From Liability to Leverage:

Unlocking Your Most Powerful Strategic Asset – Your Board

Deb Macfarlan Enright, Ed.D.

Deborah Macfarlan Enright, Ed.D., is the founder of The Macfarlan Group and a nationally respected advisor on nonprofit board leadership, governance, and organizational effectiveness. Her work helps nonprofit executives, board chairs, and board members transform boards from passive oversight bodies into engaged strategic assets that strengthen mission impact.

She is also the author of Board to Death: Transform Your Non-Profit Board Into a Strategic Catalyst for Change, a practical guide to improving board composition, recruitment, onboarding, engagement, accountability, and succession. Deborah brings a clear, candid perspective to the challenges that keep boards from performing at their best—and offers practical systems for building boards that contribute meaningfully to an organization’s success.

More information at – https://www.themacfarlangroup.com/

The Interview Summary

In this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, Hugh Ballou talks with Deborah Macfarlan Enright, Ed.D., founder of The Macfarlan Group and author of Board to Death: Transform Your Non-Profit Board Into a Strategic Catalyst for Change, about what it takes to transform a board from a source of frustration or liability into a powerful strategic resource.

Deborah challenges nonprofit leaders to look beyond attendance and compliance and ask a more important question: Is our board actually helping us advance the mission?

The conversation explores the structures, systems, and leadership practices that increase board engagement and effectiveness. Deborah explains why board composition can determine organizational success, why recruiting the right people requires more than filling empty seats, and how thoughtful orientation and onboarding create a culture of accountability and board care.

The discussion is equally valuable for people considering board service. Deborah shares why finding the right board—one aligned with your interests, values, skills, and expertise—can dramatically increase both your contribution and your personal fulfillment. Serving on the right board can become more than volunteer service; it can be a meaningful leadership experience that changes both the organization and the individual.

Listeners will discover practical insights around:

• Turning the board into a genuine strategic asset
• Creating structures and systems that increase engagement and proficiency
• Building the right board composition for the organization’s current and future needs
• Improving recruitment, orientation, onboarding, accountability, and board culture
• Helping prospective board members identify organizations where they can make the greatest contribution
• Understanding how meaningful board service can expand leadership capacity and personal impact

The central message is clear: Every board seat is priceless. Nonprofit leaders cannot afford to fill those seats casually. When the right people are recruited, equipped, engaged, and held accountable, the board becomes far more than a governing requirement—it becomes a strategic catalyst for mission success.

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou: Well, here we are again. It’s Tuesday. Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange, where we explore the leadership principles, practices, and strategies that help nonprofit leaders build stronger organizations and create greater impact. Today, we are focusing on the one of the most valuable and sometimes most underutilized assets, the nonprofit board. Our guest is Deborah Macfarlan Enright, founder of the Macfarlan Group. Deborah works with nonprofit and social impact organizations to strengthen board recruitment, engagement, succession, roles, responsibilities, and operations so that boards become strategic assets rather than passive governing bodies. Her work emphasizes matching board composition to organizational needs, recruiting for expertise and experience, and creating a culture of care and accountability that allows board members to contribute at a high level. Deborah is also author of a newly released book, and as we’re speaking today, it’s just now released. Today, it’s called Board to Death. We’re going to talk about that book, too. It’s a practical resource for helping nonprofit leaders transform well-meaning but ineffective boards into strategic catalysts for mission and growth. This conversation is especially for CEOs, board chairs who manage a board, and current board members who want to serve more effectively, and leaders who are considering board service and want to understand where they can make the greatest difference. So audience, here’s a question for you. What if I told you that the biggest threat to your nonprofit’s mission isn’t funding, staff turnover, or even the economy. It’s sitting in your boardroom right now, nodding along in a meeting, with no idea they’re doing more harm than good. So Deborah, welcome back. You’re back for another episode to celebrate this book. So when you say a nonprofit board can move from being a liability to becoming leverage, what does that transformation actually look like? Welcome.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Oh, thank you, Hugh. It’s so nice to be back with you. I’m excited to talk about this topic, particularly with someone who has the expertise and experience that you do. So I look forward to everyone learning from this conversation. I know that I will. I think instead of having folks show up for a meeting really just to rubber-stamp whatever the executive team or the CEO/executive director has prepared for them, understanding the expertise and the experience and the knowledge and the resources and the networks that each board member can bring into the work of being on a board leverages all of that to help further the mission, the delivery of it, the operational effectiveness of it, and the growth of it.

