While experience suggests that many organizations need to pay attention to their governance process and that with many, if not most, organizations, alignment between boards and executives is broken or breaking, it is often difficult, especially for board leadership to admit to this. That is until there is a crisis or major issue in the organization. Even then many are reluctant to seek outside help.
This posture often changes when institutions, especially schools and churches have the need to hire a new executive or pastor. Experienced and savvy leaders can very quickly detect issues with alignment within organizations and will either insist on improved governance development if offered a leadership position or simply refuse an offer and move on. Obviously, this leaves boards and groups without effective leadership and failure continues.
Head searches, especially in schools, are wrought with lots of shuffling of paper and resumes and cost academic institutions significant amounts of money. It is not unusual for a search firm to charge a school a fee equal to 15% to 30% or more, of first year base salary for the new head. This fee is in addition to costs for expenses. Further, if the school seeks advice on compensation planning there is an additional charge.
Coupled with the expense of a Head search is the enormous void always created when a leader leaves a school. This is true even when the departure is well planned and collegial and when there is an appropriate succession plan in place. The loss of time and money that this vacuum creates affects the basic commodity of a school, its students. An article in To the Point, a journal brief published by Independent School Management some years ago, spoke to this issue when defining what it called the stagnation cycle. This cycle can run for as long as four years and begins when an announcement is made that the head of school will be leaving.[1] Such a change can bring turmoil, disruption, and a certain distraction to a school. The activity impacts what Ken Schuetz in his book Aligned Influence: Beyond Governance where he discusses a “better way forward for Boards and their organizations” calls an ‘ecosystem’ of institutional influence which can be easily disruption.
The disrupted ‘ecosystem of influence’ looks something like the following:
- There is an announcement that the Head of School will leave.
- There is a general “slowing down” of activity at the school. While this may be manifested as school-wide lethargy, it mostly means a withdrawal from new projects and a sort of cautionary posture by all. A wait-and-see attitude begins to permeate the school community.
- Most if not all school activity goes into transition and maintenance mode.
- A search for a new head gets underway.
- A new head is appointed.
- If the school is unable to find the person they are seeking for the head position, an interim might be appointed (this is happening more frequently and not) and the stagnations cycle is extended and ‘ecosystem of influence’ may be damaged even more.
- It takes at least one year for the new head to understand and appreciate the culture and history of his or her new school.
- Few initiatives, or none, are undertaken.
- Even in the best of situations, precious time is lost.
This so-called stagnation cycle effects a school in a number of negative ways, simply by the unknowing. Matters like re-enrollment and enrollment, staff retention, fund-raising, the key elements of school success become wobbly and if governance is weak; without a clear alignment between the board and the executive team, they fall apart. Negative feeds negative and crisis occur.
Responsible consultants advise their school clients in the ways of appropriate alignment, providing them with a development tool like Aligned Influence. Oft repeated this directive to school leaders from consultants and others, “. . .the most important responsibility of a board is the hiring of the head. . .” sounds like sage advice, when in fact, it is faulty thinking. The most important board responsibility in any organization is to insist there is appropriate operational alignment with its board and executive leadership team. The most important responsibility of a consultant to his client is providing a means whereby appropriate alignment can take place. Once this is accomplished, hiring a school head will prove reasonably simple. Schools with aligned governance attract quality candidates for all positions, and their head change stagnation cycle is a less painful or school damaging process
[1]. Independent School Management, To the Point, no.7, (1990): 2.
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