BOARD LEADERSHIP

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On the importance of saying what we mean

Policv Governance Demkds That We Choose Our Words Carefully by Gary Davis

Gary Davis is a Policy Governance consultant who regularly participates in the Policy Governance Forum on the Web site www.carvergovernance.com. Pursuant to a dialogue he conducted with another participant on the topic of language, we asked him to write this article

ou SHOULD SAY what you mean!” the March Hare told Alice. The

advice also applies to anyone who imple- ments Policy Governance. Unfortunately, however, many who try to use Policy Governance chafe under the discipline of precise language. “Why do we have to use Carver’s terminology?” they ask.

The question has an answer. When John Carver was developing Policy

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

POLI(:Y REVIEW ............................ 4 It’s Not the Board’s Role to Act as a Management Consultant to the CEO

Goor, GOVERNANCE Is NOT ABOUT CONTROL-IT’S ABOUT REMOTE CoNrRoL........................ 6

Governance, he thought carefully about the terms he would use. For example, he considered several alternatives to ends and means but finally decided that the two terms best connotated the meaning that he had in mind. There is nothing sacred about the Carver terminology, but no one yet has come up with terms that better express the core concepts of the holistic model that we know as Policy Governance. When other terms are used-for example, when vision is sub- stituted for ends-readers and listeners can be misled by associations they have with the substitute terms.

Most people come to Policy Gover- nance after being exposed to other board programs. The natural reaction is to implement Policy Governance using some of the terminology of the other sys- tems. People who are familiar with strate- gic planning, for example, may wonder whether vision can be substituted for

A FEW WORDS ON WORDS

N THIS ISSUE, Gary Davis shares his I thoughts with us on the use of lan- guage in governing. His comments compel me to add a few words myself on that important topic. As Gary points out, words used by boards in Policy Governance must be carefully chosen. For most boards precision governance requires an unfamiliar, more sophisticated abil- ity to “say what you mean and mean what you say.”

Yet exercising the necessary ver- bal care for governing excellence does not take the form ordinarily prescribed by persons steeped in the “set measurable objectives” school of thought. Borrowing directly from management practices, the counsel of many board members, consul- tants, and writers is for the board to establish “measurable” expectations. As often as not, this implies the use of specific numbers as the board tells its CEO what is to be achieved. (Before I go further, let me point out that I am not against specific num- bers per se but against their being a requisite for good delegation.)

(continued on back page)

Choose Our Words (con tin ued from front page)

ends. In fact, it would be unwise. According to strategic planners, an organization’s vision is a mental image of what its members want it to be. But an organization’s intended future state (its vision) can be described without saying what it does for those it serves (its ends). Thus vision and ends are two different concepts with two different meanings. Even the term mission fails to match the Policy Governance meaning of ends. A mission is ordinarily what an organization primarily does, whereas ends are what the organization adds to the lives of those it serves. Again, the terms refer to different things.

People who are familiar with strategic planning, for example, may wonder whether vision can be substituted for ends. In fact, it would be unwise.

Some people try to substitute terms like vision for the original Policy Governance terms. Others try to attach new meanings to Carver’s words. They know that Carver selected terms that are fairly common in the English language. Everyone has uttered the words ends, means, limitations, linkages. But putting new meanings onto Carver’s terminol- ogy invalidates the model. To implement Policy Governance successfully, boards must use the words as intended by that model. For example, an end should be thought of as the good that an organiza- tion provides to those it serves, not sim- ply as the final outcome of a process.

This does not mean that every discus- sion of a Policy Governance board must begin with a clear definition of every term. Policy Governance boards may benefit from brainstorming and other free forms of discussion. If the psycholo-

gists are correct, about half of all people like to “think out loud.” But when the discussion is finished and the board sets about the task of reducing its decisions to written policies, the board is obligated to “say what it means.”

The precise board language obliga- tion is created by the fact that Policy Governance demands that the chief executive officer and the organization pursue the ends decided by the board. If the CEO is expected to pursue the ends that have been selected by the board, the CEO has every right to insist that the ends be stated clearly. What good should the organization do, for what people, and at what cost?

In Policy Governance, the CEO can use “any reasonable interpretation” of the boards ends and executive limita- tions statements. For that reason alone, the board must make certain that it has framed its policies in clear and certain terms. If the board fails to state the orga- nization’s ends clearly, the CEO cannot be sure what the board wants.

