As snow appears on the ground in this part of the Northern Hemisphere, a consultant’s heart turns to thoughts of warm indoor meetings:  getting cozy with some great committees.  “Care and feeding” could refer to room temperature, sofa softness and snacks but, in this case, it means “support that creates meaningful committee outcomes.”  How to make your board’s committees more effective?  Think about how to help any work group to be productive.  Here are some starting considerations. 

1)  Is there a clear set of objectives or tasks or sense of what constitutes successful output for this group?  If not, please make it so.  2)  Are there adequate members to get the work done?  Now is the time to add a new member if there are only a couple of people who aren’t even meeting or who aren’t making progress.  This is a great opportunity to mentor new board members or give a senior board member a meaningful task.  Make sure there is at least one person with enough leadership/management skill to engage at least two other members in sharing work.  3) Is there a timeframe to complete key assignments?  If not, declare the end of the calendar year (say, December 1) as the target.  Then determine what of importance can be accomplished by that date and give the members encouragement to complete that task.  4)  Does the group have adequate support to be successful?  This could be authority, information, technology, access to staff or partners outside of the organization to provide information, make decisions or provide other resources.  If not, then make arrangements for appropriate support or decommission the group. 

There is more, of course, but these four items provide a starting point.  Why not look at all committees and work groups now, figure out the most important thing(s) they can accomplish by December 1 and have board leadership and senior staff do the minimum to help these groups succeed.  Up to perhaps half of what is important for board trustees to do is done in work groups, so  caring and feeding activity is really much more important than it may initially appear to be.

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3.22 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."