Designing Policies That Make A Difference

BTMAD 03


Board leadership and governing are largely policy tasks. Yet only about 5% of boards have a Policy Manual. Usually they have only a loose collection of statements from the Executive Director about specific issues. Further, it is often in response to problems rather than principles for future actions. Policy making is proactive about the larger issues rather than reactive to smaller matters. The goals are for board policies to be explicit, current, literal, centrally available, brief, and encompassing.

Explicit means written. Even though they may not be in written form, there is always at least unwritten policy. In these cases, implicit policy is substituted for explicit guidelines. People then are left to “suspect” they understand what is required

Policies should literally mean what they say, and if unclear, then they should be clarified or deleted. They must be kept up to date and reliably available in one book / location.

Brevity and simplicity are the secrets of excellence policies. No matter how broad the policy, it will always be more specific than if left unstated and less specific than it could be. Policies should be written within a framework that assures comprehensiveness, and dealing with all board functions.

By attending to the largest issues in each category, the board can limit its work. As it attends to specificity, it reaches a point at which the board feels it can accept any reasonable interpretation of the policy language. At this point, management can be entrusted to make all further choices.

To do this, the boundary between board policy and staff implementation must be detailed. We want the board to control without meddling. The following principles should be observed. The board should write and resolve the broadest or largest policy issues in each category before dealing with smaller issues. Further, the board should grant the Exec Director the authority to make all further decisions as long as they are within the board’s policy guidelines.

The Policy Manual is not a “policy and procedures” manual. It is different from staff- created, staff-owned documents. For example, rather than a board-approved budget, there should be a board budget policy. Instead of board personnel manual, there is a board personnel policy. This leads away from the Approval Syndrome. Often boards are handed ponderous documents, full of both the important and the trivial. They do not have the time or expertise to fully evaluate budgets and project descriptions.

Policy making is not an occasional board chore, but its chief occupation. Only reacting to problems is clearly not leadership or good governing. Broad policies, with diligent monitoring of execution, are the cures.