Presidents and boards of trustees have an important and somewhat unusual relationship in academe: Their partnerships are close but with mixes of respect and distrust. Their relationships are interdependent, or perhaps codependent.
But those pairings are fundamentally unequal, said Richard P. Chait to a gathering of presidents here at a Council of Independent Colleges conference.
“You have a lot more skin in the game,” said Mr. Chait, a research professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. “The reality is, when the president mismanages, the board fires the president. When the board misgoverns, the board fires the president.”
And it’s not a zero-sum game, he said—strong presidents do not require weak boards, nor do strong boards need weak presidents. In his talk, Mr. Chait sought to give his audience a sense of the different kinds of relationships presidents can have with boards, and how those presidents might engage boards differently to yield different outcomes. If a president engages board members with significant work and decision making, and if the ideas and discussion flow back and forth, the president might get more-positive results and feedback from the board. If, in contrast, a president is defensive, with tendencies to isolate the board, the results might be vastly different.
“Chronic micromanagement by trustees almost always reflects insufficient opportunities for the board to ‘macro-govern,’” or make decisions about the big picture, he said. A president has a lot of power in shaping the board’s direction: He or she can direct or divert board members’ attention, overwhelm them with excessive data or provide them with meaningful information, and cultivate or impede cohesiveness among them. “I would not go so far as to say that you get the board you deserve, but pretty close.”
Mr. Chait outlined five different ways that presidents perceive boards. The most effective presidents see their boards from all of these five different angles at different times, while less-effective presidents fixate on one profile:
- Board as a nuisance and threat, in which the president tries to tightly manage board interactions. (Mr. Chait said this view is more common at public colleges than at private, independent ones.)
- Board as ATM, in which the president seeks trustees for major gifts. “It’s an ever-more-prevalent view that presidents have, and ever more problematic,” Mr. Chait said. “The emphasis on affluence tends to distort governance and compromise principle.” Wealthy board members tend to wield power with more force and influence than less-wealthy members, yet they can also be less engaged.
- Boards as fiduciaries, stewards of the college’s performance. That is the threshold of good governance, not the summit of good governance, Mr. Chait said.
- Boards as consultants, in which board members are treated as experts providing pro bono advice.
- And, seen most rarely, “boards as thought leaders,” in which a president engages the board for insight on the past and future of the college.
Mr. Chait said engagement on all the levels can produce a board that does “generative work,” asking the big questions and helping to shape the institution. He told a story about an unidentified women’s college that set out to build a “college center.” The board members began by asking for the meaning of a college center, then pondered the effect of the building on the college landscape and the center’s role in the community life. The board next examined the financial impact of the center, its effect on the college’s brand, and even more detailed questions, like how mailboxes in the center might be used in the Internet age. A member of the board, a woman of self-made wealth, contributed a significant gift. In the end, Mr. Chait said, the building was praised for its design and deemed a success, in part because of such board engagement.
An example like that one represented “a shift in mind-set, not a shift in mechanics,” Mr. Chait said.
“You can tinker with the architecture of boards forever,” he said. “It’s the change of mind-set, not hydraulics, that is going to matter.”
Three current and former college presidents were asked to critique Mr. Chait’s advice. The three—Joanne V. Creighton, president emerita of Mount Holyoke College, Carol A. Leary, president of Bay Path College, and Kenneth P. Ruscio, president of Washington and Lee University—all acknowledged that they had been deeply influenced by Mr. Chait’s research on higher-education governance, but all three also brought up quibbles with his vision of an engaged board.
Ms. Creighton said that one can have too much of a good thing with an engaged board. Boards love brainstorming, she said, but sometimes their knowledge of the institution is too thin.
Ms. Leary said that not all college presidents have the luxury of inheriting a board capable of an ideal level of engagement, as defined by Mr. Chait. She said that she had inherited a board that was largely honorific whose members lacked higher-education expertise. “I needed to provide the leadership role that they wanted,” she said. A president may have to create the vision for a college alone, rather than build it with the board, she said. (At the same time, she said, her board had taken the lead and the heat during the recession, when the college had to consider salary reductions.)
Mr. Ruscio said that Mr. Chait’s point of view on money and governance might be too severe. Money doesn’t necessarily lead to problems in governance—and, in fact, boards need a strong culture of philanthropy, he said. With money at stake, he said, boards can be more engaged.
