Q:

“I’m the board chair of a mid-sized community services organization. We started a new strategic plan in the past year which I have been very excited about; it’s an ambitious plan that is going to take us into new areas and significantly expand our services and reach. The problem is that I am locked into a stalemate with my ED. I have been asking for clearer KPIs to measure progress on the plan and they have not been able (or aren’t willing) to provide them. I know we are doing a lot of reporting for our main funder but the ED is reluctant to share the data with the board. When I ask for specific targets or benchmarks, they tell me ‘it’s complicated’. At this point I’m feeling extremely frustrated and I don’t know how the board is expected to manage the strategic plan, and ensure our ED is doing their job, without access to more data. But every time I bring it up, the ED shifts the conversation. Where do we go from here?”

A:

I feel you on this one - you’re looking for access to data that will support your board role, and not only are you not getting it, but you’re feeling stonewalled by your ED. I see this dynamic pretty often in my work, and I’ve found that most of the time everyone is trying to get to the same place, just travelling on different paths. So the good news is that this is a very resolvable situation, and working through it will likely strengthen the board/ED relationship in the process. And we get to talk about data, so, yay!

Before we dive in, there are a few things I want to pull apart here: first, there’s the matter of how to monitor your strat plan, which is a technical question that can be addressed with a bit of expertise. Underneath that, we have a mismatch of expectations between the board and ED on information sharing, and perhaps, at the heart of all of this, I suspect that there are some trust issues or power dynamics that could be named and addressed. 

Clarify your strategic goals and objectives

There are a few things that can get in the way of a good strat plan monitoring framework. The first culprit to look for is overly broad or unclear goals, which you will unfortunately find in many nonprofit strategic plans. If your goals and objectives are too vague and generic, they will be difficult to monitor. If you’re having trouble mapping indicators onto your goals or objectives, start by checking if they are clearly defined and if everyone has a shared understanding of what they mean. Indicators can help bring clarity to strategic direction, but they can’t do all the heavy lifting on their own. 

Don’t conflate strategic planning and ED performance management

I also want to clarify that monitoring your strategic plan is distinct from monitoring your ED’s performance. I have seen boards conflate these things on a few occasions, and it usually leads to tension and ineffective approaches. Building out a robust ED performance management system (which should absolutely include consideration of strategic goals, in addition to other areas of performance) can help take some of the pressure off of your strategic plan monitoring, and hopefully, help diffuse tension that you may be experiencing with the ED around this issue.

Look beyond KPIs

The next pitfall I often see around strat plan data is a narrow perspective on monitoring. Many boards say they want KPIs (rewind a decade and the language was ‘SMART Goals’); a ‘KPI’ is one specific type of indicator, and in many cases, KPIs just aren’t the appropriate tool for the job. Expanding your conversation away from KPIs to talk about monitoring indicators more generally (or, the language that I often use, is ‘signals’, as in, “what signals will we be watching for to know we are on track?”) may open up more space for collaboration around the topic. 

And permit me a moment of jargon here: We often think of summative indicators when we’re talking about strategic goals; these are indicators that measure the final outcome, to decide if we’ve been successful. Summative indicators have their place, but for strategic planning, we want to be thinking more about formative indicators. Formative indicators help you track progress as you go, so you can adjust your approach in order to reach your goal. 

Often, when it comes to strategic goals, an ED might be wary of being held accountable for summative indicators that are hard to predict and may be reliant on factors outside of their control; shifting the focus to formative indicators (or ‘signals’!) might help move beyond any impasse here. And in any case, when it comes to monitoring the strategic plan, you’re (hopefully) not just waiting around three to five years to see if you were successful. We want to monitor progress so that we can shift gears if and when we need to.

Accept that some goals defy easy measurement

It’s also worth pointing out that there are areas of strategic goals which are not easily measured or benchmarked in a quantifiable sense. This is especially the case for complex impact work. I like to share the Cynefin Framework with boards, which is a helpful tool for understanding decision-making approaches. There are generally two kinds of decisions your organization may have to make in relation to your strategic plan: complicated and complex. ‘Complicated decisions’ have an identifiable cause/effect relationship. These types of decisions can be supported by data, but often require some analysis or interpretation around the data to support decision-making. 

‘Complex decisions’ do not have a predictable cause/effect relationship. These types of decisions might involve some consideration of data, but data alone won’t do the trick. You’ll ultimately need to adopt what I call ‘emergent monitoring’, an ongoing process of testing and adjusting. This requires ongoing communication, access to expertise, time for sensemaking, and a tolerance for both risk and ambiguity. In my experience, most boards don’t love that approach, but if some of your strategic goals fall into the ‘complex’ category, then you may need to let go of KPIs and get acquainted with this approach. 

