234 Strategic Leadership
Monitoring Performance
In responding to strategic initiatives and goals, the board’s first responsibility is
to raise pertinent questions. As it does so, it exercises far more influence over the
university than it might otherwise expect. The strategic questions that are likely
to come from board members trigger a sense of anticipatory responsibility that
cascade through the decision-making chains of the institution. Administrators
and faculty leaders who interact with the board in committees and other contexts
become very conscious of whether or not the announced goals of the strategy are
being satisfied. Since its campus interlocutors know that the board will be pro-
vided information about progress in reaching the goals, anticipatory actions will
ordinarily be taken to respond effectively to expected board queries. Thus, the
actual and anticipated interrogatories of the governing board are a potent factor in
the implementation of strategic goals. Because the board is the legal guarantor of
the mission of the institution, it can play a decisive symbolic and actual role in the
exercise of its fiduciary and leadership responsibilities to ensure the institution’s
future (Morrill 2002).
As the board receives assessments of the organization’s results, it can take
an active stance in monitoring performance. If the assessments raise issues, the
board’s monitoring becomes the basis for pressing for more information, and for
seeking to know what is being done to resolve a problem or to reach a goal. Effec-
tive and active oversight depends on good systems of assessment, which in turn
lead to questions about ways to improve performance to ensure results. The board
does not intervene directly in a faculty or administrative responsibility, except in
extremis. But its level of engagement increases if important goals continue to be
delayed or missed. Its antennae go up if problems persist or are avoided. In keep-
ing with its proper form of responsibility, it can take a variety of steps to ensure
results, from asking for reports to adopting resolutions, creating task forces, and
setting deadlines for action. The administrators and faculty members who inter-
act directly with the governing board will feel the pressure of accountability to
address strategic issues that the board has addressed. Ultimately, it is the president,
the board’s primary executive partner, who will be held to account to answer
for problems that are subject to resolution, but not resolved, and to attain goals
that are attainable, but not yet attained (Morrill 2002). In its own assessment of
the president, the board uses the goals of the strategy as a central benchmark of
performance.
Renewing the Work of the Board
When boards see their role strategically, a new kind of vitality and purpose-
fulness are released. They feel their own unique and ultimate responsibility for
translating the institution’s narrative of identity into a narrative of aspiration.
Their intentions find a new perspective through the methods of strategic leader-
ship. Suddenly a course proposal is more than the arcane language of a professor,