Strategic Innovations, Inc.

Introduction

One of the hot buzzwords that has been sweeping through both technology and management circles has been “knowledge management”.  It is a rather nebulous concept, but I believe it comes down to tapping into the knowledge that currently resides only in the brains of employees.  For instance, when an employee leaves an organization, one is often worried more about the things the employee was doing that made them unique and valuable rather than accessing their actual work product.

Knowledge management does not just touch on employees though. I was recently reviewing some materials from a company, 80-20 Software, that produces a package for managing the information flow for board members of publicly traded companies. As I am sure readers are aware, in the U.S. there has been an increased emphasis on board accountability, especially as a result of the Sarbanes-Oxley law. Likewise, in the public sector, I think the following from BoardSource sums up the need for effective management of information:

"Good governance depends on enlightened decision making.  Board members in turn need to be knowledgeable about the organization's status and needs if they are to make sound decisions that advance its mission."

I can attest to the importance of accessing information as a result of my own work on a board.  In our case, it is a very large board with some members more “connected” than others (they are all volunteers) and what I believe is an unhealthy reliance on e-mail.  In my past experience, I found government organizations typically have some very standard processes for disseminating agenda packages, reports, proposals, and other information.  Despite being smaller (though not always), a constant problem continued to be the ability to get information into the hands of the board members (this often manifests itself as complaints of poor communication or tension between board members).

Having just worked on a document management system for a small start-up company, I can also attest to the fact that implementing new systems involves a new way of thinking and the breaking of some old habits.  Of course, I have run across public board members who have proclaimed they will never use a computer to receive their agenda packages.  As Mark Ross of 80-20 Software notes, “Whilst it is possible to hide the 'traditional' directors from the modern era behind printed and shipped boardbooks, peer pressure and the demands of directorship will ultimately force all directors 'online'”.  Probably the bigger challenge though will be those people who have relied on e-mail for the collaborative work and getting them on-board with new business processes.

In this article, I am going to look in more detail at some of the benefits of implementing a board information management system, what some components might be, and some potential technologies to use for solutions.  Perhaps it will benefit you and help you retire the venerable board binder.

Benefits

As Mark Ross with 80-20 Software writes, private sector companies “are already presenting their boards with enhanced capabilities for increasing their efficiency, assisting them to stay abreast of events within their industry and the corporations they govern, optimising the activities of board committees and establishing board visibility.”  He alludes to what I believe are several benefits of implementing a board information management system:

• Reduced cost – this benefit should be fairly obvious.  Anytime an organization can move its records, including items like agenda packages, into an electronic form, it is going to reduce costs.  Not only do you save in the actual materials, there are related savings like less need for storage space and file cabinets.  Besides the materials, there is a savings in the process of assembling the packages and the resources needed to deliver them.  These last two items will mainly take the form of “blue dollars” - you will still be paying employees, but their work effort can be redirected and better utilized (though with the price of gas going up as it is, there will be some “green dollar” savings as well).
• Recipients not tied to a location – this may or may not be an issue for your organization.  However, if you have a board member who engages in significant travel, with access to the Internet from anywhere in the world, they can tap into the resources available to them as a board member.
• Effective process management – this encompasses several aspects of implementing some new systems.  If your organization has used some collaborative tools in the past or currently, this is an opportunity to extend the audience of users to include your board.  This means you can benefit from things like version control of documents and retain histories.  With work flow function, you could even make sure board members have received documents they will need for decision-making.  Likewise, some applications provide a means to track the results of board meetings – who has been assigned to do what and other follow-up activities.  Again, through the effective use of appropriate tools, staff and board members can concentrate on the information and issues instead of putting it all together.
• Improved communications member-to-member and member-to-manager – as I alluded to earlier, my experience has shown that poor board information systems (especially manual ones) frequently manifest themselves as communication issues.  Anyone who has been around public agencies has probably witnessed a debate about some information being shared with only certain board members.  Likewise, I have seen board members berate managers for withholding information or not providing enough information.  Through the use of better technologies, much of that can be alleviated as the processes become much more transparent and more importantly, consistent.

Designing a new Board information system

According to BoardSource¹, there are three types of board information:

• decision information;
• monitoring information; and
• incidental information.

