Why is Our Board So Small?
Creating the Future’s board roster is on this page. With only a handful of board members, why is this board so small? There are two answers to that question.
Restructuring
First, as you’ll see on our "restructuring" page, our board has been discussing restructuring Creating the Future for many months, in preparation for “flipping the switch” on a new way of operating in early 2017. As board members have left the board during this transitional time, it has made little sense to actively recruit, given that our eventual structure will likely include only a minimum viable board*.
Open Participation and Local Decision-making
Most social change organizations seek board members who represent the people affected by the organization’s work, to ensure their decisions are the most effective they can be. This representative model leads to calls for board diversity, to ensure the people making the decisions understand how their constituents are experiencing life.
Creating the Future’s open, participatory approach to decision-making moves beyond "representation" to instead focus on real inclusion. Anyone who is interested in participating is invited to be part of the discussion. While the board itself may be small in number, the number of people discussing and deciding on a topic could be 10 times that number, from all around the world and all walks of life.
Further, as part of our restructuring, decisions at Creating the Future are not made by the board of directors, but by the people most affected by the decision - all within the guidelines of our values and by employing Catalytic Thinking to make those decisions. Our board's job is to ensure that decisions are always made in a way that adheres to our values (and obviously to the law!)
Experimenting
Because Creating the Future is an experiment, we are reporting on what we’re learning from all our work, including this ongoing experiment in leadership and decision-making. As this journey unfolds, we invite you to learn alongside us at our blog and our eJournal.
*Creating the Future is grateful to the folks at Enspiral, for modeling the concept of a Minimum Viable Board. Per the Board Agreement in their handbook, “Enspiral’s goal is to distribute vision, strategy, and leadership as widely as possible in the network, so our approach is a “minimum viable board” (MVB), with a narrow compliance focus.”