All right, it's go time, huh? So congratulations on finding room F. That's a great start. Most of us in the association profession are used to bobbing and weaving around hotels. So hopefully we're in the right session about the board-staff partnerships and high-performing boards, how they come together. And this is really an opportunity for us to share with you the GLEAM program, and we'll put that on the screen here, which brings together the staff leaders and the volunteer leaders, the physician leaders, to really talk about what is it in governance that advances performance for the organization. So you can see from the slide, it's governance and leadership excellence across medicine. So it is particular to our community. Now many of you are involved with ASAE, for instance, and you know that they bring together that same composite of board leadership and staff leadership for educational elements. But that's within the overall domain. And so what we heard in setting up this program was, can we bring that to medicine? Because there's commonality of issues and structures that are positive and challenging for us. And having that kind of engagement within our community is so important. And so we're delighted to be a part of that process with AMC in helping conceive this program. But I have to tell you, we had a very powerful task force and staff combination of Julia and certainly Helen and their tremendous guidance and input along the way. We have two of the – well, Tom, were you on the task force? I didn't think so, but he's been involved in the leadership of what this looks like. And then Marty, of course, is the immediate past president of CMSS and on the task force had a tremendous input on it. So we do want to be grateful for the task force in assembling really a purposeful program, which culminated last night. So we had 62 participants from 20 organizations. And it included three virtual sessions and then also the video learnings before each session and homework for the teams within each session. So it was a very thorough, thoughtful process that really brought the teams together. When we say teams, we're talking about the volunteer leadership and the staff leadership from each organization, each of the 20 societies to work together, but to work also across the board of all 20 organizations. So that, I think, was the real power in this. And today the panelists are going to share from that what did that look like and what is the power of doing that and hopefully what their expectations are of change in their organization and how they approach it. So again, yesterday was the culmination of it. We had three different elements yesterday around culture in the organizations and then leadership issues and medical issues that cut across the organization. So that was really the power of bringing people together. That was the construct of it. So just going to profile the types of participants that were engaged so that when we introduce the panelists, they can share with you kind of how they fit into this structure, if you will. So the participants, again, most of them were board chair, chair-elects, if you will, president-elect. We use the term chair to connotate the elected leader, if you will, and then CEO for the chief staff executive. That's the terminology we go with. So you can see the makeup of who attended throughout the 62 people. The association scope, most of them were international-focused, if you will, or national. So that's not really surprising. I think that is pretty consistent with the CMSS membership. The size, you can see most of them have 5,000 members, if you will, or close to that. And then 20% were above that, 25,000 members. So it's relatively good-sized organizations that were participating in this first cohort. Again, that didn't surprise us, too, as a new program. This is a fascinating element around what is happening at board meetings. And so the left chart really talks about face-to-face board meetings, and we're seeing in our community and representative of the cohort here, too, is we're back to three to four face-to-face board meetings a year. And that aligns with the data we had prior to COVID, actually. So we're back to face-to-face three to four times a year. But you'll see we have virtual board meetings, one to two or three to four per year. And so what that's doing is saying, are we setting the stage for our face-to-face board meetings with the virtual meetings, or are we replacing some of them? What does that look like? How are we operating? Historically, especially in the last three years, the answer is likely different than the future of what that looks like. Not that we expect less virtual meetings, but using them differently to set the stage for our face-to-face meetings. So that's part of what we'll be discussing, too. Board size, always one of my favorite issues. I had the pleasure of working with the ASAE Foundation on Recruit the Right Board research. The principal investigator was Will Brown out of Texas A&M, and I was his co-investigator on that. So we always like to ask, what is the average board size? Well, from the data set from Beth Gaisley's research for high-performing boards for ASAE Foundation and our research in Recruit the Right Board, and this is all pre-COVID data, was the average board size for high-performing boards was 15. Anecdotally, we've been working on a lot of board restructuring. We've not seen, except for I should say this morning, I was at another board meeting within your space, not necessarily a member, that actually added another board member to it. So they're up to 14, they're still under the average, but rarely do we see anybody increasing their board size these days. If we were to take that data set today, my suspicion is that we'd be down to about 13 board members on an average basis in our community. So that's the direction that we've been seeing up until this morning. The leadership body with authority is always a great question that we like to follow up on, and what does that look like? And that's a structural question. And in our community here, especially in the medical space, we talk about House of Delegates or assembly bodies or some other body with authority. And so you'll see your data set here is that it's very significant in our space here. Let me just get this data so I've got it correct in front of me. So we like to know who has the authority or a level of authority. And if we talk with all the lawyers in our space or the governance analysts like myself, we always say the more the authority lies with the board, the more that authority can be distributed into our work groups, whether it's committees or task forces. So we like to see that full lineup of authority with the board