Cementing the Partnership With Your Board
Doug Eadie
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 … Read the rest
CEO Brad Miller’s Podcast on Tweaking PSTA’s Business Model
PSTA CEO Brad Miller
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 … Read the rest
A Critical CEO Challenge: Updating Your Authority’s Business Model
Doug Eadie
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 … Read the rest
Turning Board Evaluation of the CEO Into a More Powerful Relationship Building Tool
Doug Eadie
“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 … Read the rest
The CEO-COO Partnership: Powerful Benefits But a Real Challenge to Make It Work
Doug Eadie
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 … Read the rest
Don’t Forget Your Board Chair’s Paycheck
Doug Eadie
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 … Read the rest
Don’t Allow Yourself to Get Caught in the “Policy Governance” Trap
Doug Eadie
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 … Read the rest
Don’t Emulate Poor Richard III: Protect Your Authority’s Image
And therefore since I cannot prove a lover to entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous….
Ah, King Richard III: how we love to hate him, how we shiver at his delicious villainy! He was Duke of Gloucester when William Shakespeare put these words in his mouth in the monologue that opens his riveting “The Tragedy of King Richard the Third,” and in the play Richard soon murders his way to the throne of England, his most infamous victims being his … Read the rest
How To Make Financial Reporting a High-Powered Relationship Building and PR Tool
Doug Eadie
Let me tell you a tale of two authorities’ very different approaches to presenting financial performance reports at their monthly board meetings. Authority A takes a pretty traditional approach. The authority’s CFO thoroughly reviews the multi-page financial report, consisting of rows and columns of numbers, with the board’s finance committee, which passes the report along to the full board in the monthly board meeting packet. The CFO presents highlights from the report at the full board meeting and answers any questions the board might have.
Authority B’s approach is dramatically different. The CFO takes the board’s performance monitoring … Read the rest
Taking Re-Branding Up a Big Notch: Karen Philbrick on the MTI Experience
Karen Philbrick
I wasn’t initially blown away by enthusiasm when Karen Philbrick, Executive Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute, suggested that we record a podcast for this blog focusing on MIT’s re-branding initiative. What came immediately to mind were the many re-branding efforts I’d observed over the years that involved essentially cosmetic touch-ups. I was reminded of the most recent egregious example: a local economic and community development corporation whose light – the board and chief executive had concluded – was well hidden by the proverbial bushel: its role unclear and its achievements unrecognized. Unfortunately, they chose a cheap and … Read the rest
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