Embedding future thinking into the mindset of a Board

Background
The Carr Fenton Foundation, formerly Doncaster Deaf Trust, is a champion of Deaf education, supporting children, young people and adults with additional needs. Five years on from its last governance review, an internal evaluation concluded that, while the charity was meeting the basic governance needs, it needed to become more strategic and less operational. In the words of CEO Alexis Johnson, “There was too much retrospective reporting and not enough forward thinking.”

Following a recommendation, Alexis contacted Action Planning and chose us, for our expertise and value, to carry out an independent review.

Brief
David Saint took the brief and was asked to carry out a full governance review, looking not only at the main Trust Board but also the Boards of the School and College, which are part of the Trust.

Process
In the initial discussion Alexis explained the context and the aims of the review. It was important to integrate the focus on strategic thinking into the whole review in order to connect any actions in becoming more of a future thinking board with the basics of effective governance, otherwise it would have lost its impact and become confusing.

Once fully briefed, David carried out a review of documentation, observation of Board and senior management meetings online, and interviews with members of the main Trust Board, governors of the school and of college and senior staff. He then ran a development workshop, feeding back his findings from the interviews, with the conclusion that the organisation had a massive governance structure but there were significant overlaps, an overall lack of clarity and almost non-existent strategic input, leading to frustration all round. He then facilitated discussions on how this situation could be improved.

The full report he delivered concluded with a comprehensive action plan which was very well received.

Outcomes
David’s review led to several significant outcomes: restructuring of the Board; appointment of their own highly effective clerk (they had been sub-contracting previously); created an action plan, which the Clerk is overseeing with the Chair; changing the reporting methodology to be more future looking.

“That has changed how we work as a Board,” said Alexis. “Trustees and Governors have become thinking partners and are more involved in the future of the school and the college. That’s what needed to happen. We’re happy with the direction that we’re going.”

Consultant’s insight
It is all too easy for Boards to slip into ‘review and comment’ mode, rather than ‘challenge and encourage’ mode. A governance review is a timely opportunity to reflect on how things are – and how we would like them to be. Trustees and Governors usually have far more to bring to the table than ‘standing agendas’ allow, and it was great that there was an appetite in the Foundation for a more strategic approach.