Turning Your Board Into a Cohesive Governing Team: Part 1
Teamwork in the abstract is neither here nor there for public transit boards. The only serious reason for developing your board’s teamwork is to help it function as a more effective governing body that gets its governing work done more effectively and efficiently. The acid test of an effective team is its productivity in accomplishing its assigned tasks. Productive teams are also generally characterized by a high level of cooperation and coordination in getting their work done, harmonious relations among team members, the absence of debilitating conflicts, and the capacity to withstand considerable stress and strain without falling apart. You … Read the rest
Get Your Board-CEO Retreat Right
Retreats have become a popular vehicle for involving transit board members, their CEOs, and executives in accomplishing high-impact governing work that could not be accomplished – at least not as well – in regular board business meetings. Updating a vision statement and identifying and discussing strategic and operational issues certainly fall in this category. The return on your authority’s investment of time, energy, and money in a retreat can be quite powerful, in terms not only of substantive outcomes such as an updated vision statement, but also process spin-offs such as esprit de corps, satisfaction, ownership of – and commitment … Read the rest
CEO Dave Genova on Getting Stakeholder Engagement Right at RTD-Denver
You’ll recall that in earlier posts at this blog we’ve defined “stakeholders” as individuals, groups, and organizations it makes sense to build and maintain relationships with because something important is at stake. For example, the office of the mayor and board of county commissioners in your region are always primo stakeholders whose political – and often financial – support are tremendously important to your authority. Over my 30 years of work with public transit CEOs and their boards I’ve come across more than one case of poorly planned and managed stakeholder engagement. This is really unfortunate since the support of … Read the rest
Cementing the Partnership With Your Board
This post has been adapted from an article that originally appeared in the Spring 2018 edition of the Association Forum’s “CEOnly Newsletter.” It is reprinted here with the Forum’s permission.
Satisfied Owners Make Better Partners
Thirty years of working with public and nonprofit boards of all shapes and sizes and their chief executives have taught me that your long-term success and professional longevity as CEO of your transit authority have more to do with maintaining a healthy partnership with your board than any other factor. I’ve also learned that even if your transit authority is thriving in terms of operational … Read the rest
CEO Brad Miller’s Podcast on Tweaking PSTA’s Business Model
In a rapidly changing environment, one of the preeminent keys to making sure your authority thrives and grows is for you, as your authority’s CEO, to take the lead in updating its business model, wearing what I call the “Innovator-in-Chief” hat. Therefore, I’m pleased to share the fourth podcast in this blog’s ongoing series on public transit business model updating, featuring Brad Miller, Chief Executive Officer of Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, who describes mobility on demand initiatives launched on his watch. After listening to Brad’s highly informative podcast, you might want to take a look at one or more of … Read the rest
A Critical CEO Challenge: Updating Your Authority’s Business Model
According to APTA Chair Nat Ford and CEO Paul Skoutelas in the podcast featured in the March 14 post at this blog (https://boardsavvytransitceo.com/aptas-dynamic-leadership-duo-takes-mobility-management-issue/), local transportation authorities must make a stark choice in this time of dramatic, continuous change, in terms not only of communication and transportation technologies, but also of changing customer needs and preferences. They can be aggressively opportunistic: embracing and capitalizing on the opportunities that a tumultuous environment offers by playing the preeminent leadership role in their communities in partnership and network building that brings together various transportation modes (ride sourcing; car sharing; bike sharing; train … Read the rest
Turning Board Evaluation of the CEO Into a More Powerful Relationship Building Tool
“But won’t I be inviting my board members into my business and leaving myself open to the kind of micro-management that can really disrupt my work?” This is what I heard from the GM of a mid-size transportation authority during our recent discussion over lunch of the process her board might use to assess her work. We’d agreed that a well-designed annual GM evaluation process was one of the most important vehicles for keeping her working relationship with the board healthy. And we’d also agreed that an objective evaluation process should heavily focus on the authority’s overall performance in terms … Read the rest
The CEO-COO Partnership: Powerful Benefits But a Real Challenge to Make It Work
A two-person executive office consisting of a chief executive officer who focuses on the relationship with the board, strategic planning, and external/stakeholder relations, and a chief operating officer (COO) who oversees all internal operations, is a staple in the for-profit sector. And these days I’m seeing the configuration more frequently in larger public and nonprofit corporations where several senior executives once reported directly to the CEO. There’s a pretty compelling reason for adopting this executive management structure: freeing up the CEO to focus upward and outward – interacting intensively with her board of directors, promoting her organization’s image in the … Read the rest
Don’t Forget Your Board Chair’s Paycheck
I’ll never forget walking into a transit authority’s board room several years ago. I found the board chair – a highly influential attorney – fuming. When I asked what was wrong, he handed me a clipping from the community affairs section of the local paper, saying “read this and you’ll see.” The piece was a glowing review of the authority’s new agreement with the local community college system – providing frequent, convenient bus service to students. I couldn’t see what the problem was until I got near the end of the piece, when I read a long quote from the … Read the rest
Don’t Allow Yourself to Get Caught in the “Policy Governance” Trap
A year or so ago, I got a call from a transit CEO desperate for help. The year before, he explained, his board had adopted a “policy governance manual,” spelling out the roles and responsibilities of the board and CEO and making clear the limits on both board and executive authority. For example, the manual specified that the CEO could sign consulting services contracts up to a maximum of $25,000, above which board approval was required, that the CEO was responsible for preparing the annual operating plan and budget, while the board was responsible for reviewing and adopting the plan … Read the rest
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