of directors. In the medical space, you'll see that about 30% have an active House of Delegates or assembly body with authority, 30%. That's an anomaly. You won't see that in most other sectors in our space. Maybe the legal community, we see that often in some of the scientific areas. But if you look at the data set of associations, you'll see that you are an outlier with the level of authority that goes out to a different body. Now when we see governance changes, we see a lot of that as removing that level of authority, but increasing the level of influence or informing. And we can talk about that another day. It's not part of our session yet, although we did get into that a little bit yesterday in the makeup of it. We're going to ask our panelists here to describe their governance structure. That's always one of the questions we ask is, who has what level of authority? What does that look like? So that's the data set that we have. So I'm going to ask our panelists to introduce themselves, and we'll start with Marty Liggett. And we'll go down the line, if you will. Introductions or introductions in different ways? If you could do both, that would be helpful. So I'm Marty Liggett. I'm the executive director at the American Society of Hematology. And Dr. Belinda Avalos is also going to be talking here. She is our vice president. She will move up to president-elect and then president. So that's about to happen, because our meeting is next month. And in terms of ASH, the American Society of Hematology has about 18,000 members. We have a board size of 13. And the power is vested in the board. We are, I'm sorry, but this I learned from the past couple of days, extremely lucky, because we have no House of Delegates, and we have no state chapters. So pretty straightforward. Okay? Very focused. Is that good? Belinda? Are you going to also tell them your prior, yeah, any other person? Sure. So I've had a wonderful opportunity to lead ASH in multiple ways, and I'm really looking forward to being president. In my prior roles with ASH, I led, I was the chair of the Committee on Promoting Diversity, or the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. So we've done, ASH has been a leader in DEI efforts. We're actually celebrating our 20th year of awards to recruit and retain underrepresented minorities in the field of hematology. So we're really proud of that. We've done a lot of work, additional work. We're now doing health equity work to gain more information on patients with sickle cell disease, as well as multiple myeloma. And sickle cell disease was described almost 100 years ago. And there's one FDA-approved drug, really, for sickle cell disease, and it's very unfortunate. There are 100,000 patients in the United States with sickle cell disease. So it's been a disease that's been long ignored. So we're very invested in that. And we recently also developed a research collaborative, which has a data hub and is also doing clinical trials. So we're excited about that. And we are so appreciative of your work. That's a great example of how associations touch every life, every day, in every way, and the meaningful work that you do. So thank you for your volunteer leadership. And it's her birthday. So we can sing happy birthday at the end. I'm not going to say the year of my birth. Well, happy birthday. My name is Selena Nukwe, and I'm the Vice President of Constituency Programs and Governance. In that pie chart that was there earlier, I fit in the other staff component. And in my role with AGA, I've been working with governance for almost two years, but I'm 10 years into the organization. Previously, I worked with membership and constituency programs. Our constituency programs represent our women physicians. It represents our leadership development programs, our future leaders. We have an NIH grant focused on underrepresented minorities and enhancing the pipeline through that audience. And we also work with our early career physicians. I'll turn to our CEO, Tom, to give the background on our organizational structure. Thanks, Selena. So I'm Tom Serena, AGA's CEO, everything Marty said. We have a 13-member board. I was around when it was 30, and that is a problem. The fusion of authority was absolutely—I mean, if any of you have a board larger than what we have, you have my empathy. One thing we've done this past year is to streamline the bylaws. We stripped out all the details about committees and everything and gave the board more flexibility to make decisions on the fly, so that's been a big help. Right, right. You know, and I should say, I was just at a board meeting up until about two hours ago, and getting the idea of around streamlining bylaws sounds so intuitive to us, but it is not to so many people who are clinging to what does governance look like. So part of the program was to start, what is governance, and making sure that there's a baseline understanding of it. And we really talked to three elements around that—strategy, structure, and culture. And yesterday was the culmination of that around culture. So we say strategy—I would assume most of us live in that zone in association leadership these days. Structure are the elements around authority, the bylaws and those critical elements, but they're also the way that people get a lot of their recognition, their success, and their engagement with the organizations around the structural elements. Most of those are historic in our community, and we have to be very mindful when we look at data sets or study groups that we look at what we consider to be the leading practices. And again, I don't want to be too hard on the medical space, but oftentimes we are challenged in involving some of those leading practices. So we want to make sure that if we're looking at study sets, we're broader than the medical space, unless you're looking at these two organizations. Sorry, shameful plug. The cultural elements, though, are the influence and influencers, and they're the emotional elements that undermine quality decision-making. Because it's around size, as Tom said, a board of 30 is a very different construction of decision-making than a board of 13. I've been on a board of five before, the dynamics around that. So all those elements around what does good governance look like, you know, the subtle answer is it depends, because you use a board of 30 very differently than you'd use a board of five or 13, clearly, and that engagement's very different. What does that look like? One more aspect of myself. So I've been in this space. I'm Mark Engel with the Association Management Center Consulting. I've been in this space for 39 years, about ready to wind down, hopefully. But I did go back to school at Case Western about 15 years