Why do boards sometimes fail to state the organization’s ends clearly? Some boards mistakenly try to use pre- viously adopted “mission” or “vision” statements. They realize that many hours of board work has gone into the framing of mission and vision state- ments, and they don’t want to waste past efforts. But no one is well served when previous statements are asked to do a job for which they were never intended. If they were adopted before the board began to consider the ques- tion “What is our organization for?” (as opposed to “What does it do?”), vision and mission statements will probably not work as ends statements.

Other boards fail to use precise Policy Governance language because they don’t fully understand the terms and their implications. For example, many board members express concern over “executive limitations” because, they argue, to limit a CEO is to express distrust. Additional study of Policy Governance, however, would persuade these board members that trust is a product of role clarification and that executive limitations help clarify the board’s expectations of its CEO.

In their ends and executive limitations policies, boards also must say what they mean. They must strive for precision in the language that they use. What does it take to write a precise policy statement? A policy is precise when it avoids the perils of unintended vagueness and ambiguity. Unintended vagueness leaves the state- ment open to an unanticipated variety of interpretations. Unintended ambiguity occurs when a term used has more than one meaning but the board intended only one meaning.

The problem for Policy Governance boards comes when the board’s state- ments are not sufficiently precise to convey the board’s meaning. Such statements are an invitation to misun- derstanding by the CEO and the staff. Misunderstanding the board’s inten- tions, the CEO and staff may well employ means that the board finds unacceptable. Moreover, they may lead the organization in directions in which the board does not wish to go.

Governance boards must remove every element of vagueness and ambiguity in the policies that they adopt. AU language is subject to interpretation. A wise board will want to leave many matters to the judgment of the CEO and the staff. Once they have grasped the slippery nature of language, board members should be ready to accept the fact that chief execu- tive officers must be granted the right to formulate reasonable interpretations of the board’s orders. Suppose the board decides that it wants its organization to “create a better life” for the people of the district. If the board consciously chose the vagueness that is inherent in such a broad ends statement, it is, by definition, willing to accept any reasonable interpre- tation of the statement by the CEO. If, however, the board wants the organiza- tion to concentrate its efforts on one spe- cific aspect of life, for example, economic development, it should say so. CEOs should not be expected to read the board’s mind.

Although boards should ask them- selves, “Are we satisfied with the degree of precision in our ends and executive limitations statements?” they must also take care that they not let the policies

This does not mean that Policy

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become overly narrow. In their zeal to spell out clear objectives to the CEO, boards may find themselves falling into the trap of trying to take a quasi-scientific approach to the job of crafting policies. For example, in science and in the branch of philosophy called empiricism, a term has to be “operational” in order to be considered well defined. Thus, the defi- nition of the term “healthy,” a term that might appear in the ends statements of maQy different kinds of boards, as well as in numerous different scientific con- texts, would indicate health-such as average cholesterol levels or amount of exercise-to meet the operational stan- dard to include specific and measurable criteria. Boards do not have to meet this standard, nor should they try. John Carver recognizes the power of nonscien- tific language when he holds that humans can grasp and use terms that lack an operational definition. And, in fact, using operational language when delegating to a CEO would defeat the purpose of dele- gating ranges of authority. This does not mean that ends will not ultimately be measured-the CEO is required to do this as part of the monitoring process. But it does mean that it is not the boards job when setting forth the ends policies to narrowly define these ends in terms of how they are measured.

The ends enumerated by a Policy Governance board must be very carefully crafted.

Those who implement Policy Governance must also know that the importance of precisely measuring the achievement of ends can easily be overemphasized. It is better, John Carver has said, to have a rough measurement of a significant end than to have a precise measurement of a trivial end or, even worse, of a means of even greater impor- tance. So it is that the ends enumerated by a Policy Governance board must be very carefully crafted. Otherwise, ends

statements become vague to the point of becoming useless to the organization. “Governing,” Carver says in Boards That Make a Difference (Jossey-Bass, 1997), “is a verbal job; if a boards words have little integrity, governance cannot be excel- lent” (p. 38).

Good intentions are no substitute for clear language.