Hugh Ballou: I was called into active duty again when I supported a board president, they called it, the board chair, in an organization here where I live. And it was a nodding board. They were reading the strategy, and people were nodding, and they were going home and doing nodding. And they came back. So over the process of working together and doing a new strategy where they’re a part of, they elected me president. So I took a one-year unfulfilled term. And they turned around with purpose to being an active board member. So I got to practice all the things I teach in real life, and I left it better. So what does a leader need to focus on to think about how do we impact this transition? Because really, it’s up to us to make the change, isn’t it?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: 100%.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Understand that the folks who are sitting in your seats are well-meaning people. And some of them may have a firm understanding of what board work looks like. Others may not. They may never have served on a board before or never served on a board that asks them to do more than just attend a meeting, perhaps write a check for a fundraising event, or invite a friend to a fundraising event. Sometimes board members can be inspired or intimidated by the founder and feel as though, well, I haven’t walked that walk, so I don’t know how to tell somebody how to do something better because I’ve not been in those shoes. Putting those things together, so a bit of just ignorance in terms of what it means to be on a board, a little bit of misunderstanding about what an inspirational leader needs in terms of support, and then understanding that board work really is leaning in. Those three things together cause board members to be more engaged because they become necessary. They’re essential. It’s no longer just making sure you have enough people in the seats to fill the bylaws. You’re actually asking people to engage in the oversight, not the management, the oversight of the operations of the organization as well as the management of themselves as a particular independent body.

Hugh Ballou: You and I have had some good conversations in the short time that I’ve gotten to know you. We’ve decided that we are in alignment in many, many ways. And we haven’t talked about this, but I can assume, I think, from our conversation, that we’re identifying the major issues. And I would like to invite leaders to reframe this from being critical, because we’re not criticizing anybody. We’re all doing the best we can. We’re presenting it in an analytical spirit. Does that resonate with you?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Yes, and let’s unpack that a little bit, because I think that’s a great place for folks to kind of relax and hear the conversation, hear the content of our conversation. When somebody decides that in some way they’re going to make the world better, or they step into an organization that already is doing that, there are different levels under which they kind of walk into this world that we all know and love and really enjoy serving. So we talk about in the book, three maturity levels, right? Well, you talk about maturity levels and also in for-profit. So all that to say, if you have an organization, whether it’s nascent or it’s been around forever, and you are in fact providing a product service or a program to a group of people or puppies or planting trees, you have decided to get into relationship at least with the beneficiaries. That’s not unlike the for-profit world where they’re doing the same. So instead of to move from it being a nice thing to do to something that has impact and can disrupt the status quo, this is why the leveraging of a board takes on an entirely different connotation. You’re inviting people to come in in the oversight role to make sure that the mission delivery is the most efficient it can possibly be, that the theory of change is actually really tested. Like, do we really need to be here? But it also makes for that growth from a startup to a legacy organization more, I won’t say guaranteed, but there will be a pathway versus, oh my gosh, I hope it works out.