ago with the premise of why is it that we get all these intellectuals in the room who are brilliant in their space, but we bring the decision-making down to the lowest common denominator? And part of that, again, was the experience that I was with this board this morning who had a governance redesign, and what is it that those dynamics came together that really challenged the construct of their governance? Now, they ultimately ended up approving a new governance model, but it was a very difficult journey to get there. We have to realize that most of that is an emotional tug that we're changing when we're looking at governance structures. We have to be very mindful of that. What does that look like? But let's get into more of the board-staff partnership and get engagement with the panelists. So I'm going to ask you to start off by completing this sentence, and I'm going to ask the birthday person, Belinda first, to complete this sentence for us. Board members are at their best when? I think trust is really important, respect, candor, and having a collaborative relationship are extremely important. And knowing each other socially, but also knowing that we've got our own opinions that we're adding and different perspectives. And so we need to be able to feel comfortable about expressing an opinion. There will be dissents, but we need to be respectful of each other and look at all perspectives. I love that trust comment. Selina, what's your experience in this space? Board members are at their best when they're prepared for the meeting. They're future-focused and strategic, and they're decisive. I saw a cup raised, and many of us are aware of how much work goes into preparing for a board meeting, and now heads are nodding. And one of the challenges is when the board member walks in the room and they've not read any of the material. So it's not just from a staff perspective, it's also from the perspective of one another. When they're prepared, they come thoughtfully prepared to engage in a discussion and be strategic. Another big challenge is coming out of a board meeting and wondering what was the decision. One of the things that we try to do at AGA is to end our meetings, all of our meetings, with a reflection and a recap. And in the recap, we, just with a slide at a very high level, just include the bullets, what was decided. Some of the things may mean that it's tabled to the future, but we aim to walk out of there with clarity on what was the decision. Excellent. Tom, do you want to add to that, and then we'll come back to Marty? I told Selina she had better answers, so I'm going to take a different angle. So in my opinion, what staff needs. We desperately need the board to define the problems, because we have a board looking out past three years. Three years and out. We have committees and we have staff to look at the strategic zone, but we need them to define the problems, the issues, and the opportunities that are in the windshield, and then to figure out which ones we're going to work on, and then to give us an objective. So we just had a board meeting last weekend, and I forget, the conversation was about some group, and they said, what can we do for them? We need them to have, we need a certificate program. Like, okay. So what defines success? And the guy who suggested that said, oh, you want us to answer that? I'm like, dude, yes, that's what you're here for. Excellent. All right, Marty. I will just add a couple of things. I agree with what's been said, for sure, but I also think the board, a good board is willing to take risks and realize that while you want a very high-quality product, you can't wait for perfection. You have to move ahead, and you may have to be willing to refine, and then the other thing is, you mentioned trust, but specifically I would say a good board trusts and respects their staff and tells them that regularly. Excellent. So the four things that we captured here, first were trust, preparation, a generative element in the discussion, and being bold in risk-taking. Those were four of the areas that we actually shared throughout this program, and the trust paradigm is really in four spaces. Trust within the board, board member to board member. Trust within that board-staff relationship. Trust with the PILs. Anybody remember what a PIL was? Past illustrious leaders. They're either your blessing or your curse, and then trust within, if you have a House of Delegates or some formal authoritative body. So we look at those four different paradigms. The preparation that you mentioned was the single factor that drove individual board member performance. That's what our research shows. If you're asking for an individual board member how they contribute most as a valuable member of the board, it's their element of preparation. Do they understand what's coming at them, how to engage properly, and so on. That was shared as well. The generative element is how we lead off our board meetings focused up and out so that they're not looking down and in. That's a concept that Tom was sharing. And then bold and risk-taking. How do we do that? And when we structure ourselves and especially drive the agenda with proper materials and alignment of information at the staff level, it allows our boards to look to a higher level of decision quality. And that's what our research was back at Case Western. So, delighted with your answers. So the second one, I'm not gonna always pick on you first, Belinda, but this one again. Staff members are at their best when? They're listened to and they're appreciated. They help us implement the priorities and strategy. They help us strategize too. They help keep us informed. And I think they have an equally important role as the board. Sounds like a true partnership. Yeah. Marty. Of course, I'm gonna agree with what Belinda said. I would say it's also helpful for staff to have a kind of relationship with volunteers where they can curate ideas and bubble them up before they bring them up to the board. So that's a partnership in terms of coming up with ideas. And then obviously the other role of staff is to execute the ideas that are promulgated by the board in a very high quality manner and on time. On time. Oh, and in budget. On time. Sounds like a construction project. Selena. Well, continuing with the trust thing, definitely the board, well, let me follow the order. The staff members are at their best when they are equipped with data, factual evidence, they're able to support the board and be open with that factual information. We've talked a bit about trust and partnership and that opportunity to trust one another, have open dialogue. At the end of the day, there are a number of board meetings where board members have heard