Community boards of all kinds—city councils, county commissions, school boards, chamber boards, authorities, and so on—are critical to how our communities develop. If the boards are unengaged, divisive or dysfunctional, places don't function well. But is there anything you can do to help voluntary, part-time boards work better together?
Actually, yes. And the place to begin is with an annual planning retreat that allows members (working with staff) to set vision-driven goals and deal with interpersonal issues in a positive way. But be careful. Not all planning retreats are alike—and settling for a retreat where the facilitator is unaware of community issues and unprepared for divisions on the board can be worse than not having a retreat at all.
From our experience in designing and managing numerous community leadership retreats for organizations of all types in communities of all sizes, we believe there are 10 essential elements for a prefect planning retreat. You can read about our approach to designing and managing planning retreats by clicking here.
Want to learn how we can work with your organization in creating an engaging and productive planning retreat? Contact us.
"People don't change behavior or positions based on what they know. They change based on what they feel."
Opray Winfrey
"There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable."
Milton Friedman
Economist
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