Should non-managerial staff attend routine meetings of a board of trustees?

In response to Mary's post.  Board Fellows is a Net Impact chapter run program in about 15 cities nationwide involving perhaps several hundred fellows and a corresponding number of nonprofit organizations.  There is an effort underway to understand these programs as a whole and begin to profile demographic features and the effectiveness of these efforts.  In Utah, the Marriott Chapter at BYU could establish this model but have not to date.  The other most likely candidates for Net Impact chapters and programs such as Board Fellows would be at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Weber State University in Ogden and Southern Utah University in Cedar City.  Without the infrastructure of a Net Impact Chapter, it is difficult to see how the board fellows model could be implemented and sustained.

As a skilled meeting and retreat facilitator, I pride myself on being able to adjust agendas to accommodate the flow of discussion (or lack thereof) in an extended meeting setting. One trend that I have recently observed is that many organizations desire to hold retreat and strategic planning discussions in an increasingly short time frame. Many annual retreat/planning sessions are taking place in only one half day. In almost every session lasting three hours or more, I have noticed that at least one "elephant-in-the-room" issue (something not on the agenda and not surfaced in preparation and preceding discussion during the event) will emerge, but not usually in the first 90-120 minutes. At a recent event, after the first four hours of discussion, it appeared that no truly strategic issues had emerged to move the organization forward in a fundamental way. I was ready to give up an suggested that the group consider early adjournment as this was in the evening. After some stumbling with alternative ideas to spend the last hour, a strategic issue and a new solution emerged that greatly energized the group. The miracle of the elephant had occurred once again and a breakthrough in generating new momentum was made by the group. I am suggesting that, in terms of special meetings, sometimes longer is actually better than shorter.