Boardpath · For Boards · Chair and CEO Intensive
Coaching
A written, tested operating agreement between the two offices at the center of the board, so authority is settled before it is tested rather than after.
Works on
Authority and Follow-Through
Format
Coaching engagement
Duration
Four to six weeksPlaceholder pending confirmation
In the room
Chair and chief executiveseparately, then together
Adopted by
The boardnot a private understanding
Whether this fits
Two or more, and it is usually already costing the board more than the engagement would.
The chair and the chief executive are each behaving reasonably and still ending up at odds.
A new chair or a new chief executive has just taken office and the arrangement is being inherited rather than agreed.
The board responded to one boundary dispute by asking for more reporting on everything.
Something happened between meetings and it is still not clear who should have acted.
Directors can feel the friction and have started routing around one of the two offices.
What happens
Boardpath meets each office alone. Both describe the same events, and the distance between the two accounts is usually where the work is. Neither party is misrepresenting anything; they are operating on different understandings of the same arrangement.
Reserved powers, delegated authority, the thresholds at which a matter returns to the board, and what happens between meetings. Drafted against situations that have actually occurred at this organization, not hypotheticals, because hypotheticals are easy to agree on.
The two offices work through the draft in the same room, including the cases where they disagree. A disagreement that is named and written down stops being friction and becomes a known position. That is a materially different working relationship.
The agreement is run against the next live matter and then adjusted. An agreement that has never met a real decision has not been tested, and the failure mode is always the case nobody anticipated.
The agreement is the board’s, not a private understanding between two people. It goes to the board, the board adopts it, and it survives a change in either office.
Ready to get started?
Bring the matter in front of your board, why it matters now, and who is involved. One conversation is usually enough to identify the smallest useful next step, which is sometimes this engagement and often something narrower.