Check in on your ED’s workload

In some cases, if your ED is pushing back on conversations about monitoring, they may just have too much on their plate. Monitoring activities have a reputation for being time consuming, frustrating, and not very useful (I will say, while this has been the experience for many people in the sector, thoughtfully designed monitoring frameworks avoid these issues!). It might be worth considering whether your ED feels like they simply don’t have the time or capacity to build out and manage the monitoring framework, especially if they are already spending a significant amount of time on reporting for funders. And remember that funder mandated reporting is often a slog, which typically benefits the funder, not the organization; it may not be simple or worthwhile to share funder-driven data with the board. 

Manage role clarity

Another possible explanation for your ED’s reticence to share data with the board is that the ED does not want to pull the board down into program-level conversations. Data is never just ‘a number’; any time you share data with someone, you are inviting them into a conversation about that data and the story behind it. Sharing details on program outcomes with a board is inviting engagement in program-level decisions, which is not likely an appropriate place for your board to focus. When I hear about EDs 'withholding’ data from a board, it’s usually because they are trying to manage role clarity between the board and staff. It’s perfectly fine for a board to ask an ED, “how do we know our programs and services are creating the kind of impact we want to see?”, but it's another thing to get involved in decisions about managing programs and services.

Address trust issues and power struggles

Juuust in case it’s relevant (it usually is!) I want to speak briefly to trust issues and power dynamics in your board/ED relationship. Disagreements between chairs and EDs are not problematic in and of themselves, but when parties dig in around otherwise ‘simple’ issues, it can be a sign that there’s more going on under the surface. Has strat plan monitoring become the battleground for a power struggle between the chair and ED? Does the board have a lack of confidence in the ED’s performance or communications? Is the ED feeling micromanaged? If there’s something here, it’s worth digging into it and addressing it directly, rather than under the guise of a separate issue.

Where to go from here

Hopefully this gives you a bit of insight into what might be behind the stalemate with your ED about strategic plan monitoring. Whatever is going on, one thing is clear, and it’s that your board and ED absolutely do need to be monitoring progress on your strategic plan - and your ED has an important role to play in supporting the board on this. Here are a few suggestions for how to get that project back on track:

Clarify what the board really needs

First things first, the board needs to be very specific about what it needs from the ED. As a board, and ideally in collaboration with your ED, have a conversation about your strategic goals and objectives. 

• Step one: Ask yourselves “As a board, what decisions will we need to make about this strategic plan?” 
• Step two: Once you’re clear on the specific decisions that are needed, identify what kind of information the board will need to inform that decision, how often the information is needed, and what level of certainty is required.
• Step three: Direct your ED to outline a reporting schedule that meets the board’s information needs. Some of the information is likely already being reported to the board on an ongoing basis, and in that case, flagging it for the appropriate conversation might be all that is needed. Other information may not yet exist in the organization, and in that case, the ED will have to find ways to collect it (and if the data collection is so onerous that it outweighs the benefit, that’s a conversation to bring back to the board).
• Step four: Revisit these steps if at any point the board feels that it is not getting the information it needs. And remember that your ED is your biggest asset when it comes to understanding progress on the strategic plan; don’t assume that a ‘quarterly update’ on complex work is less rigorous or informative than a KPI. 

Build collaborative rubrics

When it comes to monitoring complex work, if the idea of an unstructured ‘emergent approach’ gives your board directors hives, then I recommend taking the time to build out monitoring rubrics. Rubrics are one of my favourite tools for building alignment, managing accountability and generating meaningful dialogue around complex work (which is why it’s something that I have integrated into my ED performance management tool). If this is an approach that appeals to you too, get a hold of a copy of The Social Profit Handbook from David Grant to walk you through the process.

Get outside help

Finally, I think it’s worth reiterating that monitoring and evaluation is a specific area of professional expertise that you can get external support with. I always include a full monitoring framework with my strategic plan projects, but if you’re working without one, it might be worthwhile to hire a specialist to help you develop it. There are also specialists out there who can go further, helping your organization develop the infrastructure, processes and expertise needed to use data more effectively in decision-making (Indu Sambandam is one person I know who does this kind of work).

Conclusion

As a board, getting access to the information you need to fulfill your role effectively really matters. And while it may be frustrating to hear those requests answered with ‘it’s complicated’, the truth is, it may actually be quite complicated (or even complex!). Taking the time to understand what’s involved, and clarifying the need and use cases for data will hopefully move your organization toward a more collaborative approach to monitoring. But if issues remain, it may be time to look under the surface and address any trust issues or power dynamics that may be bubbling up. 

Big Takeaways:

• Monitoring a strategic plan can be quite complicated, or even, complex! Take the time to clarify what kind of information is needed, when, for which decisions.
• KPIs are the Kleenex of indicators. Remember that there are many, many approaches to monitoring complex work that might be better suited to your organization.
• Trust, power and turf issues often play out in conversations around data and reporting. Address underlying tensions in a constructive way, instead of through a proxy (indicator) war.