The second requirement for clear pol- icy statements is that the people writing the policies must avoid unintended ambiguity. A statement is ambiguous when it can reasonably be read in contra- dictory ways. If a community college board were to define their organization’s end as “the enrichment of county citi- zens,” one would not know whether the enrichment was meant in an economic or a cultural sense. The board might have intended both meanings, but without some sort of gloss on the original state- ment, the college president and staff would not know with certainty. In fact, one kind of enrichment might come at the expense of the other, so the individu- als who are left to follow the board’s dic- tates find themselves in an impossible situation. No matter what the college president does, the result might not be what the board intended.

Good intentions are no substitute for clear language when it comes to imple- menting Policy Governance. The fact that the board “knew what it meant” when it adopted the original vague or ambiguous ends statement does not help at all. Until the recipient of the ends message, the CEO, understands what the board wants the organization to produce, the organi- zation wiU lack adequate direction.

In its commitment to clear language, the Policy Governance board joins sci- entists, legal scholars, and philosophers who have traditionally insisted on the need for precise communication. In

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THE POLICY - - - - GOVERNANCE

MODEL

OARD LEADERSHIP requires, above B all, that the board provide vision. To do so, the board must first have an adequate vision of its own job. That role is best conceived neither as vol- unteer-helper nor as watchdog but as trustee-owner. Policy Governance is an approach to the job of govern- ing that emphasizes values, vision, empowerment of both board and staff, and the strategic ability to lead leaders.

Observing the principles of the Policy Governance model, a board crafts its values into policies of the four types below. Policies written this way enable the board to focus its wisdom into one central, brief document.

ENDS The board defines which human needs are to be met, for whom, and at what cost. Written with a long-term perspective, these mis- sion-related policies embody most of the board’s part of long-range planning.

EXECUTIVE LIMITATIONS The board establishes the bound- aries of acceptability within which staff methods and activities can re- sponsibly be left to staff. These lim- iting policies, therefore, apply to staff means rather than to ends.

BOARD-EXECUTIVE LINKAGE

The board clarifies the manner in which it delegates authority to staff as well as how it evaluates staff per- formance on provisions of the Ends and Executive Limitations policies.

BOARD PROCESS

The board determines its philoso- phy, its accountability, and specifics of its own job.

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The authors propose that managers don’t follow this advice as often as they should because they are trying to create perfect people-defined as doing every- thing the right way. If managers select for talent to begin with and then follow their advice about ends and means, they can stop fretting about everything being done according to received wisdom. Their solution, they claim, encourages employees to take responsi- bility for ends by getting out of their hair about means.

Defining ends is to exercise the most powerful, most elegant leadership any board can muster.

Most boards I’ve known have faced great difficulties when they got down to the business of describing ends, partic- ularly with the rigor recommended by Policy Governance. For boards of school systems, colleges, social service agencies, municipalities, cooperatives, profit companies, and virtually all other organizational forms, defining ends is as difficult as the concept is simple. But to do so is to exercise the most power- ful, most elegant leadership any board can muster-the core of its servant- leadership.

Borrowing a line from Buckingham and Coffman, this kind of transforma- tion of the management-governance environment, though hard work, “is worth the effort. If as much effort were spent identifymg the right employee outcomes as has been spent trying to legislate the manager’s style, then everyone would be better off (p.120). Without doubt, defining ends is difficult and fraught with value dilemmas, and it can be tedious. But at the same time, it is rich, engaging, exciting, and worthy of what it should mean to be a responsi- ble governing board. CI

Choose Our Words (continuedffom page 3)

Chinese culture, clear language rises to the level of a religious principle called “the rectification of names.” Confucius said that “if names be not correct, lan- guage is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately. What the superior man requires is just that in his words there may be nothing incorrect” (Huston Smith, The Religions of Man, Harper & Row, 1958, p. 182).

Words are the building blocks of thought, and thoughts are the building blocks of action.

Long before Policy Governance, the Chinese master of governance knew that words are the building blocks of thought, and thoughts are the building blocks of action. Without reliable words, our thoughts, intentions, and actions will fail. 0

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Introductory and Refresher Seminar; Sept. 8-9. First exposure or “booster” for board members and others. All trainings are in Atlanta. Contact Ivan Benson: e-mail polgov@aol.com, phone (404) 728-9444, or fax (404) 72%0060.

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Policy Review (continuedfrom page 5)

discuss these aspects of their justifiable fears, they need to look elsewhere in poli- cies already written to see if these matters are already covered. For example, it is common for Policy Governance boards to have a policy on treatment of staff wherein maltreatment of various sorts is proscribed. It is also possible that a board already has a policy on limiting risk that includes sufficient reference to jeopar- dies that include those associated with labor law, safety on the job, and so forth. In other words, there may be no need for a policy on the employee evaluation issue at all.