rumors and things in the field, and they bring those thoughts into the boardroom. And that informs their decision, right or wrong. And so when staff are prepared and equipped with factual data, it can help steer the direction of the board. I actually just want to say that our organization's come miles from years ago when I was at a board meeting, walking in a hallway and a member passed me and asked me to make tea times for him. So our board staff relationship is right where it needs to be. Everybody feel everybody is an equal in the room. What I would say what staff is best at is that they're the connective tissue. Board members generate, we all generate ideas, but what the board doesn't understand are all the various aspects of our organization, right? We may be doing something in one corner that can be applied somewhere else based on a board member's idea. So we're the ones who can best connect dots. So let's keep building on that, Tom. When we look at the competencies of board members and staff members, where's the alignment or the distinction between the two? And how do you look at that? You prepped us with this and there's a lot of overlap. I mean, everybody can generate ideas and people can connect dots, but I'd say the staff, obviously the subject experts and the board recognize that everybody used to know everything about marketing. Now they recognize sort of those limitations. But board, the staff is, I think, better at strategy. Like there's a lot of ideas generated, but how to structure those and connect them to other parts of the organization, I think that's sort of the staff competency. So we're not doing the color of the website to redesign anymore? We let them pick the color of the brochures. Okay, all right. Salita, do you want to add to that? I just wanted to add that I see staff wants to identify issues through their subject matter expertise, but once the issues are identified and the data is brought forth and the background research has occurred, it really is incumbent upon the board to make those, again, courageous leadership decisions that perhaps staff are not equipped to make. Not to air our dirty laundry or to share everything, but we are coming out of a board meeting and staff were very open about a leadership issue with one of our programs. And we opened up the door for those leaders to come and speak before the board, because for years they wanted to speak before the board. And when they spoke before the board, it validated the concerns that the staff had shared. And so at the end of it, staff said, what do we do? And the board made the courageous decision to end it, start over, new leadership. And it was very decisive. We all walked out of the room saying, oh my goodness, now what? But it was years of things taking place without a clear direction and decision. So I'm gonna tweak the question slightly for our friends at Ash. So I'm gonna start with Marty saying, what kind of competencies do you seek in your senior staff? How do you align that? Well, obviously deep knowledge of the subject area of whatever subject area they're going to be working on. In this case, not kinds of leukemia and lymphoma, but rather education, training, and so on. I'm willing to really work in a collaborative manner. We have, you know, having gone through COVID, we saw what happens when there's Zoom collaboration only. So we have a hybrid working situation where we're in the office Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. And so we really wanna make sure that all of the staff, especially the senior staff, are very collaborative and seek each other out to make sure that that interstitial knowledge is there and that we build on each other. And just being obviously creative and considerate and kind people who can assume all of their colleagues are always acting with the best of intentions, even if they maybe have a different point of view on how to get from point A to point B. So that's a great setup for how I'm gonna tweak it for Belinda. So when we look at competencies, we spent quite a bit of time on this yesterday about the competency lineup at the board level, particularly. We said the research shows hard skills, soft skills, and strategy skills. And the soft skills are how we work together. How would you characterize that in kind of assessing competencies for your leadership lineup? What does that look like? So in terms of our board members, we look at the nominations holistically in terms of what experience does this person have? What gaps do they fill when we're doing nominations? We've recently added a PhD member to our board. We also have an international counselor position. So we try and take all different perspectives and what will, again, this individual fill a gap in for our board. Good, excellent. We spent a lot of time on board construct and the competencies and so on. And we also spent early in the program distinction of roles and responsibilities. And we had a wonderful chart that kind of distinguished the board's responsibilities and role and the staff's responsibilities and role. And we had quite a bit of dialogue around that. So I'm gonna pick on Selena on this element first. So how do you educate your board, whether it's an orientation or some other element around those distinctive roles, realizing there's a blur in the middle, we have to be respectful of that, but there are distinctive roles and responsibilities. Correct, well, I definitely have to thank our communications department. They took this issue of board staff committee collaboration and created this beautiful visual of it's intersecting circles with one another with a spirit of equity amongst the three. That visual we show for our committee chair orientations. We have a leadership summit meeting each year where we bring together all of our committees, our committee chairs, our board members. And it's an opportunity for our board to share with the committees what the governance direction is for the organization. And then for the board to listen in on the committee meetings. And during that event, that's an opportunity to remind and to train new chairs and remind through the voice of the board, that relationship. We have it again, something that comes before the board before each meeting, we started to, it's a little costly at times to ship around the country, but we have these large posters that remind the board of our strategy system and orthodoxies, things that they should be aware of. And we ship that around the country to the meeting so that they're visual reminders as well. And that board staff connectiveness is one of those visuals. Drawing a picture of that relationship is pretty critical. Pictures speak a thousand words, right? Tom, do you wanna add? But