How to make boardroom learning deliberate

Is your board effective without deliberate learning activities? If learning is not an explicit activity, its absence could be responsible for constraining the board’s effectiveness.

Boards often look to increase their effectiveness either reactively when circumstances change in the environment within which the business operates, or proactively by, say, adding or changing a member or members.

In the latter case, the assumption being made is that board performance is limited by one or more of the directors or a combination thereof.

That assumption is not unreasonable given that board composition is promoted as a panacea for many of the supposed boardroom ills. But few boards appear to proactively look to increase, let alone maintain, their effectiveness through continuous learning practices.

Proactive explicit learning practices maintain a board’s self-awareness. Is self-awareness not a one-off matter? No. Because few boards operate in a stable and static environment. Change is pervasive and persistent.

For example, a lack of awareness of growing hubris can result in the board accepting – arguably succumbing – to intolerance of scrutiny: a sign of board dysfunction. Once self-awareness is dulled, board dysfunction is more likely to go unchallenged – much like a yacht approaching the proverbial unknown reef.

Persisting with the yachting analogy, continuous explicit learning is like the helmsman making a decision to minutely change direction and synchronously reflecting on that steering’s impact. Moment by moment. Little by little. Just like the sail trimmers continuously tuning sails to maximise a yacht’s performance in response to the existing and oncoming conditions. The total alertness to performance.

Should the board be alert to its own performance and effectiveness? Moment by moment while in the boardroom, collectively reflecting on its decision-making? Something that can only be undertaken by the directors themselves, individually and collectively?

If the board is able to affect organisational performance, then a dysfunctional board also affects the organisation’s ability to fulfil its purpose. So when there are challenges to organisational performance each challenge emerges as a direct challenge to the board and its very effectiveness.

In this age of unprecedented organisational problems and opportunities, boards must change in tune with, and in advance of, the organisation’s needs and the opportunities they wish to create.

The board must maintain its alertness to its ability to perform: its self-awareness alongside of, and in anticipation of, that change.

Organisational sustainability is dependent upon board effectiveness being sustainable, of which board learning appears a key, if not the key collective attribute.

The board must maintain its alertness to its ability to perform: its self-awareness alongside of, and in anticipation of, that change. Organisational sustainability is dependent upon board effectiveness being sustainable, of which board learning appears a key, if not the key collective attribute.

Our research shows boards have an opportunity to embed explicit learning practices enabling them to maintain and increase their effectiveness. It shows effectiveness is developed quickly through the deliberate adoption of intentional learning practices.

When learning became an intentional practice, awareness of the learning’s why, what and how came into focus (the board’s double-loop learning). That awareness sharpened the board’s focus on the changes they were making to their own effectiveness and what they could do next to further increase that effectiveness. When the mode of learning changed from reactivity to proactivity, the boards felt in control of their own effectiveness and their ability to anticipate and meet internal or external challenges.

That is not control in a hubristic – arrogant – sense but control in a learned sense. One steeped in wisdom. There is a clear distinction here between these two behaviours. Both result in a board observed to being in control, evidently unflappable. Only one of which emerges from learning, knowledge and the resulting wisdom created and subsequently shared.

So what does intentional learning and development of board effectiveness look like? There are two interdependent learning functions of directors on boards. Learning by the individual director, occuring independently of others (inside or outside of the board), and learning by the board as a collective.

The research identified seven core board collective learning practices:

1. A learning and/or board development plan: Adult education research has shown that learning and/or development requires three concurrent elements: content, motivation, and a process of interaction. Content refers to the knowledge, understanding and skills being developed; motivation refers to the volition that the directors have to make the next decision; and interaction being the action, communication and cooperation they use. The first practice guides the board in the content it needs to maintain and develop for its collective efficacy. A good board evaluation should produce a number of ways the board can develop itself, and when prioritised, should form the basis for the learning plan.
2. A designated boardroom learning coordinator: Arranges the interaction needed for learning and/or development. The learning coordinator must be one of the board members, and take responsibility to ensure learning and/or development continues to happen – both individually and as a collective. The coordinator may facilitate that learning, or on occasions may ask a subject matter expert to guide the learning. That expert could be among the directors, within management or external to the business.
3. The creation and maintenance of a ‘safe zone’ for robust discussion: This provides the ‘rules’ for how all interaction happens around the table. It is an agreed set of behaviours to which the members hold each other accountable and by which they can scrutinise themselves, challenge hubris, and channel it for the good of the organisation. A safe zone isn’t necessarily warm and comfortable, but it is a safe place and space – the boardroom – that provides an opportunity for robust discussion, challenge, learning, and development.
4. A board culture of learning, development, and continuous improvement: Such a culture is effective when it becomes part of the DNA of how the board works. Without this culture the motivation to keep learning, developing and improving eventually dissipates. Learning and development should challenge directors’ desire to maintain the status quo and requires their humility to admit there is a lot they don’t know.
5. The inclusion of an explicit learning/development item in the agenda of every meeting: This ensures content makes its way from the learning plan to the boardroom and keeps the learning focus alive. It could simply be a restatement of something that would have been in the agenda anyway, but the language changes to one of learning as opposed to decision-making.
6. The board scrutinises its own collective efficacy at the end of every meeting: This ensures the evaluation of every board meeting is an interaction that produces learning and development. For example, how the board operated and how each member behaved with respect to the agreed safe zone. Members can take turns to evaluate each meeting. Everything is open to scrutiny, other than the wording of the decisions and actions upon which the board has just agreed.
7. A methodology for learning from experience, such as from past decisions (whether good or bad): Deliberate learning from experience is another form of interaction that produces vital learning and development. The board reflects upon and scrutinises how past strategic decisions were made and actions agreed upon in light of the results. Reflection provides the means through which directors distil their experiences into something from which they can learn.

The adoption of explicit board learning practices is not especially common. This may be due to a lack of knowledge about the practices and their benefits; a shortage of time in board meetings; or hubris often encountered among directors and boards.

Developing an awareness of the seven practices and creating time is easy. There is no paradox, explicit board learning practices should, over time, reduce the time taken in meetings because effectiveness increases. As effectiveness increases, alongside awareness, hubris and a resistance to learning ought to also decline. A virtuous circle of practice is created and maintained as the thirst for learning embraces board practice.

A deliberate boardroom learning or development focus may appear to be yet another layer of something to implement not core to the business itself. On top of greater compliance regimes in free-market economies, such a reaction is not surprising.

Except that a learning and development focus is neither new, nor another layer. It is an unambiguous restatement of the board practices that lead to continuing collective efficacy and subsequent organisational performance.

This article is a result of a study of board learning by Peter Allen CMInstD – involving 26 directors and trustees representing 26 entities – and research on corporate governance at the Massey Business School over the past two decades.