The safety function resolves the often heard objection that the board can’t possibly think of everything that might go wrong.

Or there might be. But the board can- not tell without going through the easy steps just described. Then, if the board deems it necessary, it simply incorpo- rates into policy the remaining, more specific worries it wishes to control. Of course, it would have to do so using the level-by-level statement of these things. One reason, by the way, not to skip levels (as done in item 1 of the policy I have cri- tiqued) is that a well-stated broader level often makes further detail unnecessary. In any event, even if the further detail proves to be desired, the larger thought will have been omitted. It is therefore unavailable as a “net” to catch things that the board might inadvertently leave out of its more specific list-the safety func- tion with which Policy Governance resolves the often heard objection that the board can’t possibly think of every- thing that might go wrong. 0

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Personal Note (continued from front page)

Gary introduces a helpful concept that is well known to persons with a scientific background the operational definition. Briefly, an operational definition (as opposed to the usual sort) is a measure- ment that is to be accepted as the embodi- ment of some concept. For example, I might define “reading skill” as the ability to pronounce, comprehend, and retain written information. We are all familiar with that kind of definition. In doing sci- entific research, however, it is important to be far more exact, so the operational definition comes to our rescue. An opera- tional definition of “reading skill” might be “raw score on the Carver Reading Test” or “score in standard deviations from norm on the Carver Reading Test.” Notice how the operational definition pinned the intended meaning of “reading skill” right down to a fine point? With that specificity, research results from different studies can be compared more accurately.

It is important for the board to choose words precisely, but it is not important for the words to be precise.

Board leadership is not science. Board leadership is the expression of broad challenges to an organization that is then charged with fulfilling those challenges. I said “organization,” but that really refers to an organized group of human beings. Every one of those human beings has a marvelous brain capable of judgment, innovation, and productivity. Board lead- ership, in the service of the board’s boss (the ownership in Policy Governance), wishes to get as much from those brains as possible. To do so calls for giving those fine folks as much room to use their brains as possible-short of “giving away the shop,” of course. To do that requires the board to balance two very important aspects of organization. First, it is impor-

tant for the board to be clear about what it wants. Second, it is important not to be so clear as to eliminate human creativity, initiative, and perception.

Achieving this balance is not a trick done with mirrors, but it does require some pretty slick verbal work on the part of the board. It is important for the board to choose words precisely, but it is not important for the words to be precise!

So even though slavishly following the “set measurable objectives” mantra is destructive to good delegation and should be abandoned, that does not excuse sloppy use of language. The job, as Policy Governance explains better than any other approach to governance, is for the board to carefully manage the degree of looseness in the words it uses. Let me say that again: the job is not to eliminate looseness, nor is it to speak so vaguely that ultimately noth- ing has been said. The challenge to the board is to manage the degree of speci- ficity in the words it chooses for stating its commands to the CEO.

To manage the degree of specificity means that the board must consciously choose how much its words will be open to the interpretation others will give them. If there is a CEO, then these others are really that one person; the CEO can then worry about all the others. Consciously choosing requires the board to discuss, debate, and decide among various levels of specificity. Because no one knows at the outset how much speci- ficity the board will choose, it makes sense to debate and decide the least spe- cific or broadest terminology before going on to more specific or narrower terminology. For my reading skill exam- ple, it is possibl-but rather unlikely- for a board to get to a level that would constitute an operational definition. Numbers might show up in board policy language but not ordinarily.

In almost all the publishing Miriam Carver and I have done on the Policy Governance model, we have used the expression “any reasonable interpreta- tion” to describe what happens manageri- ally after the board has settled on its preferred level of specificity in policy lan- guage. That simply means that the CEO must live with whatever words the board has chosen. The CEO never needs more specificity, for the board has guaranteed

the CEO’s right to use any reasonable interpretation. The board itself may subse- quently choose more specificity, but only because its collective values have shifted from the time the policy was 6rst written.

In a manner of speaking, then, Policy Governance recognizes that governance requires precisely chosen language but does not require precise language. 0

BOARD LEADERSHIP P O L I C Y G O V E R N A N C E I N A C T I O N

J O H N C A R V E R , Executive Editor

NUMBER 49, MAY-JUNE 2000

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