We are the ones we've been waiting for.

—Alice Walker, author and activist

In our interview, Marty Saggese, executive director of the Society for Neuroscience, offered the Tao Te Ching quote: “In the universe great accomplishments are made up of small deeds.” When he arrived at the society, board members were not happy with their recent governance experience but were unsure about what changes were needed. He understood that the board had not felt well-served toward the end of his predecessor's tenure. The association required a different model of staff interaction with the board.

His deputy executive director, operations, Kate Hawker, concurred. She described the origin of the big procedural changes that followed as a very subtle and intentional cultural shift that happened around the time Saggese arrived. And change was built brick by brick through communication, training, and focus. Today they have great board–staff relationships—a respect that has been hard-earned on both sides through intentional efforts.

Change is evidenced by end results of some kind. But it is the journey, the day-to-day commitment to moving forward with vision and intention, those “small deeds”—that bring about these results.

For those prepared to take this journey, it is hard to cleanly summarize the recommendations of such a diverse group, some of whom arrived at better governance using strategies entirely at odds with those recommended by others, and some of whom executed similar change strategies but in quite a different order. Some associations, for example, began the change process with a bylaws revision. Others ended there. Some considered a more risk-averse board to be a good outcome for their change process, while others praised their improved boards for being bigger risk-takers.

But there are clear patterns in our findings. First are the collective goals. These are boards that sought governance change to become more strategic, representative, nimble, and knowledgeable—all aimed at serving their members better. Next are patterns in their strategies. Many in our study found the following were necessary to achieve the kind of smart, resilient, flexible, strategic, and entrepreneurial board of directors we have been writing about:

• Shorter bylaws, to give the board flexibility
• More nimble (e.g., shorter) strategic planning documents.
• A smaller board (while a few associations increased their board size to gain more capacity, most shrank the size of their board)
• Fewer standing committees and greater use of task forces and working groups, again with the goal of flexibility via ad-hoc assignments
• More frequent board meetings, to maintain the pace of change and the focus on strategic thinking
• Consent agendas, to free up the board's time for generative discussion
• More carefully structured meetings, to keep board members on task
• More skill-based board recruitment, to ensure members bring more than representative value
• Active if not constant efforts at identifying and preparing new board leaders
• Carefully managed board member selection, to ensure representative goals can be achieved with a smaller board size
• Frequent if not constant self-education in board governance, to ensure members understand stakeholder and regulatory expectations
• Evaluation of themselves as individuals and also of their board's governance processes
• Patience and trust

In addition to these patterns in the elements of the change process that reflect the how of transformational governance, we also found patterns in the what—specifically, what needed to change in order to achieve these goals. Among our 50-plus fully interviewed associations, nearly all (more than 90 percent) described changes to at least one of the following governance elements:

• Bylaws (e.g., to shorten them and facilitate quicker board action)
• Policies and procedures (to accommodate the shorter bylaws)
• Board roles and responsibilities (mostly to focus the work of the board on strategic rather than operational activities)
• The structure of board meetings (e.g., to free up board time for more strategic activities or to improve the board's culture)
• The structure of committees and committee roles (to increase flexibility or to delegate more board tasks to the committee level)
• Board member eligibility (mainly to reduce reliance on constituency-based boards and achieve new knowledge, skills, or representation)

Thus, these patterns suggest that while in many examples the structures and functions of governance shrank, the boards in these associations ended up spending more time governing, just in less rule-bound and more nimble and efficient governance systems. Boards that invested in these changes in turn generated new benefits for themselves, including more efficient and effective decision making, greater collegiality, and a stronger focus brought about by the alignment of mission, culture, and strategy. We heard many stories of positive secondary effects, such as the ability to hire better staff who would be reluctant to work with a weak board. And in many instances, interviewees discovered that growth and improvement offered new challenges, but they also noted that their stronger expertise and board culture gave them better tools for dealing with challenges. Dorsey, of Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) and the American Association of Snowboard Instructors (AASI), observed:

Another challenge is that we have been successful. Two outcomes for us: First is that the board can sometimes be complacent. Our solution has been to feed them outside literature so that they understand the external environment. As a result we were one of the first associations to evolve to the new 990 form. Second, we now have record membership numbers and sponsorship revenue, and more technological sophistication that enabled this success.

But as the previous list of potentially necessary changes to governance processes reflects, nonprofits must anticipate a real commitment of time and energy to go down the same path. Among the 44 associations that provided us an estimate of the time required to complete a governance transformation, one third (32%) reported an investment of one to two years, 39 percent reported three to five years, and the remaining 30 percent reported the process took six or more years.