given to a hierarchically-flat group instead of an individual (see also “death by a thousand cuts”). While an individual decision-maker will almost always be more efficient, most organizations that are not for-profit (and even many that are, such as publicly traded corporations) are run by a governing body. If you find yourself in this situation you may be asking yourself, “how do we even get anything done?” As with many things, the answer is relatively simple, but can be extremely difficult to implement, for the exact reasons we just went over.
First, let’s define roles:
Governing body: This will most commonly be a council, board, or committee. Aside from formal meeting roles (see Robert’s Rules of Order), we’re going to assume the members only have authority as a democratic group.
Operations or staff: Everyone in the organization who is not part of the governing body. This includes contractors, consultants, and volunteers. We’ll use “operations” and “staff” interchangeably as euphony dictates.
Executive leader: This person may have the title of CEO, CAO, Director, or Manager, depending on the scale of your organization. For the purposes of this article, we’re going to include them in “operations”.
Next comes responsibilities. The governing body is responsible for mission, policies, and direction. Operations is responsible for procedures, tasks, and reports.
(A quick note; we’re going to assume all of these things are written. The value of the written word is a common theme here at ScaleBright, and I will most likely die preaching on the subject. See the previous entries under “Writing Things Down Is for Boys Too”, “Paper Copy Please!”, and “One Skill to Rule Them All”.)
Let’s also define the responsibilities:
Mission: The reason the organization exists, or what it’s trying to accomplish. This may be summarized in a formal mission statement.
Policy: A formal set of guidelines for the actions and behaviour of the governing body and operations. Policy does not usually include specific procedures or tasks, unless governing law requires it (i.e. harassment reporting and investigation sections of HR policies).
Direction: Governing body decisions, requests, and any other instructions passed to operations.
Procedures: A formal set of specific instructions for tasks.
Tasks: Activities that are carried out.
Reports: Information passed from operations to the governing body. Usually take the form of requests for decisions or post-task summaries.
Now that we have definitions for everything, let’s walk through how something would get done in some hypothetical scenarios.
Scenario 1: The volunteers (operations) at a food bank see that they have a need for more refrigerated food storage space. They prepare a report (task) using a decision request template (procedure) outlining the need as well as options for solutions (additional refrigerators or a walk-in cooler). The report is given to the manager (executive leader) for review and presentation to the board (governing body). The manager presents the report, and the board weighs the request based on the food bank’s mission and available resources. The decision is made to purchase additional refrigerators (direction) and the manager and staff follow their purchasing procedure to buy them, install them, and utilize them (procedures and tasks). Once they’re up-and-running, they send a brief report back to the board (via the manager) letting them know the direction was acted on and the tasks were completed.
Scenario 2: The council (governing body) of a municipality wants to build a new multiplex. Municipal law (policy) requires public consultation, so they ask (direction) their CAO (executive leader) to carry it out. The CAO passes the direction onto their staff, who follow their procedures to carry out the public consultation (tasks). Once the public consultation is over, the information is compiled (reports) and made available to the council for assessment.
A final note; both the governing body and operations should be fully aware of the other’s responsibilities. If staff know a potential request goes directly against policy, they can save everyone time by finding an alternative that doesn’t. If the governing body knows how long a particular procedure takes to complete, they won’t need make constant requests for updates.
If you’d like help implementing any of this in your organization, you can find us at scalebright.ca.
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