The Pivotal Role of the Chair in Ensuring Good Governance

How can the Chair perform the role effectively to maintain accountability and high performance from the Board?

Last time we considered the conditions for a high performance board. A critical player in making the Board effective is the Chair. He or she has a crucial role to play both inside and outside the boardroom. The Chair should be a team-builder: ensuring the Board understands the strategy and common objectives; promoting open and two-way communications, facilitating participative decision-making and providing visible leadership.

Managing meetings is critical

The Chair’s role is to create a safe space in which constructive inputs from all board members can occur. The Chair runs the Board and set its agenda. Meetings should be held in conducive locations and should start and finish on time. Agendas should focus on strategic matters, value creation and performance, rather than operational details, which are better delegated to executive managers.

The Chair should ensure that all members of the Board receive accurate, timely and clear information. This should cover both financial and non-financial indicators. This will enable the Board to make decisions based on evidence and properly to discharge their duty to promote the success of the organisation. Information should generally be circulated in advance of meetings to allow reading time.

For each item, the Chair should invite the person leading on it, often an executive manager, to introduce the subject and report, then open up the subject for discussion and debate. Vociferous members of the Board should not be allowed to dominate, particularly if this discourages quieter members from contributing. The Chair’s primary role should be to elicit the views of others and not to manipulate the discussion so that it goes their own way. The sense of the meeting must be ascertained and the outcome documented in the minutes. The Chair must ensure that actions are followed through.

The Chair should manage the Board to ensure that sufficient time is allowed for discussing complex or contentious issues. Board members should not be faced with unrealistic deadlines for decisions. All Board members should be encouraged to participate and offer constructive challenge. One Chair I know always sets homework for individual board members in advance of the next board meeting!

A skilful Chair should encourage feelings to be openly expressed and create a climate of trust and candour. Conflict should be surfaced and handled, with constructive negotiation, rather than personal attacks. Contrary views should not be glossed over. One technique to avoid ‘group think’ and ensure proper debate is to assign the role of devil’s advocate for unpopular alternatives, to stronger members of the group. Or occasionally the Chair could divide the board into two groups to evaluate options.

If consensus cannot be reached on a particular decision, the Chair should consider adjourning the discussion and returning to it at the next meeting. In the meantime, the Chair should attempt to identify the concerns of dissenting directors and reduce differences of opinion. Resisting contrary views may only serve to entrench the dissenter in his views, or even polarise the Board. If agreement cannot be reached, it may be appropriate to go to a vote: this should draw a line under the debate and allow the Board to move on.

The Chair should make certain that the board decides the nature and extent of the risks that it is willing to tolerate in implementing strategy. Sufficient attention should also be given to the composition, skills mix and succession planning for Board roles.

Chair’s role outside of the Board room

A newly appointed Chair should make a special effort to get to know the other board members through one-to-one phone calls or meetings. Valuable insights can be gleaned by drawing out fellow directors’ perceptions of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the organisation. The Chair may help to facilitate social time in advance or after meetings to enhance teamwork within the group, by encouraging Board members to get to know and understand each other’s background, skills and perspective.

The Chair should take the lead in providing a proper induction programme for all new appointees to the Board (assisted by the Secretary, where appropriate). The Chair should also lead on evaluating the performance of the Board as whole, as well as individual directors, preferably on an annual or biennial basis. The Chair’s performance should be subject review by fellow directors too.  Following the review, the Chair should follow through on any training and development needs which have been identified.

The Chair has a crucial role to play in managing communications with the organisation’s stakeholders and ensuring that board members develop an understanding of the needs and desires of customers and employees, investors, funders, as well as regulators. There is a key role to play in dealing with the media, particularly during a crisis, to protect the organisation’s reputation.

What makes an effective Chair?

An effective chair needs self-confidence, usually acquired through experience, good listening skills and charisma, which arises from being simultaneously in control, yet still open to contributions. To lead the board effectively, the Chair must know the directors, their strengths and weaknesses, so that they can be drawn out on relevant matters, or reined in when they are becoming too long-winded. A visible presence, walking the floor, motivating and talking to staff, as well as meeting and presenting to external stakeholders, is important.

