A team runs the same play a hundred times in practice.
Then runs it once, on game day, in front of everyone.
A board does it backward. The first time it sees a hard question is the night it has to vote on it. No reps. No practice. Just the pressure and the clock.
Miriam Carver and Bill Charney wrote a book about closing that gap. It's called The Board Member's Playbook: Using Policy Governance to Solve Problems, Make Decisions, and Build a Stronger Board. John Carver — the man who built the Policy Governance model — wrote the foreword.
The whole thing rests on one plain idea.
A board is a team. Teams practice. So a board should practice too.
They call it rehearsal.
Here's how it works.
Policy Governance says a board decides what it wants before the heat of the moment. It writes down its values. Its limits. Its expectations. On paper. In advance.
Then a hard question shows up. And a strong board doesn't scramble to invent an answer in the room. It asks a better question first.
What have we already said?
That's the move. The answer to tonight's mess is often sitting in something the board already agreed to. It just never thought to look.
The book hands you a tool for exactly that. The Rehearsal Worksheet — four questions, run in order, starting with what your own policy already says. Work the four questions and the fog usually lifts.
Then they give you fifty scenarios to practice on. I've expanded those scenarios in All 50 Plays. Real boardroom messes. Blank worksheets to try yourself. Filled-in worksheets from Carver and Charney, so you can check your work against theirs.
That's the part I keep coming back to. The book doesn't just tell you to be a better board. It makes you run the plays.
One reviewer compared it to a personal trainer. Someone who pushes you hard and keeps you from hurting yourself in the process. That's about right.
Why I'm pointing you to it.
Maybe you sit on a church board. An elder team. A nonprofit. A foundation. Somewhere, you're helping steer something that matters — with people who mean well and a room that can get tense.
This book won't hand you the answers. It hands you a way to find them together. Before the pressure, not during it.
Decide who you are on a calm Tuesday. So you don't have to decide it in the storm.
That's worth practicing.
Additional Links
- All 50 Plays — Explore Steve's complete series of 50 boardroom scenarios and practical governance responses.
- Get The Board Member's Playbook by Miriam Carver and Bill Charney
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