Are you an established Chief Executive with an incoming Chair? Are you an established Chair with an incoming Chief Executive? Are you both new together? How will you work together? I bet that wherever you are in this scenario, you are already making assumptions. S/he/they will do this; s/he/they will do that. And do you ever test out those assumptions. Probably not. We all make assumptions all the time – sometimes unconsciously. But make them we do. So – we’ve made an assumpt

Does any organisation have a perfect board? Of course we’d like to say that the answer is “Yes!” But I spend much of my professional life working with Boards, and their senior staff and I must say I’m beginning to wonder. We’ve all been to training sessions for trustees – indeed I often deliver them. They are full of useful tips, processes, strategies, legal responsibilities, theories – you name it, we cover it! But – and it’s a big but – the thing that is often overlooked is

I must admit my experience as a trustee of sub-committees is mixed. I have seen some that have tackled issues that the main board neither have the skills nor the capacity to address. But I have seen others that are a huge waste of time and energy, both for staff and trustees. My first experience of bad committees was when I was a trustee of the RSPCA over 30 years ago (I am sure it's much better now!!) The sub-committees provided another opportunity for trustees to meddle

Introduction This is the tenth in the Heyheyjoe briefing series, looking at external social, economic, and demographic changes and their impact on charities and non-profit organisations. This one focuses on immigration and how changing migration levels and the politics of migration affect charities and non-profits. Migration into the UK has two sides to it: the pull or recruitment of people into the UK, and the push of people who wish to leave their home country. The chan

I have always struggled to work out how to harness and use the talents of all the members of a board of trustees. It’s particularly a problem if all the trustees wait to be asked about what they can do to help. It's also hard for a trustee to know what it is they should do. So this blog looks at how a trustee can take the initiative to be of the greatest use to the board and the organisation. Respond and engage in good time. Nothing takes up a Chair’s time like having to fo

Introduction Many boards have a Code of Conduct which sets out how their members should behave. That is a very useful and important set of guidelines. But less frequently set out is what the organisation’s commitment should be to its board members. Put together, they could become a kind of mutual promise. Here are some ideas about what behaviours and commitments an organisation should make. The foundations of good practice Reimbursement for costs & expenses The first and mo

Introduction It's easy to measure the success of a company – profit, turnover, share price – to name but 3 ways. It is much harder to...

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I listened to a charity trustee the other day, saying how we shouldn’t talk about charities being competitors. They should be in...

A few weeks after the UK general election, now is a good time to reflect on what the charity sector can learn from the campaign. This...

What is a balanced scorecard? Balanced Scorecard is a 30 year-old performance measuring concept developed by two US academics – Robert...

Making things better: creating a framework that improves expertise and standards. The idea behind this piece is to set out a framework...

This strategy blog, no 10, looks at some of the practical challenges that come out of making a strategy, and some of the shortcuts, or...

After strategy blog 6 lots of readers contacted me with other examples of aspects of charity strategy they don’t like. So here are some...

Strategy is about choices. Almost no charity can do everything in its mission. Charities simply aren’t large enough to reach every person...

Here are the Heyheyjoe charity strategy awards. I have read a whole bunch of charity strategies (over 100) and this is a collection of my...

There are a lot of strategies with pictures of their CEOs or Chairs in various poses introducing the strategy, or talking about how...

At the heart of any strategy is the setting of goals and how they will be delivered. Too many strategies have a few lofty aspirations...

Strategies don’t happen in isolation. They happen in the context of the wider world in which an organisation is working. The external or...

Strategy documents are full of values. In my view they are often one of the most useless sections. There are only so many ways that an...