Hugh Ballou: Absolutely. It’s a more direct pathway instead of driving around town. We’re on the railroad tracks going there. So one of my programs I’ve written out of many is called Unbound and we tend to tie ourselves up as leaders because there are these things we’ve been taught and especially in the nonprofit world. I appreciate you highlighting. This is a tax-exempt business. So you have all of those responsibilities and complications of running business magnified by the fact we’re stewards of other people’s money, we’re called to a higher purpose, we’re working with volunteers, and we have a lot of regulations. So this is not light work. So we really, this board piece is so critical because you really have partners in the work. And you want to not be the smartest person in the room because you need a new room. We come in both the board members and the leader We have these myths about what we can and cannot do. So talk about how some of those myths limit this and how your teachings can help us get get rid of those myths You know, I really like that question Because I think you’re right.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: This sector is wrapped in that, right? I mean, for instance, we even introduce people in this sector by what they don’t do Which is curious, right? They’re out making the world better, and all we do is explain that they are a tax-exempt organization. We don’t say that they’re changing the world, or fighting social injustice, or planting millions of trees, or helping poverty. We don’t do that. We just say they’re in the non-profit world. Well, what do they do? They don’t make a profit. Okay, that makes no sense, right? So thinking about this from a enterprise, I think you use that in one of your great books. Thinking of it as an enterprise that needs to be managed, I think leaders don’t understand. Traditionally, they may think that the board is the place, the stage for a dog and pony. Everything’s fine, no problem. We’re meeting all the benchmarks we need to, if we even have any, and so all is good. So it’s almost as though the meetings are nothing more than, Thanks for coming, appreciate your check, everything’s good. when there could be chaos, right? It’s like the duck races on the lake and then the feet are just paddling because that person’s trying to just stay afloat. They don’t feel as though they can go to a board and say, Right now, this is a mess and I really need your all’s help. Or my development director and the person, the CEO, maybe the development director too, my development director just said, we’ve lost a million dollars in grants and I don’t know how to make that up by the end of the year. That’s not comfortable, but boards would love to hear that stuff so that they can pour their expertise and experience, whatever it is, either from being on hundreds of boards or they’re in that particular kind of area in their for-profit world, or they have seen that show before and they know that it’s going to work out. So I think that’s the first thing. I think that the board members at times, well, they don’t know their role. They think it’s just about governance, the internal piece of a board, right?, the internal kind of management of the board. Is everybody, do we have the right people? Are we fulfilling the bylaws? Are we following all the regulations? Are people showing up? Are people buying a table or getting a table or seeing if they can get a speaker or putting some auction items up? We have very minimal expectations for boards that I know board members are hungry to get more active, to be more consequential to the work. Again, in an oversight role, And that’s about, you and I also have talked about this, that’s also about understanding the strategic plan or whatever nomenclature, where are you headed? You know, the board member needs to know who they are, what the organization does, and an understanding of where it’s come from, but it really needs to know where it intends to go so that they can impart whatever tools, resources, networks, programming, ideas, anything they possibly can to move that forward. So I think instead of this kind of passive, like, okay, we’re going to be, you know, we meet the second Tuesday of every other month, and they get this little packet, either digitally or tactile, and people go through it, and nobody asks any questions, and they’re like, well, that was great. We’re done in 45 minutes. Nothing has occurred to help the organization. Nothing. Missed opportunity. Completely. And you don’t see that person again for two more months. Whereas if it is fully explained, when you’re on this board, a couple of things you need to do. You need to rest up. You need to be prepared and understand that at the end of your term, because we are going to honor term limits, at the end of your term, you’ll have sweat on your brow and beads of sweat down your back. And you’re going to go, I have no idea how they got that much out of me, but I would do it again.

Hugh Ballou: That there’s a lot of stuff packed into that. So if you’re just happening by on the live stream. This is Deborah McFarland Enright. She’s got a new book. We’re going to highlight the book in just a second. So You just highlighted a key leadership problem I’ve seen in 40 years of doing this work. I had to learn as a conductor, I had to be vulnerable on the podium before I could really create effective music. I had to be vulnerable as a leader. It doesn’t mean you whine or you complain about things. It means you’re You know, honesty is really important. The integrity builds trust. So transparency and directness on this is really important. That’s a vulnerability. So the leader, which you’ve just isolated from me, is the leader needs to be very transparent. And also we think we have to have all the right answers when really we have a team of gifted people. we’re going to talk about recruitment in a minute We’ve we’ve got the right board, assuming we’ve got the right board and they’re gifted people and they care about your cause They’re waiting and we’re the ones who tie them up. Talk about how we can Engage people. I think the question that I think I would like to put this underneath is What should the ceo and board chair understand about the difference between governance management and strategic leadership?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: I think this all kind of fits together. Yeah, one hundred percent. I think that governance and management, those are internal activities. Strategic implementation or advantages or just making sure that the mission moves forward is external. So I think most people, yeah, you want to get your house in order, right? You want to make sure you’re following things and everything’s up to date, but there’s no greater way to make somebody, a board member’s mind turn to boredom than it just be about that. When they, and if they think that’s all there is, that’s how engagement levels level off or drop because why are they necessary? If it’s just an attendance point, well, I’ll either stay hybrid always because the meeting isn’t interesting to me. And if I have any friends on the board, I can see them other times. Or I’m going to be ready because it’s going to be consequential that I’m there. It’s going to matter that I’m there. I’ll do the fiduciary stuff we need to do. We’ll make sure that we are following all the prescriptions. of being a board member, but let me sink my teeth into where we’re moving forward. Now, the tipping point, the balance beam that has to be walked on that is understanding that a board is an oversight body and the CEO, executive director is the gatekeeper. And that’s tough. The involuntary member, particularly if they’re like, they really love the mission. They really want to help. And they’re not trying to go around anybody. But if the board doesn’t understand that their gatekeeper, as well as the person they funnel questions, comments, et cetera through, is the CEO/executive director. Because you and I also know that energetic board members can cause havoc because they may also be friendly with, let’s say, the development director, and they, you know, kind of go, they don’t think it’s bad that they’ve called and asked for some data points. but that can cause a problem for the staff. So I think a couple of things going back to the question itself, how do you put together the internal – the governance and the management, very, very important. How do I keep my board so that they’re at the top of their game? But how do I also make sure that we are constantly focused on the external strategic implementation so that the vision can be met and the delivery of the mission is operationally effective. These are all words. Who uses those in nonprofit world, right? Operationally effective to serve as many people, puppies, or make plantings as we possibly can.