Margaret, I think you alluded to this. I mean, orientation is very hard and we tweak it every year, but where I've landed is less is more. When we used to have each department meet with the officers and everybody wanted to show and tell, that just clouds your thinking. So we do, again, less is more, talk about the major issues and tell them they're gonna have to sort of surf with us as we go along. And part of that is likely because of the maturity of the organization in your space and the culture you've created. So if we have a earlier maturity of an organization, for instance, understanding those distinctions is really critical. When you've got a well-oiled machine, if you will, that is focused strategically, that allows you to have that latitude. Yeah, we're oiled. We're getting to well-oiled. But I think the big thing that we emphasize is, what I've discovered about board members, they're humans, right? They wanna solve problems. They're less likely to come in wanting to establish a legacy the way it used to be, but they want something concrete by the time they leave. And we try to dissuade that because they said, you need to be comfortable with a lot of ambiguity because that's not what you're gonna do here. You're looking down the road to a time when you won't be on the board. We actually have this thing we say before every meeting. We have a slide that said, what will our successors say about us? To keep in mind, that's your framing. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the context that we speak to is around a doing board or a thinking board. And part of that's the life cycle of the organization, the maturity, and the resourcing of the organization. And so what we're describing up here is highly into a thinking board. And that skillset, those competencies are different and they need to make sure that we've got that evolution at the board. So how do you all engage with that at ASH? Well, in terms of orientation, one thing that we've found to be very effective when we're talking about orientation and what's the role of the board versus the staff? How do you stay in your lane? How do you show up prepared and so on? So we have collected over the years, case studies that we tell them are based on actual past board behavior. We change the names and usually some other identification. So people are always trying to figure out, was that Nancy? I can't remember. So they try to figure out who it is. But the message it sends is, do not come unprepared like so-and-so did. Do not hide a conflict of interest like this person did and so on. And that has a greater, they remember that better than if I just try to tell them a concept. So that's part of our orientation. And the other thing we do that builds the staff leadership interaction and helps the new leaders understand our programs, we have, when we have our, once a year we have a four-day meeting and that's the one time we have a strategy. Our other meetings are only one day long for the board. So this four-day meeting is preceded by the orientation for new members and old members are welcome to come. And then the senior staff, and there are now 20 senior staff, so this is a big group, and all the standing committee chairs, 17, and the editors as well as the board come for the whole four days. And all of those entities are equally, we've got this big open, everybody's at the table. Everybody's welcome to speak. Everybody, it's not like there's a kid's table over here. Everybody interacts and everybody's encouraged to meet board members they don't know, staff people they don't know. We work from like 7.30 to 12, 8 to 12.30. We have the afternoons where we do social activities together, board, staff, guests, spouses, and people really get to know each other that way in a very friendly way. And it's worth the expense of bringing everybody together. And from the committee section, committee perspective, they hear, oh, this is what the training committee is thinking about, or hey, I wanna let you know that we're also thinking about this, or hey, finance committee, we're gonna need some money over here. So it's proved to be a very good way of doing things. Yeah. Blenda, you've been through it many times, right? I have. I was a counselor on our board, preceding my role now as vice president. So that's been very helpful. Being a chair of a committee has been very helpful. And we interact with our junior members, not at this meeting, but I think from the, in terms of our officers, our board, our chairs, it's a really good opportunity to get to know what, to stay in touch with everyone over an extended period of time. But I think the socialization that we do as well is really important too. I think it builds more trust, and people are more willing to speak out. Yeah. That's why we spend so much time on trust. We really look at three elements around that orientation element. And one is the roles and responsibilities, whether it's the fiduciary, or we don't assume that even committee chairs have been trained into how to lead, and how to facilitate engagement, and those other techniques. And then the second part is the strategy, and their alignment, whether it's at a committee level or whatever, how do they inform strategy? And the third element is really, how do we get our work done? Especially with large, complex organizations like yours, sometimes it's a maze to get, who do I go to for what? So some of those simple things, we can't assume that they really know. So orientation has really taken on a new meaning as we elevate ourselves at the board level, particularly to be focused on the future, and not down and in. So we do have about another 20 minutes. I have one more question for them, but then we're gonna turn it over to you. What is it that you wanna learn or share? And we do know that the CEOs had the meeting this morning to do a wind down on the GLEAM program, and what really transpired, and how can it evolve to improve next year? And I know there's great interest in always evolving this program. I give CMS tremendous credit for looking up and out like that. So I'll start with Belinda again. Happy birthday. Thank you. So how has the GLEAM program advanced your board staff partnership? So it's made me realize the importance, even though I haven't, that's not been the case, but it's made me realize the importance of us working together as staff and the board. I've also learned some things from the GLEAM meeting in terms of asking questions and giving an award for. That was a great tip, wasn't it? Yeah, that was a really good idea. I also feel like I've learned what other societies are doing in terms of approaching similar problems that we have. I really would benefit from coming a second time. I think it's