The Nonprofit Secret: The Six Principles of Successful Board/CEO Partnerships by Jonathan Schick is a 113-page pamphet intended to provide guidance to nonprofit boards on how best to "partner" with the CEO.
Meaningful and significant principles? I'm not blown away. Messages nonprofit boards could benefit hearing? Possibly. You be the judge:
Principle 1: Shift the board's focus from management to governance. Uh, OK particularly for nonprofit board's that are in their mature stage of development. I on the other hand believe the better message should be that boards focus on outcomes. Maybe the reason for not emphasizing outcomes is that this focus doesn't necessarily make for an easier Board/CEO relationship. In fact, such focus can be quite demanding but I believe it to be the right and best mission focus.
Principle II: The board has only one employee, the CEO. Practicing this principle does seem to be a challenge for a number of boards and practicing it successfully can certainly make for a better relationship between the board and its CEO.
Principle III: The CEO has only one employer. I suppose their are many nonprofits where the CEO finds it necessary to selectively relate to one or more board members and that may not be a service to the board as a whole. But I also believe that the effective CEO that forges an individual partnership with each board member helps create a more informed, passionate, mission-focused and engaged board. I'm not disputing Schick's Principle III as much as reinforcing that recognition of the one-employer principle does not displace my principle that the CEO's job includes cultivating each board member's relationship with the organization as well as the CEO to ensure both are on the same page and pursuing a similar vision.
Principle IV: Committees help accomplish the board's job, not the CEO's. For sure this has proven a sore point for many a CEO. This is a good message. Of course, the more fundamental message: The board must be clear about committee assignments (informed by staff) and hold the committeee accountable. Failure to follow this framing results in the many difficulties that likely stimulated Schick's Principle.
Principle V: The ESAT. I guess a book on nonprofits without an acronym just isn't a good book. Anyway, the ESAT, the Executive Support and Appraisal Team is in my opinion the one "new" idea for the nonprofit governance and management field that Schick introduces in The Nonprofit Secret. And, I think the ESAT framing is helpful and could be useful to many boards if thought through at a deeper and wider level. This might actually make for its own pamphlet and worth the purchase by many a nonprofit board.
Principle VI: board's should conduct their own annual self-appraisal. Again, sure. Not a new concept. Actually, this is a principle that is helping financially fuel BoardSource. Fine.
So, The Nonprofit Secret does not really provide a lot of new framings or insights that will revolutionize board-ceo relationships. But, it maybe could be helpful, particularly to boards in their developmental stages where they are just getting staff for the first time or are rethinking how to operate as both the board and staff change to address the needs of a growing or changing nonprofit. Again, the ESAT offers something substantive to think about that can serve most boards.
I do not recommend The Nonprofit Secret as a first purchase for your nonprofit book shelf, especially if your organization is fairly well established.