Trying on a Different Angle to Generate Organizational Solutions

I recently started writing a blog about the idea that boards could be more useful to organizations if they functioned like high-performing teams. I hadn’t seen much written about this particular approach, and as a fan of Patrick Lencioni, I wanted to explore the analogy. However, as I meandered my way through this writing exercise, I had an insight that made me reconsider the whole endeavor. Why is it that we pose solutions for organizations focused on individuals, departments, or distinct elements in the organization, rather than addressing what we know, which is that organizations are dynamic ecosystems that contain multiple interdependent elements? Given this, what good is offering a discrete analogy about the board? How useful is it to answer the question, " How can nonprofits improve board functioning? Maybe the better question is, what does an organization need, and how can the board function to best address those needs?

Following this thread, I further considered that many of us are spending precious time asking and answering the wrong questions. I get questions like this all the time from organization leaders:

●      How can I get my board to be more engaged and effective?

●     How do I remove “dead weight” from my board that I inherited when I joined the organization?

●      What is the appropriate role for the board to play alongside my leadership as the CEO?

●      How can I spend less time managing my board and more time getting their input on strategy?

If organizations are a composite of dynamic interdependent elements, all meant to focus on a shared purpose and set of goals, I find that as I go deeper with leaders, we can identify more useful (and harder) questions to answer:

●      What is our purpose, and does everyone in the organization understand it the same way? (There is a difference between everyone knowing what it is and everyone understanding it the same way).

●      Do we have shared goals across the organization? What are they, and how are we holding everyone accountable to the role they play in accomplishing those goals?

●      Do we all understand our organization’s business model well enough to make aligned choices when it comes to decision-making and resource allocation?

●      What purpose does it serve the organization to have a more engaged and effective board, and how do I design for that? How do we ensure that the board operates in relationship to other elements of the organization and not as an island unto itself?

I am excited to continue exploring these ideas further:

●      The importance of leading with the organization’s purpose (and your own!), before proposing solutions.

●      Organizations are interdependent ecosystems - not a set of discrete units (e.g., the board, the executive team, the management team).

●      To improve organizational effectiveness, solutions to challenges must consider the interdependence of the teams or units within the broader organization (that often operate discretely), as well as the external context that the organization operates in.

●      Intentional organizational design is key to effectiveness (Leaders, you do not have to accept what you’ve inherited.).

●      Asking questions that acknowledge the complexity of an organization and working on those may generate more effective and sustainable solutions rather than picking off discrete questions about individual teams or units.

I hope you take some time to sit with these ideas for a minute. I am looking forward to putting these ideas to work at the upcoming GEO 2026 Conference here in Boston. I am hosting a Community Event, Breakfast Roundtable, on Tuesday, June 2. If you are at GEO, please join me!

In my next blog, I will share what I learned from the roundtable and any other insights gained from the conference. Stay tuned!