Association Leadership - July/August 2008 - (Page 23)

the Board Case Study In our association, ofﬁcer and director candidates travel from around the world to a central location for intensive interviews by a seven-to-nine-member nominating committee. The nominating committee is elected by the board of directors using applications submitted from volunteers in the membership. Since this committee typically has never met face to face before the interviews, come from different countries – which make them culturally diverse – and represent at least four segments of our membership, the process is always very interesting and typically provides surprising results. They always seem to make good decisions – sometimes different than I would have predicted – but still good decisions and overall we have experienced many years of great ofﬁcers and board members. A few years ago, we did have a big surprise when an ofﬁcer candidate was picked that was cerebral and introverted rather than political. As part of our ofﬁcer orientation program, we require some things of our ofﬁcers, which include attending the Elected Leaders Conference and intensive orientation with key staff members, and we also assign one of the veteran ofﬁcers to be the new ofﬁcer’s mentor. After orientation, the individual became one of our best presidents and actually lead us through some very controversial changes. One of the biggest advantages HFTP has is our forward-thinking boards. All programs of work and our budgets operate from a long-term strategic plan. We also have several board policies that make it almost impossible for an ofﬁcer to come in and try to operate off a personal agenda – unless that agenda is part of the strategic plan. By implementing these types of changes over a period of time, no individual ofﬁcer or board member was put on the spot and these policies just became part of our operating culture. In order to make our policies meaningful to our governance, we developed a list of FAQs right out of board policy. These FAQs address the most highly sensitive issues that a CEO needs to tell their board. For example, can an ofﬁcer assign projects to staff, does the spouse of a board member have to pay for reception tickets, can a board member be involved in site selection, can a board member be involved in hiring and ﬁring of staff, etc.? Since these are posted, it takes a lot of the sensitivity out of the equation when the FAQs can be referred to or just forwarded. ◆ Frank Wolfe, CAE Executive Vice President Hospitality, Financial and Technology Professionals July/August 2008 | Association LEADERSHIP 23

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Association Leadership - July/August 2008

Association Leadership - July/August 2008 Contents Chairman’s Column Homepage 60-Second Solutions Cover Feature: Association Lessons Learned Perspectives Association Case Study TSAE Annual Conference CEO Strategies New Members Community Spotlight Government Relations: Resources Technology: Web Site Redesign Global Summit Photo Page Great Ideas Beaumont New Mexico Index to Advertisers Advertiser.com The Lighter Side of Associations

Association Leadership - July/August 2008

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