Hugh Ballou: Great. Great summary. So we’re going to talk about systems next. But before we do that, bored to death is a condition. It’s a real life event. It’s also a book now, as of today. You got a copy there?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: My gosh, how nice of you to ask? I do just happen to have a copy here. So I want to give, um, if I can’t, can we, is it working? Well, here it is.

Hugh Ballou: It works. Yeah, it does.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: so I have to give props. The publisher and I, as we started to do the title, they, uh, you know, you put the SEO terms in and how do I, how do you do this? And, and we came back with a bunch of academic sounding stuff, which was, you know, terrific. But frankly, wouldn’t cause me as I’m going through Hudson News in the airport to pick it up, right? Because I may serve on a board or lead a board. How can I grab their attention to the point that I think it’s a murder mystery or maybe it’s a business book? My husband, who is the king of dad jokes – I don’t know, you guys might want to fight for that title – And so I said, gosh, we’ve got to do something that would be interesting. So he came up with, well, it sounds like these guys are all bored to death. B-O-A-R-D. And a title was born. Yeah, so we’re real excited. And thank you very, very much for bringing it up. The book itself is one of those kind of give backs to this sector that I have just learned so much from. And it’s a bunch of stories, for sure, has some very practical takeaways for everybody. But then at the end of every chapter, Hugh, there is a perfect your practice, where I ask kind of provocative questions. You’ve learned this. What do you know about your board? or you’ve learned this, would I get wrong? And so that will allow a board to go through it if they want to, individuals to go through it if they want to. But if you are sitting on a plane and you’ve picked this book up and you’re like, oh, great, we’re delayed, you can go through it. And while the book has sequence to it, you can also look up a chapter and go, huh, we need to think about this. And you can enjoy that chapter. and also perfect your practice. The opening of every chapter, and I know you know this, is written for every leadership role that’s on the board, not the committee chairs. So each chapter is written for the CEO or executive director. Here’s what you are gonna pick up from this chapter. For the chair, here’s what you’re gonna pick up. For the current board member, This is what this chapter is going to help you understand. And then there are snippets for aspiring board members as well. So this is one of those ways where each chapter can speak to a variety of leaders. And also they’ll pick up what the other leaders, right, the CEO or the chair, if you’re a board member, are picking up as well. My hope is that these books get shared everywhere, that they’re dog-eared, they’re highlighted, and that people really use this as a way to make their board all that it could possibly be.

