An Arts Council board member thinks the Ends are too broad.
She is not willing to accept the full range of interpretations the wording allows.
Carver and Charney begin chapter 5 of The Board Member’s Playbook with that tension.[1] It is not a drafting problem alone. It is a question of who decides.
The member should propose greater specificity to the full board.
Broad policy is not automatically weak policy. It gives the CEO room to choose among many responsible routes. That freedom is deliberate. The cost is that the board must accept every reasonable interpretation of what it wrote.
If the range includes results the board would find unacceptable, the board should narrow the policy.
I would ask the member to complete three sentences:
The current End says…
A reasonable interpretation could therefore produce…
The board should rule that out or require more because…
That moves the concern from preference to policy.
Govern for Impact’s Source Document says the board defines the intended results, recipients, and worth in Ends policies, then allows the CEO any reasonable interpretation.[2] The board can add detail at broader-to-narrower levels until it is willing to accept that range.
The important word is “board.”
One member cannot privately supply the meaning she wishes the policy had. She cannot instruct the CEO to follow her interpretation. She can make the case and ask colleagues to adopt new words.
The board should resist two common reactions.
The first is writing a program plan into Ends. “Offer twelve concerts in rural schools” may be a method. The End is the benefit the concerts are meant to produce, for whom, and at what cost or priority.
The second is making policy vague to preserve agreement. Words such as “enhance,” “support,” and “promote” can hide unresolved choices. If members disagree about who receives the greatest benefit or which result matters most, drafting should expose the disagreement.
I would use a policy staircase.
Begin with the broadest result. Ask whether every reasonable interpretation is acceptable. If not, add a more specific statement beneath it. Repeat only until the board is willing to delegate.
Then stop.
Too little detail leaves the board’s values unspoken. Too much detail turns the board into management.
The CEO should be invited to explain operational and financial implications. The CEO may show that the proposed specificity costs more, excludes another group, or narrows innovation. That information should inform the board. It should not replace the board’s value judgment.
There is a timing issue. A board may change Ends prospectively. It should not rewrite policy after receiving a compliant result merely to declare the CEO wrong. Evaluate performance against the policy that existed.
You can test the draft with one question:
If the CEO chose a different method and still produced this result, would we be satisfied?
If yes, the policy is probably still about Ends.
A broad End is not an abdication when its breadth is chosen.
A narrow End is not micromanagement when its detail expresses a board value.
The discipline is to know which one you mean.
The board should read the revised language aloud before adopting it. Ask the CEO and each member to offer one plausible interpretation. If those examples expose a result the board cannot accept, more work remains. If the examples differ only in method, the freedom may be exactly right.
Specificity should resolve a value choice, not satisfy a preference for detail.
Footnotes
[1] Miriam Carver and Bill Charney, The Board Member’s Playbook (Jossey-Bass, 2004), rehearsal 5.1, pages 144–147.
[2] Govern for Impact, “Policy Governance Source Document,” principles on Ends Policies and Any Reasonable Interpretation.
Additional reading
John Carver and Miriam Carver’s Reinventing Your Board helps boards draft broader-to-narrower Ends without prescribing programs.
John Carver’s Boards That Make a Difference explains why policy precision determines the freedom delegated to the CEO.