Directing or Managing ... or Meddling?

“If you’re managing, you’re meddling.” So said a lecturer in a Chicago conference; he was talking about trustees of retirement communities. I was there in my role with Horizon House. But it’s true for all boards, large or small, corporate or non-profit. His admonition is right on -- when trustees or directors begin to manage, it signals there’s something wrong. As a trustee of Horizon House, Seattle’s leading continuous care retirement community, I hear his admonition ring in my ears when I feel the urge to tell staff how to do their job.

Directors should be stepping in only

• when staff has asked for help
• or when a job must be done for which staff is unavailable
• or when management must be changed in order to carry out the org’s mission.

But in each case, directors should be asking themselves ‘what is the underlying problem indicated by a need to step in?’

Directors of small, young theatre, dance and music companies often have no choice but to help manage, for they are chronically understaffed. So is that “wrong?” No, not wrong, but unsustainable over time. Committed, volunteer directors and part-time staff can keep an enterprise moving for a time, in some cases for years. But eventually they wear out; if an org is to sustain itself, the time comes for adequate staff resources and professional management systems.

That’s been the case with SRJO: we have reached that awkward stage of being too big to run out of a part-time Exec Director’s back pocket yet too small to afford a full time staff yet too large and complicated to run out of someone’s back pocket. Our directors have stepped up to undertake management tasks in order to get everything done. Our season brochure and concert programs have been produced via collaboration between staff and directors; our fund raising letters are director-written; our terrific new SRJO blog is produced by Bruce Moore, a director; our Jazz Scholars project is mainly director-managed by Susan Jenkins.

But long term, this isn’t healthy. Such shared project management may strain the trustee/executive director relationship as well as compromise the objectivity and independence that trustees must protect.

It’s a stage of growth with all the strains and emotions of a painful adolescence. And like adolescence, it is best grown through and put behind one.

Jim Tune, President of ArtsFund, has seen a number of arts orgs founder by failing to get through that transition. Whether the problem is lack of funding to afford professionals or resistance to change on the part of long-term directors and/or founders, the “problem” is best viewed as an opportunity to arm the organization with the professional staff and systems that will enable it to reach more audience and become a sustainable contributor to the community’s arts culture. Sustainability demands change and growth.

So, what are we doing at SRJO? Setting about to fund supplemental staff – no mean task in this economy – and recruit executive talent. But with transition to executive staff, directors should be able to withdraw from managing (or meddling) and focus on directing, on mission and vision once again.