Hugh Ballou: Yeah, yet again, we’re aligned. We create stuff. You’ve got a copy of my book, thank you so much, Nonprofit Success System. It’s what we’ve learned in doing this work that people ought to have a book on the shelf as a reference, but they need to read it. It just doesn’t go. So let’s talk about systems, and I’m sure there’s a lot in the book about that. But a strategic plan is not only important for being able to fill in all those blanks in your grant application, which is an inverse way of learning what you should have in your strategy. But it’s also an engagement tool, so everybody knows what they’re supposed to be doing. Talk about that a little bit.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: You know, yeah, strategic plans are so important, however you want to call them. It tells you kind of where you are, where you’re going, and why you’re going there. And then hopefully, comprehensive plans have some understanding of what success looks like and with some boldness, when that success should be realized. Well, if you unpack all that, even if you take one particular piece of the plan, that’s what you need on your board. That expertise and experience for whatever that particular component is, That’s how you recruit effectively. So that information helps to fuel the recruitment, helps you understand what you need for the recruitment. It also helps you in the orientation of your new board members. And most importantly, it does cause that commitment to engagement become just real. It sounds silly, but that’s the word I’ve got at the moment. Here’s where we’re going. This is what we need from you. This is what we expect. And the nice thing is either with the plan itself or even a commitment form, like this is what we expect of a board member. These are neutral tools. So that if somebody maybe is kind of falling off and they don’t seem as engaged as they were, or somebody is trying to understand what engagement looks like, you can sit down with them as the board chair and say, you know, I’ve just noticed maybe this isn’t a good fit anymore, or how’s the timing? Is the season still good? And someone may just tell you, look, I’m on this committee, and it is just, I don’t like it. I’m not enjoying it. But I get it. I come from the finance world, so you’ve got me on finance, and I’ll help you. But you know, when I was in college, I knocked it out of the park with special events. And I would, I am dying to get on that event committee, but I don’t see a way to do that. So the plan, it’s serious, serious stuff, right? It helps us know where we’re going. It’s the compass for us. It helps us populate the board. It helps us understand what engagement is going to look like, but it is a neutral tool so that you can begin to care for your board members. without saying, hey dude, how come you’re not coming to the meetings?

Hugh Ballou: Yeah, look in the mirror first. I want to let our audience know we’re going to go extra. This is a bonus part of the section. We’re usually done at this time, but there’s so much to cover. We’re going to cover it in the next few minutes. So we’re going to just find time to illuminate. This is such rich content. And Debra, I want to highlight the wisdom you just shared. People say to me, oh, I don’t have time to write a strategy. I’m busy doing the work. Well, wait a minute, stop. If you haven’t written a strategy, you shouldn’t be operating. So it’s an engagement tool, but you just highlighted a really important relative part of this to your board composition, which applies to your board, your committees, all your stakeholders, people in responsible positions. You need to know what skills you need. So you’re going to recruit for those and find. And then what you just talked about is know the person, know what their passion is. So we put them, you know, people perform at low levels because we don’t ask enough. Plus, we didn’t have a proper fit for what their passion is. So let’s talk a little bit more about the systems piece of this and why it’s so important and why it’s so relevant to recruiting the right board member to get the right board and the right people. So talk about that whole continuum in it.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: So the first place you start is what do you already have? And and while it is also about expertise and experience it’s perhaps the for-profit world It’s also about board leadership. It’s about representation. It’s about understanding a multi-generational it’s understanding of its geographic does it encompass the geography of the beneficiary. So there are just a myriad of things, right? So we developed kind of a matrix to help people understand, here are some things, some really big buckets, and then underneath those buckets, you’re just gathering that data. So if you have a board of well-meaning people, and they are doing the best they can, but they’re all from one particular sector, let’s say law or maybe HR, you’re robbing your organization of a bunch of information about operations and about how to deal with the outside world and how to deliver and what beneficiaries, you’re just missing out. You’ve got the seats filled, but you’re missing out. So once you know what you have today, then with the strategic plan, which is an ever evolving document, right? And could be shelved for reasons you cited at the very beginning of the show, Then you start to say, all right, we’ve got several lawyers. We don’t have anybody from the back of the house. We don’t have anybody in IT, nobody in facilities management, if that’s appropriate, and nobody in HR. We don’t have anybody who’s under the age of 45 or 50, and everybody went to the same school. So to evolve into an ecosystem that is representative of what you need but also who you are and what the community represents is very, very important. So that’s kind of how that all feeds. So that’s a system, right? What do I have? What does the plan tell me I need? What also do the operations tell me, which could be a bit outside of the plan? What do the operations tell me that I need in terms of expertise and experience? And then that helps with recruitment. It also helps with engagement because everybody engages differently. So having these systems in place, as well as adhering to the term limits, allows your board to constantly evolve and mirror not only the community but also those you’re serving.

