Boards Bury Visioning in Concrete

We have attracted good people to be on credit union and nonprofit Boards. They are almost all left-brain dominant who like to do concrete things like solving problems; they prefer not to have free-flowing discussion about intangible things, such as vision statements.

Therefore, in large measure, our leadership boards remain involved in management-level planning and decision-making. First, let’s understand about our two brains. Actually, two parts of our brains. We have a right-hemisphere that is simultaneous, and a left-hemisphere that is sequential. Daniel Pink suggests we see it this way, “the right is the picture, and the left is the thousand words.” We all use both hemispheres all the time, yet one side dominates how we think and act.

Here are observations and facts to consider:

• The majority of humans are left-brain dominant. That’s been good for much of human history, helping humans adapt to life on earth through the rigors of science, the industrial revolution, and pyramidal organizational structures.
  Boards of nonprofits are more left-brained than the average population. Maybe it’s because in the early days, Boards did all the work, getting satisfaction from completing taks.
• Left-brain dominant directors (and managers) prefer to work with familiar problems and solve them. Board agendas bring such decisions to the board. Those decisions keep out the strategic and visionary discussions that may keep their organizations relevant: Relevance = survival.
• Boards are accustomed to examining monthly, questioning recent activities, and making management-like decisions because many of them are managers in their vocations. Making decisions on concrete issues is intrinsically satisfying to left-brained dominant folks.
• Discussing issues with no immediate and concrete answers frustrate left-brain dominant people, and people naturally avoid frustration.
  Strategic thinking is more a right-brain activity. Since right-brain activities are random, unplanned, scattered, artistic, creative, and often off-the-wall, they don’t quite fit the traditional Board agenda.

You get the idea. Read Daniel H. Pink’s, 2005 book, A Whole New Mind. He makes the case that we’re passing into an era in human history that favors right-brained skills. [ buy the book here ]

Restructure Board activities and agenda to focus on strategic and big-picture issues. Recruit directors and more managers with right-brain tendencies and skills.

Get creative or perish. If you don’t believe perishing is a real possibility, you’re not seeing the long-term picture, and I can’t fit in the thousand words here.