Complex questions about governance structure, function, and purpose often get confounded by interpersonal histories. This leads to avoiding key issues rather than risk facing the wrath of fellow board members who are in different camps.

Our collaborative committee model is a simple yet amazingly effective technique. Our approach brings together varied interests from large organizations to tackle what have been seen as intractable problems.

The key ingredient to this model’s success: forming a committee of stakeholders who represent the organization’s different, and even conflicting, viewpoints.

We propose our client’s adopt two requirements for committee membership:

1. Members must be identified within the organization as staunch advocates for their position and as key influencers. Any compromise these members reach will cause others throughout the organization with similar views to take notice.

2. Members must be reasonable. Not necessarily easygoing or un-skeptical, but members should be critical thinkers who are capable of fair and rational judgment.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 7:21 am and is filed under Consulting for Nonprofits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.