Governance Playbook and Strategic Design
An operating board wanted to support a high-performing CEO and transition to a governing board, but it wasn’t sure exactly how.
SECTOR
Non-profit organization
Size
30 employees + 300+ service recipients impacted
Pathway
Design → Aligning on a Future Vision
Engagement
Three months; 2025
01
The Situation
A provincial non-profit had decided to transition from being fully volunteer-led and hands-on in the operations, to a governing board.
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With the leadership of a high-performing Executive Director and leadership team, the organization planned to grow and expand for greater impact at a sector level.
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The board and Executive Director needed support to identify where governance ended and operations began, and how board practices needed to change to support emerging operational capabilities.
02
Our Process
We were engaged to design a future governance model, and written governance playbook that would provide a simple and effective way of aligning everyone on the board’s future role as overseers (not doers), and support the leadership team as it expanded services.
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We started with assisting the board in building the governance model, playbook, and terms of reference, then paused that work to run a strategic plan clarification process with the board and leadership team — defining core services, value proposition, and future direction.
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03
The Outcome
What we found was that the board, CEO and individual senior leaders were not 100% aligned on the recently developed strategic plan.
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It meant different things to different people, and for that reason, the necessary governance and opreating supports were not clear.
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We agreed that the best thing would be to back up and support them in first clarifying the strategic plan, including the organization’s core purpose, value proposition and future goals.
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With that in place, we moved back to finalizing the board playbook, defined committee roles, and core governance policies and processes. We then supported the leadership team through its first operational plan defining precisely how the organization would achieve impact on its goals.
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The outcome of our work was full alignment between board and leadership team on the direction, risk appetite for growth, guardrails for decision-making, board expectations for involvement, and a greater comfort in allowing the leaders to manage with the board’s oversight.