Doesn a boards fiduciary responsibility require considerable involvement?
Yes, it does. Fiduciary responsibility must never be ignored. The greatest fiduciary responsibility is ensuring that what the organization produces (e.g., literacy, shelter) is worth what it costs. (Most discussion of fiduciary responsibility, however, concerns far less momentous activity.) Policy Governance focuses boards on the more profound fiduciary responsibility through explicit attention to prescription and measurement of “ends,” a concept that includes both results and costs. Few non-Policy Governance boards know whether ends are being achieved or not, since typically they have not established any. Fulfilling all the board’s fiduciary responsibility does require much involvement, to be sure, but involvement in setting wise expectations and monitoring performance rigorously, not in hands-on, trivia-beset micromanagement.
