Articles in the Board Governance category

As a teenager, my father told me “A wise person dreams at night and works during the day.” That was good advice 40 years ago, and it remains good advice […]

We’re nearing the end of board retreat season: the window of time between December, when elected officials are sworn in, and April, when budget deliberations start in earnest. All across […]

When I teach leadership one of the first discussions I have is about the differences between leadership and management. Warren Bennis says that management is about doing things right and […]

Some meetings really are a waste of time. A recent survey reports American workers spend up to 9 hours a week preparing for and attending general status meetings. Status meetings […]

Are we losing civility? Over 1,000 US adults were surveyed in 2014 and a whopping 94% considered the tone and level of civility in the country to be a problem, […]

In January, I had the pleasure of teaching two sets of veteran county and city elected officials through our LELA program, Managing Conflict: How to Disagree and Still Get Along. […]

Producing a long list of issues to learn about or discuss at a retreat is easy. Crafting an agenda that will generate effective discussion, decision-making, and follow-through, however, is a […]

By Lydian Altman and Margaret Henderson It is the responsibility of elected and appointed leaders to set a vision and direction for their communities. This function involves convening the stakeholders […]

Stephen Covey trained the modern world to manage time by using the metaphor of filling a jar with rocks of varied sizes. The bigger rocks symbolized more time-consuming tasks. He […]