The report is twenty pages long.
Staff held 46 meetings. They launched three programs. Attendance increased. Partnerships grew. The photographs are excellent.
The board reaches the last page and still cannot answer one question: did the intended result occur?
Miriam Carver and Bill Charney call this rehearsal “We’ve Been Busy!” Their CEO offers an Ends monitoring report filled with meetings, programs, and other staff effort. The interpretations may be reasonable, but the data describe activity rather than achievement.[1]
I respect hard work. I do not think effort is the same as an End.
An End names the difference the organization exists to make, for whom, and at what worth or priority. Meetings are means. Programs are means. Hours, visits, events, and materials are means. They may be necessary. They are not proof that the result happened.
A food ministry can distribute more boxes while nutrition worsens.
A school can add tutoring hours while reading outcomes stay flat.
A trade association can hold more events while member value declines.
The board needs a report that connects work to effect.
I would ask the CEO to build every Ends report around four statements.
Here is my reasonable interpretation of the policy.
Here is the measure that would demonstrate achievement.
Here is why that measure is credible.
Here is the data, including where performance fell short.
Govern for Impact describes monitoring as evidenced assurance of compliance with explicit, justified interpretations and performance standards.[2] That definition leaves little room for a scrapbook of activity.
The board’s response should be precise. It should not grade the staff’s effort or suggest a better program. It should decide whether the evidence demonstrates that the End was achieved under a reasonable interpretation.
If the report does not contain outcome data, the board can find it noncompliant as a monitoring report even when the underlying program might be succeeding. Reporting compliance is part of the CEO’s assignment.
This is where boards sometimes retreat. Measuring outcomes can be difficult. Social change has many causes. Results may take years. Data may be expensive or incomplete. I would rather see an honest measure with stated limits than a confident list of activities that answers a different question.
A CEO can use leading indicators when the final result takes time. A board can accept qualitative evidence when it is the most credible evidence available. It can ask for comparisons, trends, beneficiary experience, independent validation, or a reasoned proxy. The measure must still point toward the End.
The board also owns a piece of the problem.
If the Ends are vague, no report can rescue them. “Improve the community” offers little help. Improve what, for whom, and at what worth? Before blaming the dashboard, the board should read the policy it wrote.
BoardSource recommends dashboards with concise performance indicators and notes that program reports should disclose both accomplishments and shortfalls.[3] A dashboard is useful when the indicators measure the board’s questions. Colored circles do not turn activity into impact.
Activity information still has a home. The CEO may use it to explain why an outcome moved, what resources cost, or which risks are growing. Board members may want it for learning. The discipline is to label it honestly. An operating update can inform the board without masquerading as evidence that an End was achieved.
You can change the next report with one agenda rule.
Do not ask, “What did staff do?”
Ask, “What changed for the people we named?”
Then let activity data appear only when it explains the result, the cost, or the risk.
Busy people deserve gratitude.
Boards owe owners something different: evidence that the work made the promised difference.
Footnotes
[1] Miriam Carver and Bill Charney, The Board Member’s Playbook (Jossey-Bass, 2004), rehearsal 3.9, pages 56–59.
[2] Govern for Impact, “Policy Governance Glossary,” entry for “Monitoring”.
[3] BoardSource, “What to Evaluate,” section on organizational assessment and dashboards.
Additional reading
Richard P. Chait, William P. Ryan, and Barbara E. Taylor’s Governance as Leadership helps boards ask better questions about purpose and results.
John Carver’s Boards That Make a Difference explains why the board’s job begins with the effects outside the organization, not the activity inside it.