good for officers and board members to come to this meeting. These are things that we don't really touch on. And I've been a member of an NIH study section. I've been of multiple NIH study sections. I've been on other boards. And I think learning how to govern and lead is really important. And we all need to be, as medical societies, learning from each other. Excellent. Marty, do you want to share with that on that board staff partnership? I think it's a real, in addition to what Belinda said, I think it's a real opportunity to have a discussion of concepts, listen to what some other groups are saying, and then huddle together and say, okay, we're gonna take this back. Like you said, we're gonna take this idea back to our board. And there are always so many little ideas that come up at these meetings. Like you talked about the animals. One of the, I can't remember which group it was, but one of the groups said they have animals that they give as an award. Is it your group? For board members that do certain things. So if you're the board member who, over a period of time, never lets go of an idea, you get the alligator at the end of the meeting. And then your job is to figure out the board member after you who won't let go of an idea, and you get to award it to the next person. I mean, it's always just cute ideas like that that I love walking away with. They're meaningful, aren't they? What would we learn from ASGA? Sorry. Well, I think from my perspective, especially as a non-CEO, this is really the personification of trust. Tom and I went through this process with our board chair and our vice chair. And it really, when I think about it, it was almost like a kayak. the four of us are learning together about governance and it caused our board members to really have a greater appreciation of AGA's focus on governance and the work that staff has already done. And then the element of trust when our board chair indicated that she was just here this past weekend, she needs to get back and she was unable to be here today, I had this opportunity, which is really an element of trust to be able to sit here with this esteemed group. So that partnership in being students together. You've upped our game, we appreciate that. Tom? The line that's in my head is no prophet has believed in his own country. So when our president elect leaned over to me two hours into the meeting and said, my gosh, they have the same problems, joy sang in my heart. So it's like validation that the problems are sort of, we're not alone and everybody's struggling with these things. And I'll just say, it was exactly what we asked for. Medical society, leadership, training, and we'll definitely do that again. It was very helpful. So the last question is really open. So low-hanging fruit, as you described, of course. Any other things that you think you're going to take back to really change or implement or consider at the higher level that might take some time to really change? Any other takeaways like that? Go ahead. So we've already dipped our toe into a lot of what was described during there. But I think we could do a much better job of evaluation. Our board evaluations are always 9.9. And I don't think they give us any value. So I think that's one thing we're going to focus on. And we really talked about multi-level evaluations. One is of the board's work collectively, which the board source has a good tool with ASAE on the BSA. If you haven't done that, that's an excellent tool. We also provided an individual board member evaluation. I'm on several boards of directors. When I fly home from a board meeting, I fill it out. How did I do? Was I in an empty seat? Was I properly prepared? Those elements, and the nice thing about that tool is it really does allow an individual board member to judge themselves first. So those types of evaluations are good. Please. Mark, we do that too. But Melinda and I talked about maybe we should do an anonymous evaluation by the other board members of each other. Because again, they give themselves the highest score on everything. And that's really not. So if we could do it anonymously, we think that might be useful. And you also might consider ranking instead of rating. And that forces an element of, how did I do? Was I a six or a one? And you can't have two sixes, if you will. So yeah. Any other elements like that? I'll just add one. We went through an exercise yesterday that was called, it was learn and share. And it was an opportunity with tables around the room with very hard topics. And we were to go to a table of our choice, a problem of our choice. And we had to identify whether we were a learner or whether we were a sharer. We had some knowledge of this. And we stood around and we learned from the learners. The learners also learned. And there was that sharing opportunity. I think that's one thing we hear from our board sometime is, you all don't use our knowledge and expertise enough. And so if we found a way with these tough issues to provide an opportunity for the board to have that peer learning, to learn and share amongst one another, I think that we have a smaller board, but it may be something to try as well. We were able to display several different engagement techniques. And that was the beauty of being together face to face. But we also were able to do some of that virtually as well. So yeah. How do we shake it up? How do we set the expectation? Things are going to be different. If we're talking like Tom talked about the generative discussions, why are we going to our traditional structure with the setup and so on? We're forcing ourselves into a mindset of history. Why don't we look at setting it up differently and setting the stage for that different engagement? What does that look like? Any other takeaways like that? Yeah, Belinda. I just want to make one comment. One of our chairs for one of our committees made a comment, progression, not perfection. And I think that's a really important quote. Yeah, especially in the governance space. We say there's never a perfect governance model. And if there is, you're in trouble because it's already evolved and you haven't admitted it. So yeah, governance is messy. All right, let's open it up. And I'm going to ask Helen if she'd like to offer anything. Because you did get to share with the CEOs this morning. And it sounds like there was some favorable response from it. It's not fair to pick on you. But I got the microphone, so I don't have to be fair, I guess. And I know, Marty, you were in there, too. Can I go first? Oh, do you have a question? Good. Tom's going to go first. I'll try to use my big girl voice. OK, and I'll repeat your question. The microphone won't be able to. So yesterday, at the glean