The Higgs Review of 2003 found that an effective Chair:

  • Upholds the highest standards of integrity, probity and good governance, leading by example
  • Sets the agenda, tone and style of board discussions to promote debate and discussion and sound decision-making
  • Ensures a clear structure for running board meetings, including starting and finishing on time and spending proportionate amounts of time on thorny and complex issues
  • Promotes effective communications, inside and outside the boardroom
  • Builds an effective board by initiating change and succession planning for board vacancies
  • Ensures that Board decisions are implemented effectively
  • Establishes a close relationship of trust with the senior executives, providing wise counsel, advice and support, but at the same time being careful not to interfere with operational management decisions
  • Provides coherent leadership of the organisation, including representing the organisation to the outside world and understanding the views of all the organisation’s key stakeholders.

Chairmanship is a challenging role. A good Chair will have a clear vision and focus on strategy, bringing together the disparate skills, qualities and experience of other board members. The Chair should foster a positive culture of corporate governance which then permeates down through the organisation and delivers positive results.

I hope you enjoyed reading about The Pivotal role of the Chair in Ensuring Good Governance.   Next time we look at The Board’s role in identifying and managing risk.

Mark Johnson is an experienced solicitor and company secretary helping charities, social enterprises and SME businesses to flourish. His company Elderflower Legal offers a range of support packages to help organisations with legal compliance, managing risk and good governance. For more resources check out elderflowerlegal.co.uk.
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How to Create a High Performance Board

How can you put in place the right systems, structures and processes to ensure that your Board drives success?

Any organisation, whether in the private, third sector or public sector is only as good as the people who lead it. Board members have a vital responsibility to define the vision and mission of the organisation, to decide its strategy and objectives, to manage the risks and to fashion the ethos and culture of the organisation.

The Board is the epicentre of any system of corporate governance, by which the organisation is directed, controlled and held accountable to achieve its purpose and create value over the long-term; it must balance the needs and interests of different stakeholders, whilst at the same time providing the entrepreneurial drive and leadership to succeed. Sound governance should be seen as a source of competitive advantage, not a brake on progress.

Four key tasks of the Board

An effective Board has four main strands to its work:

  • To establish and maintain the vision, mission and values of the organisation (the vision should be an inspiring picture of the organisation’s potential, the mission is a statement of how to achieve the desired state, whilst values are the principles and deeply held beliefs and standards of conduct embedded in the organisation’s way of doing things).
  • To decide the strategy and structure – the Board should continually review and evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and consider how best to play to the organisation’s strengths, or bolster the required competencies. (More on strategy here).
  • Delegate authority to managers and then monitor and evaluate the performance of the strategy and business plan, whilst maintaining appropriate monitoring and controls over risks; determine the appropriate KPIs to be used for effective monitoring.
  • Communicate with all the stakeholders in the organisation (such as customers, employees, funders, and members): maintain a continuous dialogue to understand their needs, promote their goodwill and support.

In carrying out these tasks, there needs to be a dynamic dialogue within the Board. As the Walker report into the behaviour of bank boards during the financial crisis found, many boards ‘lacked a disciplined process of constructive challenge’. They had descended into ‘group think’ and had focused on conformance with rules, rather than thinking laterally and strategically. The Financial Reporting Council in its 2010 Guidance on Board Effectiveness tells us, ‘An effective Board should not necessarily be a comfortable place. Challenge, as well as teamwork, is an essential feature’.

The role of the Board

One of the Board’s first tasks is to decide how it will function and identify the key issues and decisions which it must tackle collectively and which cannot be delegated – a schedule of reserved matters. Following that, there will be a scheme of delegation of powers to executive managers, committees and subsidiaries. Typical matters reserved for decision-making by the Board, include:

  • Approval of the annual report and accounts
  • Approval of dividends (in a profit-distributing organisation)
  • Approval of communications with members and the public
  • Appointment or removal of auditors
  • Developing, approving and reviewing the strategy
  • Approval of operating plan and budgets, review of progress against budgets
  • Approval of expenditure and contracts in excess of delegated limits
  • Approving the prosecution, defence or settlement of any litigation
  • Approval and ongoing monitoring of risks – the board should set appropriate risk management policies and seek regular assurance that the system is working effectively
  • Appointment and removal of Board members and senior executives
  • Succession planning for key roles
  • Ownership of health and safety policies
  • Approval and ownership of ethics codes and CSR policies
  • Setting terms of reference for delegation of powers to executives and committees

