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It might be easier to list the boards Robert (Bob) Astley hasn’t joined.
Now retired, the former CEO of Clarica Life Insurance Co. (now Sun Life Financial Canada) remains an active member of boards, ranging from the directors overseeing BMO Financial Group to the ones — members of his family — looking after the Astley Family Foundation.
So he made the perfect keynote speaker — somebody who has governed through triumph and crisis — to open the sixth Manulife Board Governance Boot Camp run in partnership with Capacity Canada. The boot camps put leaders of charitable non-profits through two full days of training on the different but complementary roles boards and administrations play.
Forty-three board chairs and senior administrators make up the 2014-15 cohort meeting Friday and Saturday (Nov. 21-22) at the the Waterloo Region Museum in Kitchener. Astley spoke at a reception Thursday night (Nov. 20).
“You take on a great responsibility,” Astley told boot camp participants and alumni. “It’s not always comfortable, but it can be a source of great pride as you make a difference in the world around you.”
Covenant, collaboration and character are key elements that mesh in a well-functioning board, he said. Covenant is the exchange of expectations as board members begin their relationship with an organization.
Collaboration, Astley said, comes out of the trust directors and staff build among themselves. That heavily depends on the third element — character. It’s the ability to keep bring passion into the boardroom, keep ego out, and work collectively for the good of the organization.
The 2014-15 boot camp includes participants from as far as Vancouver, B.C. and Fort McMurray, Alta. Participants leave with homework when the boot camp closes Saturday afternoon. They take what they’ve learned, apply it to an issue on their own boards, and report back at a third full-day session in March.
Some of the questions Astley handled after his talk looked ahead to topics that might come up during the boot camp: how to keep ideas from falling into the age gap between younger staff and older boards; the need for a fourth ‘C’ — courage — in Astley’s covenant-collaboration-character model; and the difficulty of recruiting people to boards.
Board work comes with its share of rough spots, he said, recalling Sunday meetings convened over the phone during the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra’s Save Our Symphony emergency in 2006.
But board chairs and executive directors need to do more to sell the upside — community improvement and personal growth, Astley said.
“You’re going to learn so much that will make you a better person,’’ he said.
Capacity Canada asked Bob Astley what he learned from an early experience as a board director.
I was on the local chapter of Children’s International Summer Villages, which is an organization that sends 11-year-olds around the world to interact with 11-year-olds from other countries. I was the treasurer, and my son was an 11-year-old delegate.
Clearly we were committed to the cause. That was a good experience.
It wasn’t that I was fundamentally changing the organization, because it was in good shape; but I was helping to maintain it and perpetuate it, and serve other children like my son had been served.
I would never want anyone to set aside their dreams, but (they should) realize that they are part of the collective board of the organization. They are working not as sole practitioners or lone rangers; they working as part of a group, and it is the wisdom of the group that really propels an organization forward. It’s quite a mind-shift to get away from what can I do to what can we do.
