Which board goals should you focus on every year? Where is your organization headed? How do you know you’re on target to get there? Your goals hold the answer. They give you the power to measure whether you’re on the right track. This allows you to be a more focused, strategic, and effective organization.
Boards that have a clear set of priorities throughout the year are the ones who will achieve success and be able to reflect on how they got there.
Streamline Your Board Goal Setting Process with BoardOnTrack
BoardOnTrack’s easy-to-use platform can help you create and organize an action plan to achieve your goals. Each long-term goal can be broken down into short-term goals so you can continue to make progress throughout the school year and stay on task. You can also:
- Stay organized
- Use volunteer and staff time wisely
- Help ensure that the board makes a positive impact
BoardOnTrack’s platform makes it simple for you to take the lead in creating and establishing a workflow so you can continuously make progress in achieving your goals throughout the school year.
6-Step Plan to Achieve Your Board Goals
1. Align On Your Organization’s Priorities
What are the most important things that your organization needs to do this year? Priorities guide our goals, but they are not the goals themselves. Goals are smaller, more actionable statements on how you will pursue your priorities. Your organization’s priorities, on the other hand, are the big initiatives or efforts that your team needs to focus on to stay on track to meet and exceed your overall promises to the community.
2. Decide Your Board’s Priorities
What kind of board do you want to be? And what kind of board are you? Get on the same page about what kind of impact you have had and what kind of impact you want to have. It’s also important to include your CEO in each committee’s goal-setting process, as well as the full board’s conversation. Use the BoardOnTrack board assessment tool to get a sense of your board’s strengths and areas you need to improve on.
3. Structure For Success
This means forming the right committees, composed of the right people, and doing the right work to achieve your overarching goal. Form should follow function. Each goal should be assigned to a specific committee.
4. Build Your Board’s Goals
Using the priorities the board has decided on, create a SMART goal framework to help build and articulate each committee’s goals. SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Attainable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
5. Discuss & Approve Your Board’s Goals
Ensure that your board, as a whole, understands and approves each of the committees’ goals. To be sure this is done thoroughly, plan time for a deeper strategy session or a full board retreat to review your goals in depth, away from the distractions of day-to-day business. Then to affirm your commitment, you should hold an official vote to approve the goals set in place.
6. Get To Work & Stay On Track To Make An Impact
When you know what milestones you need to reach to continue progressing to your overarching goal, you can build your entire year’s meeting calendar and agendas based on that information. This will help you efficiently use the short amount of time you have.
Scheduling meetings and organizing the agenda around the goals you’d like to discuss and prioritize is easy with BoardOnTrack and can be done in 3 simple steps.
Take advantage of the summer months each year to create the goals that help you continuously meet your charter promises. BoardOnTrack’s dashboard will help you stay organized, monitor progress, and meet deadlines so you are using your time efficiently throughout the busy school year.
Board goals should consistently be a high priority on your list, so you are set up for success during the school year. We have created this step-by-step guide to creating goals and maintaining your progress, so your board meetings are smoother, time efficient, and more organized.
To learn how BoardOnTrack can help you and your board stay organized and help you set and accomplish your goals, book a 30-minute demo with our governance experts.
