Could we make boards better?
I’ve just looked back to my first proposal for setting up a Board Development programme within the Clore Leadership Programme which I presented to the then Director and his Deputy, Chris Smith and Sue Hoyle, in 2005. It ended with a two-fold purpose:
- to ensure efficient and motivated Boards;
- to investigate whether the current use of Boards within the arts funding system was providing best governance models.
Some 14 years later I think the first purpose has contributed to more emphasis on the importance of good governance and, ultimately, to the setting up of the Governance Cultural Alliance.
The second purpose, however, remains largely unaddressed. And, for someone who has spent considerable time working on governance in the cultural sector, it was perhaps surprising to hear myself asking, at the end of the recent Clore Leadership diversity day, if the current model was in fact the best way of doing things. By ‘model’ I meant the system whereby a miscellaneous group of volunteers, meeting perhaps formally only four or five times a year, take overall responsibility for an organisation that in many instances has a considerable turnover and employs a fair number of people.
