ENDS and MEANS

Policy Governance makes a big deal about separating ENDS and MEANS. While this at first seems to be a lot of effort by the board, even feeling sometimes like wasting time splitting hairs, in the long run it is critical to creating an empowered and creative organization. When the lead executive and his or her staff understand what decisions are theirs to make, it creates a great sense of empowerment. It creates within the staff an attitude of "go until I say stop" (a limitation), rather than an attitude of "stop until I say go." In the past, I've seen extremely talented individuals reduced to nothing more than glorified secretaries always waiting around for their next instruction from above. Many times, those instructions were augmented by long periods of silence which resulted in staff doing nothing, thus wasting huge potential. The main reason why they did nothing was because of fear of overstepping their boundaries. It was safer to do nothing than to do something that might not be in their realm to decide. Clarifying these boundaries is what a true governing board needs to spend their time doing. It may seem tedious, but it pays great dividends by releasing the great potential of the staff.