session, it was fabulous, by the way, as all of you have already heard. The evaluation of the board, there's one thing for the board to do, an assessment. And they all self-awareness to the evaluation. But one of the things I really appreciated, which was a different spin on any board assessment, is having the board chair assess each of the individual board members. And I would love to hear some reactions to that. Pitfalls, pros, cons, reactions, what can we anticipate, aside from the board chair saying, no, I don't want to do that. So I'm going to repeat the question for the video. And then I'll ask our panelists. So it's really asking an assessment from the board chair's perspective. And I think you're saying of the individual board members, whether it's performance or engagement, if you will. OK, who would like to share first? All right, Belinda. I'll say Belinda again. I think that's a little tricky. I think it would be more informative to have the entire board provide input. Because I mean, yes, there should be a sense of trust. But sometimes there can be competing interests. So I think it's better to get the perspective from the entire board. That's my opinion. Well, I second that opinion. They won't do it. I mean, our experience is we can't get committee chairs to give us any feedback. And it's not brutal feedback. It's some very simple questions to answer. People don't want to get close to it, at least where we are. We've actually done a couple of projects with associations that have gone through this mechanism. And what we found is if it's done in a non-threatening basis with groups evaluating constructs instead of performance, that it's more acceptable. For instance, my undergrad was in finance. And so one of the feedbacks that I would likely get is you speak technical terms on finance. And most of our folks don't understand what you're saying. I'm thinking, wow, I'm the whiz bang in finance. But I'm confusing things. So having the ability to get that type of a construct and feedback would be very informative. That could change behavior. So how do we do it so it's not offensive? So there's some work that we've done on that basis. So there's some good literature out there, too. And I'm happy to share that with you after the session. Great, great question. Oh, good. We have a traveling mic. Oh, it's working. Working? Yes, excellent. So universally just praised, without question. I think everybody who was there yesterday thought it was just an incredible opportunity. Definitely a lot of sentiment that we should move the in-person first, without question. I think everybody heard that. I think there was a little bit of FOMO of those who weren't there, which was great. Because I think we can really think about the sentiment of you're going to need a bigger room next year. It was nice to hear. Some really great suggestions, though, I thought which was really interesting is that we should try to put together an executive summary of what we did in Gleams. We can really put something out that people could really understand what went on so everybody can have a better sense of what we did. That would help amplify participation. Sort of an idea, this was really a product line that we have to sort of think through. I think more than anything else, people kept coming up with expansion ideas. Like, can we just get this right? But OK, we're going to keep expansion ideas. Can I bring my whole board? Can I bring my whole executive committee? And how much of it was really just all of governance. And interesting ideas about how really there are elements of this that we all do, that new employee orientation. Everybody needs to do some stock lectures around board orientation. There's elements that we could also just build out that even go beyond this. And a sense that definitely kind of even doing something, even if it was a couple of days in person, would be great. And a lot of interest in potentially thinking about building something out for emerging leaders. That would be separate. Not bringing them to the session. I think that was a little of the discussion yesterday. But that there's such a responsibility for us to bring the new leaders forward that thinking about a modified version of this for emerging leaders within our societies was really important. So I mean, I was just incredibly positive. And if your ears are burning, they should have been. It's all good. Any other thoughts or questions out there? Karen. So I wasn't part of GLEAM. I'm sorry. But that's because Mark's been working with us for the last year and a half. And I will tell you that we did the exceptional boards program. I took my whole executive committee. And it was transformational for me. Because it was like these light bulbs went off in their head. And they said, oh my gosh, there's actually science behind this? This is a profession. I'm like, yeah. No offense, doctor. But we've been on an amazing journey. And I definitely want to participate next year. And I want to send my head of governance, like you, to go. And any new officer that comes up. But we have succeeded in getting our board to become a completely competency-based board, rather than representational. And we're going from 28 members down to 15. So we're very excited about that. And then phase three is going to be getting rid of a lot of our committees. Well, that's all. But I can't speak highly enough about working with AMC. They totally gained the trust of our leadership. And it was painful at times. But we got through it. And it's been a success. Very high-performing organization with great leadership. And not only Karen and your director of governance, but your volunteer leader. Your task force was so well-placed and so integrated into the work that they spoke with credibility. And so, as Tom mentioned, you're not a prophet in your own village, right? And they could hear it from you until they're blue in the face, because you know it. But for them to go outside to hear the research and how it came together. And they made a very bold decision and advanced that governance structure in a very significant way. So there's a lot of good examples. One of the things I shared yesterday is that in the last year, and I've been in the business for 39 years. That makes me really old. But the last year, I've seen more governance model changes than the rest of my life put together. And I think what's happening out there is we're experiencing this COVID impact saying, we're not going to get back to 2019. Things are not going to be the same as they were before. And if we don't consider ourselves to have significant change in how we look at things, how we operate that structural element, and keep that culture from inhibiting our ability to advance