Job evaluations. A very effective practice for Board members is to evaluate the quality of their Board’s operations. Many times, Board members don’t know what they don’t know about their own Board. Board evaluations are required in many for-profit industries. These Board members know that it’s critical to regularly conduct short, hands-on assessments of their Board’s operations and then act on the results of those assessments throughout the year.
Evaluations don’t need to take a lot of time, many times, even 15 minutes a year for each Board member to complete a short questionnaire, followed by half an hour to analyze the results and plan an improvement strategy.
Some boards may feel that they do not need evaluations. I would suggest that these boards complete the free board evaluation tool offered by BoardWalk Consulting. This assessment must also be completed in confidence. If your board scores less than an eight on any of the five criteria, then it may be time for an assessment to find and correct deficiencies in your operations.
Before you undertake the exercise to assess your board, make sure everyone is on board with this exercise and the first question to ask yourself is, what are we assessing? There are different assessments that can be completed, such as board effectiveness or individual board members. The individual performance of board members should never be evaluated until everyone has been educated about their role on the board. It can be demoralizing to be evaluated on criteria you didn’t know were part of your responsibility. We will focus this article on the effectiveness of the board as a whole.
Here are some sample questions to help assess your board’s performance. Have your board members complete the survey and then summarize the responses. Instruct your board members that the survey should be completed quickly and honestly, don’t overthink the responses.
Some points to consider before implementing the evaluation.
1. Make sure your questionnaire is relevant to your corporation and the items you want to measure. Your board members will lose interest in answering irrelevant questions.
2. For evaluations to work, everyone must be open and honest. The only way to achieve this is to ensure confidentiality in the questionnaire. Have an independent third party prepare the summaries.
3. Don’t try to be too thorough in your evaluation.
Commit to act on the results of your survey. These assessment tools provide an excellent picture of a board’s strengths and weaknesses. His power is from If these exercises are not followed up, then they are simply a waste of time and energy for your volunteers.
– The board has a complete and common understanding of the roles and responsibilities of members, management and staff within the corporation.
– The board receives regular reports on finances/budgets, outputs/program performance, and other important matters.
– The board communicates effectively to the community.
– Board meetings facilitate focus and progress on important issues.
– Every board member feels involved and interested in the work of the board.
– Directors receive regular training and information on their responsibilities.
– New board members are oriented, including a board operating manual, the Declaration of Companies, the Bylaws and the Law, as well as their roles and responsibilities as board members.
– The organization of the board is documented with a description of the responsibilities of the board and the board committee.
– That the organization has at least the minimum number of members on the Board of Directors required by its statutes or the Law.
– The board has a process for handling urgent matters between meetings.
– The board of directors has an annual calendar of meetings.
– Meetings have written agendas and materials related to major decisions are delivered to the board prior to the meeting.
– Conflicts between directors do not interfere with the functioning of the Board of Directors.
– Our financial monitoring and control systems allow us to quickly identify errors and protect us from most criminal activities.
– I am proud to be a Director of this corporation.
Responses should be categorized simply as “Agree or Disagree”, collated and summarized. I like to see summaries in bar chart format.
These summaries for each question can be used to determine if there is a problem in a particular area and can also help prioritize areas to focus on for improvement.
Condominium Corporations would do well to take note of board practices in highly effective companies. While the industries may be different, the need for an effective decision-making structure is the same.