The previous post highlighted the need to be clear about the roles and responsibilities of the operational functions as this provides an accountability and reporting framework for the board to ensure the organisation is operating effectively.  There are several ways to achieve this and the main methods are discussed below.

Method 1:  The board may allocate key operational roles such as finance manager, event manager, membership coordinator or office manager to members of the board where they undertake the functions of that role in line with the position description statement or terms of references.  Then at each board meeting they provide a report outlining the main issues addressed since the previous meeting as well as seek approval for key decisions.

Method 2:  The board could restructure itself such that it performs a governance function as well as an operational function.  As such, part of the meeting relates to the operational and day to day issues and then another part of the meeting has a focus on the traditional governance issues relating to strategy, policy compliance and financial monitoring.

Method 3:  The board may create a sub committee whose terms of reference relate to operational issues.  That is, all the issues discussed and decided upon specifically relate to the day to day operations with key recommendations and decisions made by the operational sub committee to be ratified and approved by the full board.

There may be other methods that you could use but irrespective of what method is implemented, the critical factor is that the board recognise the need to have a clear separation of duties between the governance and the operational issues.

This issue is discussed in more detail in the next post.