The Board-Savvy CEO

"The Board-Savvy CEO" is a “survive-and-thrive” handbook for nonprofit chief executive officers. Author Doug Eadie draws on his real-world experience with hundreds of nonprofit and public organizations in offering detailed, thoroughly tested guidance that you can put to immediate use in building a truly high-impact board-CEO partnership. You’ll learn how to: help your board strengthen its governing capacity by clarifying the board’s governing role and putting in place a well-designed board committee structure; assist your board in mapping out processes for active, meaningful board member engagement that fosters sound governing decisions and satisfaction; and nurture a resilient CEO-board partnership through robust communication and an effective process for board evaluation of CEO performance. This richly detailed volume will help you forge the kind of board-CEO governing partnership required to capitalize on opportunities and counter threats in a changing, challenging world.

"The Board-Savvy CEO" is a “survive-and-thrive” handbook for nonprofit chief executive officers and executives aspiring to become CEOs. Governance expert and author Doug Eadie explains how leaders who build and maintain a close, productive partnership with their boards do a better job of translating vision into practice and achieving organizational stability, innovation, and growth. The author devotes a chapter to each of the three critical functions of a board-savvy CEO: chief board capacity builder; chief governing process designer; and chief governing relationship manager. Eadie explains, in Chapter Two, how the board-savvy CEO (as chief board capacity builder) helps the governing body define and develop its own governing mission; evaluate and implement effective standing committees that mirror the major streams of decision making; and design and adopt processes that enable the board to manage its own performance. He shows in the next chapter how CEOs who wish to be known as board savvy take the lead in designing processes that engage board members in such governing functions as planning, performance monitoring, and external relations so as to heighten their feelings of satisfaction and ownership — qualities that Eadie says make board members more positive and productive governing partners. Pointing out that the board-CEO working relationship is easily frayed, the author describes in Chapter Four how savvy CEOs help their boards assign a committee to monitor and manage the relationship; reach agreement on formal guidelines for CEO interaction and communication; and assure that a process for CEO performance evaluation is carried out annually. "The Board-Savvy CEO" is chock-full of richly detailed, real-world guidance on how to keep board members actively engaged in governing work that makes a real difference in their organization.

Through his coaching and consulting assistance over the past twenty-five years, Doug Eadie has helped more than 500 nonprofit and public organizations build rock-solid board-CEO partnerships and take command of their own change. Before founding his consulting firm, Doug served as a Peace Corps teacher for three years in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and held a number of senior executive positions in the nonprofit and public sectors. Doug’s twenty books include four in addition to The Board-Savvy CEO from Governance Edge Publishing: Leading Out-of-the-Box Change (2012); The Blind Visionary (with Virginia Jacko, 2010); Building a Rock-Solid Partnership With Your Board (2008); and Meeting the Governing Challenge (2007). Doug is also the author of more than one hundred articles that have appeared in such publications as Associations Now (American Society of Association Executives), Forum (Association Forum of Chicagoland), Nonprofit World (Society for Nonprofits), and the Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Doug was awarded the master of science in management degree from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management. He and his wife, Barbara Krai, reside in Tampa Bay, Florida.