Practical steps for success

There are several practical organisational steps which will contribute to success of any Board:

  • The Board must be properly constituted with the right skills and have the resources to undertake its duties, such as a good company secretary. Board members must dedicate sufficient time to their role.
  • The number of meetings should be sufficient to deal with the business effectively.
  • Agendas should be properly planned and sent out in advance, together with supporting papers to allow for prior reading and preparation.
  • There should be enough time to devote to the items on the agenda, with the right focus on the most important topics – especially strategic issues, rather than mundane operational detail.
  • Minutes should be accurate and available promptly to aid follow-up actions. (Minutes also form a legal record of decision-making that must be kept for up to 10 years).

The organisation’s governance framework should be implemented in a way that is proportionate and realistic. However, as the Financial Reporting Council commented in 2009, the quality of corporate governance depends ultimately on the behaviour of individuals, not on procedures and rules. That leads us to consider what are the desired qualities and skills of valuable Board members?

Desired attributes of Board members

The late Neville Bain, former Chairman of the IoD boiled it down to ten attributes:

  1. Ability to understand issues and identify central points for decision
  2. Sound judgment – probes facts and assumptions, weighs evidence to arrive at decisions
  3. The ability to provide and accept challenge in a constructive way
  4. Ability to influence through clear communication and persuasion
  5. Good interpersonal skills and ability to manage conflict
  6. Forward thinking – anticipating new trends and events, alert to the need for change
  7. Ability to think strategically, to understand the role of risk analysis and control
  8. Financial and commercial skills to understand how well the organisation is progressing against its goals.
  9. Integrity and high ethical standards – which they live by in practice.
  10. Good self-awareness – a thirst to improve personal knowledge and performance.

Boards must strive for continuous improvement

An effective Board should aim to be a learning organisation. They should continually review their collective performance as well as the performance of individual members. A useful way to approach this is through a structured external board effectiveness review, such as BoardCHECK360™ offered by Elderflower Legal. The review will examine various aspects of the Board’s operating procedures, composition and succession planning, induction, meetings management, internal controls and risk management, delegation and will highlight good practice, as well as areas for improvement.

As Bob Garratt tells us: ‘Directors are there to ensure that at the cybernetic centre of the enterprise, there is a heart and brain. This heart..creates an emotional temperature appropriate to that specific organisation. This is the essence of that organisation’s climate or culture”.

Next time: the pivotal role that the Chair plays in developing a successful Board.

Mark Johnson is an experienced solicitor and company secretary helping charities, social enterprises and SME businesses to flourish. His company Elderflower Legal offers a range of support packages to help organisations with legal compliance, managing risk and good governance. For more resources check out elderflowerlegal.co.uk.
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Ten Top Tips for Effective Governance

How can you set up your governance systems to achieve results?

Corporate governance has received increased attention in recent years as a result of high-profile scandals involving abuse of corporate power and, in some cases, unlawful activity by corporate officers. Governance is all about the way the organisations are directed, controlled and held accountable to deliver their purpose over the long-term. The organisation’s practices and procedures should be organised so that the organisation achieves its mission and goals, whilst complying with the law and sound ethical practice.

Putting in place a well-defined and enforced governance structure can provide a structure which works for the benefit of everyone concerned, by ensuring that your organisation adheres to accepted ethical standards and best practices, as well as formal laws. However, it is important that the systems are proportionate to the size of the organisation and the risks it faces. We set out below our ten top tips for effective governance.

Positive benefits of good governance include:

  • People will trust your organisation (including members, service users, funders, suppliers and the public), leading to improved trading terms
  • The organisation will know where it is going
  • The board will be fully connected with members and wider stakeholders
  • Good and timely decisions will be made
  • The Board will be better able to identify and manage risks
  • The organisation will have greater resilience to cope with problems
  • The organisation should enjoy improved financial stability

In our experience, there are common areas that often cause difficulties for organisations. Here are our ten top tips for effective governance.

  1. Mistakes at the start

When setting up a new organisation it is important to have a clear shared view of the vision and mission for the organisation. It is important to plan ahead and bring your supporters with you. Think carefully about your strategy from the start and articulate the vision continually to all your stakeholders. (A stakeholder is any individual or group who depends on the organisation to fulfil their needs and on whom the organisation depends).