strategy. And the boards are much more open minded to doing that in a significant way. My suggestion is to you, if you've got a legacy model, seize the day. Things have changed. So it's an exciting time to be part of our community, frankly. And I think the other part of that is the recognition of the professionalism of the association business as a profession is at a height that I haven't seen in my experience either. Seize the day. So I've had the pleasure of working with many of you in this. And there are some real leaders in our community. So yes, sir. Yeah, hi. I was part of the GLEAM task force. So I'm envious that everybody was able to go, wasn't able to go. But I'll go next year. So one of the things I want to talk about is, or ask you about is, board led versus staff led organizations. My organization used to be very volunteer driven. And over the last 18 months, we've become a lot more staff driven. I've got my senior staff way more engaged with the board, the executive committee. We just restructured, without any outside help, from 23 board members down to 15. And we even restructured some of our councils. So it seems to me like we've had an opportunity over the last 18 months to become more staff driven. And we've taken advantage of it. I'd just like to get your perspective on that. So I would say the ability for staff to inform strategy is significant, because we've got all the ability to gather information. So we gather that information, but we allow the information to be processed, to be validated by the volunteer leadership. And so what it's doing is it's changing the way we are preparing the information and allowing them to analyze it. And they'll likely come up with the conclusions that we expect them to. And so that does get them to buy into the system and to rely on the professionalism of how we're gleaning and gathering information. So they're more processing it. So that's the distinction between staff led and volunteer led. The other thing that we're interestingly seeing is a movement towards a corporate structure. And we are engaging with boards to say, how do corporations do this? Now, they assume the fiduciary responsibility of a public corporation as a nonprofit, but the structures are different and the expectations are different. So it's really interesting. In the history, my history, I've been not a big fan of committees, but I am getting to be a bigger fan of board fiduciary committees to engage in meaningful work, to streamline the ability for the board of directors to really focus on strategy. As Tom was talking about, that frees up our ability to look up and out, but being mindful that we are the fiduciary. The other element that's really coming up of interest too, I think, we have perpetuated this myth that we are a democracy. And when you look at the structure, we're a nonprofit corporation, but the board is responsible for the benefit of the organization. Now, we have to be mindful that if we're not member supported, and how does that context convey, we're going to be a shell of an organization. So we need to be mindful of that, but we have to remind our board all the time that their responsibility is to the corporation. We need to be mindful of the members, we need to engage them properly, but they are not the decision making body. And that's when we look at these governance models and what are our inhibitors. So, yes. I just wanted to add to that point regarding staff driven, board driven, I think it's in parallel, but it's a question of what is the focus. And one thing we've been very intentional about is identifying what we call the strategy window, which is year one through three, and then three years out and beyond is really the realm of the board. And so by having the future focus board that's focused three years out, then it enables the staff and the committees to focus within this three year strategy window, which in an essence is the day to day. So that's been very, very helpful between the staff and board driven. Let the board own the future, let the staff own today. Marty, how do you all look at that element of it, board driven, staff driven, member driven? You know, some of the things you guys are talking about, I think we wanna think about, as I said, when we have the retreat, we are trying to think out, that's the purpose, that's what are the new strategic priorities going to be and so on. But you know, no matter how long you do this, the idea of, we call it wearing your ash hat when you're sitting around the table, they do that very well until the decision has to be made about raising dues or increasing author fees. And then all of a sudden, they are wearing a different hat. So I like what was shared about the fact that if your duty, if you're a board member for a non-profit organization like ours, is to the organization, if you are working for a for-profit company, your responsibility is to the shareholder. So we need to have the board members remember to be there as a board member and not as a shareholder when we make those decisions. But I guess I think there's always more to be thinking about, but it works pretty well. Yeah, great, great question. What else from you all? We have one minute left. We have one minute. Who gets the last one? What kind of animal do you get if you come up with questions? You get a free drink if you come up with questions. I was glad that they didn't open the bar before our session. I saw I'm setting it up, I was a little nervous. So happy birthday, that's a minute. That's true, we will do that. So you don't want me to sing, trust me, but the microphone, that'd be dangerous. I just want to share that for all the engagements that we are engaged in in this community, we always learn and we don't come in with a prescription because every organization is unique. I mean, we can talk about strategy, we can talk about structures, and frankly, we've all seen them all and experienced them all. It's the cultural element that really is unique to each organization. Is it an inhibitor or is it an enabler to advance strategy? So, and that was one of the premises we shared for this program was how do you look at strategy, structure, and culture in that intersection? And that is governance. Thanks for the opportunity to learn with you and from you. I always appreciate that. And thank you so much to our panelists. I definitely appreciate how you've added the wisdom to what we've learned and shared. And thanks to Helen and also particularly Julia who was really instrumentally involved in the success of this program. Absolutely. Thank you all very much, appreciate it. Thank you.

GLEAM program

board-staff partnerships

collaboration

governance

trust

preparation

board members

staff members

evaluation