THE BUSINESS & MANAGEMENT REVIEW - The Academy of ...

Management and Organizational Sustainability Tool (MOST), this is a participatory assessment process
for identifying an organization’s management needs and making concrete plans for improvement. The
MOST tool brings out the basic gaps at the periphery and actually identifies the organizational systems
that needs to be strengthened, that is why the team has to go further in administering the Board
governance assessment tool to illuminate specific gaps in governance practices.
The third step is the design of intervention, basically the results from the assessment informs the
design of intervention. This guides the team on what needs to be addressed, the area of focus for
strengthening and what type of intervention will be appropriate. For some organizations, it could be just
providing technical assistance in form of coaching and mentoring while for some it could be training in
workshop setting or both. We could even go further in providing technical assistance in developing
governance/guidance documents and support in governance enhancement plans. This stage of designing
intervention is really critical because a whole lot of factors and determinants need to be considered for
example, the Board composition, in terms of the level of literacy, mental models, and priorities.
Simultaneously, the variable the capacity building team wants to change is key.
The fourth step is the actual implementation of the intervention depending on what is most
appropriate for the organization. The team mostly utilized training in a workshop setting and makes it
participatory and really interactive, with a shift from the traditional training program which places so
much emphasis on theories, to a program designed specially to have a real life impact on the participants
with an eye on the beneficiaries, that is the organization and the community at large. It involves learning,
reflecting and practicing what they have learnt. Information from the first visit gives the facilitator some
sort of internal connection to the standards and operations of the organization and helps in linking their
mission, vision, values and goals to the training, and from experience, it has made the training climate
relaxing and intriguing. . A Standard of ethics manual for Board operations was adapted and used during
the trainings. This document is designed to support the effective functioning of non-profit boards by
recommending specific best practices, which are designed to guide board members and staff leaders of
every non -profit organization as they work to improve their own operations, it also enables the board and
staff leaders of every organization to examine these principles carefully and determine how best they
should be applied to their own operations. At the end of the trainings, the Board develops an action plan
or Board work plan to close identified governance gaps within the organizations .This forms the Board
calendar that guides Board activities and timelines for a year or six months (also depends on what the
organization wants).
The fifth step is basically following up with the action plans developed and providing feedback
on how responsive they are in its implementation. Technical assistance is provided to support the Board
on areas that they might be facing challenges. This is a continuous process until the governance system is
really functional, both financially and programmatically. At this point, they are left to sustain the
intervention themselves. (The PLAN –Health Project calls this “weaning off”)
Board governance training methodology/process
The Business & Management Review, Vol.2 Number 2, July 2012
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