Hugh Ballou: That is so important. We want to have the right board, but the right board for us. And it’s not necessarily friends and family and people that will say yes to you all the time, is it?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Sometimes, particularly if an organization is well loved in the community, you’ll have people who want to join because why wouldn’t you? People are having fun, it’s a mission that’s succeeding, it’s changing lives, but sometimes they’re just not what you need at the moment. Similarly, just filling a seat doesn’t help you in the long run either. Finding the board, board recruitment can be extremely difficult to get started if you’re a startup, but also if you’re in the legacy section. Because I served one organization, and there was a new executive director. He was extremely frustrated by the board. Long story short, it was a historic organization, and that board had been around for about 30 years, and they they were just tired. And they didn’t know how to tell the new executive director, who was marvelous, they were just tired. And so I came in and said, hey, did you guys know that your term was actually three years long? And some of them were like, phew, it’s time for me to go. How can I help get some new people in? And then others were like, could I roll off in a year or something? So there was great relief for everybody. They could give no more. They they were just spent. And the executive director had come in with all these ideas. And so it was a natural maturation process that could have happened a long time before.

Hugh Ballou: And we don’t think of that, because we want to hang on to something that’s sure. But that’s so important. I’m a fan of rotation. And I’ve technically fired volunteers in my churches over my 40 years of leadership. And they were all happy about it, because they didn’t know how to tell me they weren’t happy doing it. But it wasn’t firing in a cruel sense. It was like giving them another opportunity, which is how I presented. Now, where do people find your website? What’s the link?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: TheMacfarlanGroup.com. That’s really it. TheMacfarlanGroup.com.

Hugh Ballou: It’s M-A-C, it’s T-H-E first. The M-A-C-F-A-R-L-A-N, there’s no D, Group. The Macfarlan Group. Now, for people on video, they’re seeing it, but people on the podcast, describe what they’re going to see when they get there. Ah, there’s the book.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: There is the book. It’s really a matter of understanding the book in particular. And then if folks have questions about board management, I’ve had a wonderful time working with organizations creating strategic plans and had developed software with a team in Brentwood, Tennessee for operational efficiencies. And I enjoyed doing all of that. But I think the one thing that keeps coming up, no matter if it’s a mature organization or a startup, is this notion of board management. And it’s also understanding for everybody out there who’s looking to seat their board, think about, from the board members’ point of view, how much they’re going to gain. They’re going to have new friends they probably never would have met before. But there’s also professional development. It could be you are an aspiring executive, right? And you’re maybe not entry-level, but mid-level. And you’ve never really been in a leadership position, even chairing a committee, right? You might find yourself on a board chairing a committee with C-suite executives as part of your committee. You and I know that’s leadership 101. So the board itself provides infinite opportunities relationally, increasing network, increasing your skill sets in ways no one necessarily can articulate or know until it happens.

Hugh Ballou: They got your website. I encourage people to go there. So Deborah, let’s do something really fun. Let’s do some rapid fire questions. Are you game?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Okay, let’s go.

Hugh Ballou: One word that describes a great board.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Engaged.

Hugh Ballou: The most overrated board recruitment criteria.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: The size of a potential board member’s wallet.

Hugh Ballou: Most underrated quality in a board member?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Curiosity.

Hugh Ballou: One board meeting habit you would eliminate immediately?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Not starting on time.

Hugh Ballou: I love it. One question every board member should be able to answer about the organization?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Where it’s headed.

Hugh Ballou: What is one thing every CEO wishes board members understood?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: That they’re the gatekeeper.

Hugh Ballou: Complete this sentence, a board member becomes a strategic asset when?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: They are prepared to deliver the necessary oversight to accomplish the vision and deliver the mission.

Hugh Ballou: If our audience members remember only one idea from this conversation about turning their board from a liability into leverage, what do you most want them to carry forward?

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: I want them to hear, believe and live the notion that board seats, their board seats are priceless. So fill them with purpose, use them appropriately to make the world better.

Hugh Ballou: Deborah, thank you so much for today. You help us, and me too, I’ve been doing this a long time, but you help us all rethink the board, not as a necessary governance requirement, but as a priceless collection of leadership seats that can be intentionally filled, developed, cared for, and activated in service to the mission. Listeners, viewers, whether you manage a board, serve on a board, or are considering board service, the challenge is the same. Do not merely occupy the seat. Understand the mission, bring your best gifts, accept accountability, and help the organization move forward. Remember, Deborah’s website is T-H-E McFarland, M-A-C-F-A-R-L-A-N. Deborah, this has been a priceless interview. So thank you so much for coming back for the repeat performance to celebrate the launch of your book.

Dr. Deborah Macfarlan Enright: Thank you so much, Hugh. Thank you so much.

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