Self-assessment by the board is an essential management practice that top-performing boards make use of to ensure long-term oversight. It requires the board to step back from their day-to-day activities and examine its effectiveness. This allows the board to proactively tackle areas that could be major sources of frustration and friction.
There are a variety of ways to conduct a self-assessment of your board that range from interviews and surveys to facilitation-based discussions. The best method will depend on the size of your board, the resources available and the depth you’d like to include in the assessment.
When you have decided on the method, make sure you clearly define the goals you intend to achieve with the assessment. For instance, do you intend to improve governance, match governance with organizational goals or enhance accountability? Once you’ve determined this, you can select an evaluation tool.
Certain tools allow you to analyze your results against other hospitals or health systems, while others are focused solely on the governance practices of your company. Whatever you choose it is important to ensure that the tools used are impartial and don’t make any mention of the individual directors. This will create a safe environment for honest feedback.
Many boards also employ a peer review process that requires board members to assess their colleagues as directors. This is a productive and beneficial process, but it is important that the process remain private. It isn’t easy for directors to be critical of someone else’s decision if they worry that it will be retaliated against them. In this situation it is generally better to let the facilitator go through the responses to determine which insights are relevant to share with the board.