Imagine you’re on the board of an art museum. A priceless collection of the museum’s art is being loaned to a hotel in Las Vegas. As a director, what do you need to know and do in response? This exercise, undertaken in much more detail by the CUES Board at its May meeting, showed that—for the most part—being a director of an art museum didn’t require knowledge of the art world. In fact, questions the museum’s directors should be asking and input they should be giving go beyond the day-to-day issues related to moving the art from one place to another. Their questions and input need to focus on the museum’s big-picture strategy and purpose.
Led by Michael Daigneault, CCD, principal of Quantum Governance, L3C, Vienna, Va., (pictured facilitating another board’s session) the museum exercise was part of the CUES Board’s commitment to walking the talk when it comes to striving for excellence. The board brought in Quantum Governance, CUES’ strategic provider for board assessment and consulting, to help ensure the CUES Board itself performs at the highest level possible. The CUES Board also commissioned Quantum Governance to lead a board assessment. In doing so, the company’s staff members conducted personal interviews with each director and senior CUES staffer, and administered a brief written survey. While the questions weren’t “difficult” or overly time consuming, the results provided a great deal of useful feedback, which was shared first with me and our board chairman, Bob Ramirez, CCE, and then with the full board through a presentation during the May meeting. The survey and the exercises created a cool outcome: Board members and senior staffers advanced their thinking almost immediately. It seemed like there were things everyone had in the back of their minds, and they quickly jumped into the open discussion. A specific outcome is that we are going to make what might appear to be some small tweaks to our board’s meeting format. But board meetings matter, and they resonate throughout an organization. The larger outcomes of making these changes ”just” to our meetings will be improved director-to-director interaction, a better onboarding experience for new directors, and ever higher-level strategic (and even generative) thinking. With the assistance of Daigneault and the other experts at Quantum Governance, we are refining our efforts to have efficient and effective board meetings, as well as a governance structure and process that will most fully benefit the CUES organization and its members.
Charles E. “Chuck” Fagan, III, is president/CEO of CUES. Quantum Governance is CUES' strategic provider for Self-Assessment for Credit Union Boards. You may also wish to download "Credit Union Board Assessment: A Research Study." Daigneault is a frequent contributor to CUES' Center for Credit Union Board Excellence. Sign up for a 30-day free trial. Daigneault also writes regularly for CU Management magazine's monthly, Web-only "Good Governance" column. Sign up forCUES Advantage e-newsletter to get the link delivered to your email inbox.
