By Duncan Webb, Guest Author
Duncan Webb is the founder and President of Webb Mgmt, a management consulting practice specializing in the development and operation of performing arts facilities. Webb Mgmt has completed over 500 assignments throughout North America and in six other countries, delivering feasibility studies, business plans and strategic planning to governments, arts organizations, developers and educators. Mr. Webb was born, raised and educated in Canada. He began his career as a banker then spent six years as a producer of commercial, industrial, and experimental theatre before starting his consulting career in 1988.
This is part of a larger series on boards. You can find out more here.
I’ve been working in the performing arts sector for 40 years. My work includes facility feasibility studies, business plans and strategic plans. More often than not, the success of my work depends on the effectiveness of boards. It is one of the reasons I have chosen to teach younger people entering the field of arts administration about boards and governance.
Over the years, my teaching has evolved. Early on, in my classes at New York University and City College of New York, I stressed standard topics that young people need to know about boards. A typical curriculum might include board roles and responsibilities, fiduciary versus advisory boards, the role of committees and their purposes, board recruitment, board training and orientation, fundraising and financial management, and so on.
Also, through these years, I built and shared a list of all the different ways that boards become dysfunctional. This included what I liked to call the “Game of Thrones” board [full of intrigue and in-fighting] to the eccentric dominant funder board. Sharing those examples has become an amusing way to introduce governance do’s and don’ts. Sadly, over many years, the list of different types of dysfunctional boards keeps growing. The latest addition to the list is the “all-ideas-no-action” board, in which well-meaning board members believe their role is to come up with as many out-of-the-box ideas as possible that they then throw at staff with instructions to do the research and come back with a plan. This is clearly NOT HELPFUL.
Why does the focus on dysfunctional boards matter? While it is fine for me to teach board basics, I increasingly believe that a dysfunctional board—even one that thinks it is doing the right things from a governance standpoint—can destroy an organization. And that a high-performing board is necessary for nonprofit arts organizations to navigate in these uncertain times, and it needs to avoid some obvious pitfalls.
This has led me to an interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive place. My teaching used to focus almost entirely on the role of board members. I now believe that senior staff in nonprofit arts organizations play an equally important role in governance. An executive director must make the commitment to invest time and effort into building and maintaining relationships with individual board members, guiding them into appropriate and helpful behavior, and then carefully managing the group dynamic.
To the extent I was interested in senior staff in the past, I believed what they needed was merely a solid grounding in board basics—the structure, functions, and activities that go with governance. That kind of rational intelligence is still required, of course. But today, I would add that senior staff must have very high levels of emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills. This will often require additional training. Yes, the board workshops of the past are useful, but even more essential is training in people management. Staff must be able to determine what makes each board member tick, how to motivate board members and get the most out of each one, and how to get that group of individuals pulling in the same direction.
“Isn’t that the board chair’s job?” you might ask. If you are fortunate to have such a board leader, lucky you. But all too often the skill of people management falls between the cracks. Board leaders have neither the skills nor the knowledge while executive directors believe people management of board members is not their appropriate role. Perhaps that is what the textbooks say. But indeed, it is part of their role. Executive directors have the delicate task of stepping in when necessary and guiding the very group whose responsibility it is to evaluate their performance and determine their future with the organization.
There is a second insight about board effectiveness that I have come slowly to realize. While most nonprofit arts boards carry out their responsibilities more or less—approving budgets, monitoring finances, approving program ideas, and raising money—they are at the same time ignoring some very basic practices to make them effective. This includes consistent and formal recruiting practices, adequate training and orientation, the expression and exchange of clear expectations, periodic evaluations and frequent one-to-one communications between board members and senior staff. It is the absence of these practices and protocols that quickly lead to dysfunctional boards, which can then threaten the organization.
Looking at one of these areas—recruiting practices—effective boards are never done searching for, evaluating, and recruiting appropriate candidates and utilizing the executive director in selling prospects on the mission and programs of the organization. All too often, there is a mad scramble to fill vacancies that leads to less-than-stellar candidates being invited to serve.
Training and orientation is often skipped when it is critical to the success of governance. An annual orientation meeting should not only involve those new to the organization but existing members of the board should participate and model what it means to be active and informed.
And while many boards do carry out an annual evaluation of the executive director, they do little to assess their own performance. There are many tools available and proven processes for trustee evaluation. Taking the time and care to carry them out is essential in this era when board effectiveness is not a luxury but a necessity.
Ultimately, the message is that you get what you deserve with boards. They only work if you invest the time and energy to develop individual relationships, group dynamics, structures, and protocols. In 2025, you must do these things to be successful.
This is post is part of our On Our Minds newsletter. Previous issues of On Our Minds can be read here.