They go on to note that most information that is passed on to a board is of the incidental nature – think committee or staff reports here.  The focus should be on decision and monitoring information though as these “help board members make decisions or monitor the organization's success at carrying out its mission.”

In order to get started with the design of a new system, the board members, manager/director, and staff who normally work with the board need to decide:

• what information the board needs to do its job;
• how often it wants the information;
• in what form the information needs to delivered.

With answers to those questions, you should be able to map your existing processes and then figure out how they either meet or need to change to meet the needs identified.

Solutions

With an idea of what the board and staff are expecting in terms of an information system, the next step is to identify possible solutions to implement.  Our recommendation is to focus on those that make sense.  Some likely candidates include:

• Portals – this will probably include both an external component and an internal component.  Within an organization, these are usually referred to as intranets and of course, the external component would be an Internet site.  Ideally, they should be tied together with the external component secured in some way to allow those external users to tap the information and documents available internally.  Implementation of this type of portal can range from enterprise grade applications down to freely available solutions.  One primary concern should be that whatever system is implemented is easy to use.
• Wikis – these are user-editable web sites, the most famous example being Wikipedia.  Wikis are just now becoming a “hot” solution, so their value is still somewhat unclear.  Having worked with both very structured applications like Microsoft's SharePoint server and wikis, I would recommend the wiki approach.  The work is much more collaborative and bottlenecks can be reduced considerably.
• Document management system – depending on what type of solutions are implemented, you may or may not need a separate document management system.  These systems provide a means to maintain your document repository.  A couple key benefits of these system include version history and the ability to maintain “checked-out” status.  Checking out documents gives you a means to have several people work on a document without overwriting each other's work or using an old version.
• Agenda management system – there are several packages available that are specifically designed to automate the agenda production process.  They allow for the electronic building of agenda packages and connecting supporting materials to the agenda items.  These may be useful for some organizations either as a way to transition into a more technical board information system or to supplement some of the other technologies.  Perhaps the biggest drawback that we see is the narrow focus of these products.
• Customer Relationship Management – normally considered a package for the private sector, CRM packages could prove useful in a public sector setting as well.  That is because they are focused on people and tracking activities related to people.  And what is a board meeting but people who generate activities for others to do?!  Typical CRM's would need some significant modification for use in the public sector or you could pursue some of the packages already geared toward that sector (they usually go by names like “issue tracking” systems – not to be confused with software issue tracking systems).
• PDF generation – this is included as I still run across organizations that are sending out MS Word documents or spreadsheets.  Given the plethora of end user capabilities, we recommend using something more universally accessible like the PDF format (although the recent ISO approval of the ODF format could make that acceptable as well).  This is a fairly easy first step to take if you are still working with paper based agendas.
• Calendaring – frequently a component of portals or wikis or CRM's, the ability to setup and share calendars can be invaluable for a board.  Not only will it make it easier to schedule meetings, all members of the board can better understand what activities are going on and what their fellow board members are involved with.

The final solution really goes back to section of this article covering design of the system.  One of the best solutions that can be implemented is to map the processes used to disseminate information to board members.  This can give you important insights and should provide you with plenty of information what can be improved, even in manual processes.

And a caveat – with the solutions described above, you do need to be aware that some user “re-training” will often be required.  So many people are used to collaborating via e-mail – sending documents and comments here and there via their mail client software.  Using collaborative tools such as those described here requires some different ways of thinking and managing your work flow.  The improvements will not appear overnight, but they are there.

Conclusion

Boards set strategy and direction for organizations.  As a result of that guidance, the rest of an organization is expected to get in alignment in pursuit of the organization's mission.  An important piece of this work is helping the board achieve the best strategy and direction by making the best decisions possible.  Doing so requires good information and communication be available to the board members.  I have had the opportunity to work with organizations that functioned on a global basis with a high level of teamwork and cooperation down to working with local groups who struggle to keep up with what is going.  Helping board members get the information they need when they need is certainly a key to success or failure.

I hope this article has provided you with some valuable insight into an area that may often be overlooked as we all work to improve operations.  Keep in mind that implementing a board information management system does not need to be expensive.  If you would like more information or some assistance with assessing your organization, please contact Strategic Innovations.

Jeffrey G. Causey
President

¹ - BoardSource Knowledge Center Q&A - How do we keep board members informed?