  1. Choose the right legal format and corporate structure

Think about what you want your organisation to achieve and choose the right format. Take professional advice and learn from what others have done. Don’t let the tail wag the dog. When selecting a legal format, form should follow function, structure follows strategy. First decide what you want to do, then choose the right structure which facilitates this. Don’t rush into setting up one particular format without understanding what the choices and implications are. It can be expensive to unravel the wrong choice. Professional advice is a sound investment.

  1. Clarity of roles

There may be many roles in a complex organisation. It is important to have clarity about the responsibilities of the Board, individual directors, officers and managers. Write down the key responsibilities and draw up a structure chart and scheme of delegation so that everyone knows who is responsible for what and who has the authority to take decisions. Role descriptions should be easy to understand and new joiners to the organisation should be offered an induction. Roles and responsibilities should be reviewed annually, perhaps as part of an individual appraisal.

  1. Poor Board performance

Board members may fail to perform effectively unless they have the right training and skills and a proper understanding of what their role is (in a documented role description). This can have a knock-on effect on the rest of the organisation, if it is not tackled effectively. There should be regular skills audits of the Board to ensure they are performing well. Group training session can be run to remind the Board of their role and continually improve their skills. A regular formal review of the Board’s effectiveness facilitated by an independent observer can be a useful tool for improvement

  1. Recruitment and succession planning

You need to attract good people onto your board with a wide range of skills. If you have skills gaps and vacancies this can lead to ineffective performance or lack of scrutiny. Cast the net wide in looking for new and diverse talent and plan ahead to refresh the Board at regular intervals. Proper training and induction should be provided to would-be recruits to the Board. Allow them to attend a few meetings as an observer before taking the plunge.

  1. Ineffective meetings

Regular meetings to enable a proper exchange of views are very important to good governance. In a fast world, where digital communication is becoming the norm, some of the nuances of physical meetings, body language and interaction can be lost. Meetings need to be properly run, with a clear agenda and board papers circulated in advance, at regular times and accessible venues. Attendees should not leave feeling unclear about what has been decided; concise minutes should be prepared and circulated promptly after the meeting. The Chair plays a vital role in running effective meetings, supported by a good company secretary.

  1. Dominant founders

Sometimes the original founder of the organisation, a long-serving Chief Executive or Chair may have undue power or influence. Sometimes they may take on too much responsibility and spread themselves too thin. It is important to document the roles and responsibilities of key officers, including the limits on any delegated authority to make decisions (e.g. financial limits on payments, requirements for second signature etc). It is a good idea to write into the constitution a requirement for certain appointments to be refreshed every few years.

  1. Mission drift

If an organisation starts to drift away from its core mission or principles, this can cause a sense of confusion and disengagement for board members, employees, members and customers. There could be a variety of reasons for this. Funding streams or contracts may encourage managers to move into new areas of activity. It is important for the Board to continually review whether the organisation is still fulfilling the objectives written into its constitution. The constitution may need to be reviewed and refreshed to cater for change and this will usually require the members to vote in favour of the change.

  1. Engagement with members and stakeholders

Members and stakeholders need to feel that their voice counts and need to be kept regularly informed about the organisation’s activities. The board must be accountable to and represent the interests of the membership and service users effectively, otherwise a division can arise. This relies on transparent rules and reporting lines, as well as effective regular communication by the Board to keep all stakeholders informed. Members’ meetings should be appealing and easy to attend – think about possible incentives to get people to attend. Cadburys used to give away free chocolate to shareholders who attended its AGM!

  1. Deal with conflict swiftly and decisively

Conflicts occur in most organisations from time to time. Unfortunately, disagreements can quickly escalate and cause rifts within the organisation as positions become entrenched. Conflicts are not always a bad thing- they can help to bring issues to the fore and lead to better debate. The Board, usually through the Chair, needs to deal with conflicts diplomatically, mediating between the different parties to achieve a positive outcome.

Mark Johnson is an experienced solicitor and company secretary helping charities, social enterprises and SME businesses to flourish. His company Elderflower Legal offers a range of support packages to help organisations with legal compliance, managing risk and good governance. For more resources check out elderflowerlegal.co.uk.

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