Services / Board and cabinet
Board and cabinet support for colleges and universities
Facilitation, retreats, and advisory work for boards and cabinets at the moments when alignment decides the outcome.
What the work is
Governing boards fail in predictable ways. They drift into operations, or they disengage entirely. They approve things they do not understand. They arrive at the retreat with an agenda built by staff and leave without having decided anything the president can act on.
We facilitate as people who have been on the other side of the table. Several of our consultants spent years as presidents and chancellors reporting to elected boards, and know the difference between a retreat that produces alignment and one that produces a photograph.
The work ranges from a single well-designed board retreat to standing advisory support through a presidential transition, an accreditation sanction, or a public crisis.
- Annual board retreats
- Cabinet alignment offsites
- Board self-assessment and effectiveness reviews
- New board member onboarding
- Bylaws and committee structure design
- Crisis and transition advisory
- Board and cabinet AI briefings
- Presidential evaluation process design
How a facilitation engagement runs
The design work happens before the room, which is why the room works.
Scope
A conversation with the board chair and the president, separately, about what this session has to accomplish and what is in the way.
Prepare
Pre-reads, confidential member interviews where warranted, and an agenda designed backward from the decisions the board needs to make.
Facilitate
A neutral chair who keeps the board in the hard conversation, protects the president from ambush, and gets to a decision rather than a discussion.
Follow through
Written outcomes, assignments, and a follow-up structure so the retreat changes the next twelve board meetings.
Who leads this work
Former chancellors and presidents who have been accountable to elected and appointed boards.
Do you facilitate board retreats for community college districts?
Yes, including elected boards of trustees in multi-college districts. Our consultants include former district chancellors and a former state system chancellor, and we work within open meeting requirements such as the Brown Act.
Can you conduct a board self-assessment?
Yes. We run confidential member surveys and interviews, benchmark against effective board practice, and present findings to the full board in a session designed so the conversation stays productive.
Do you help during a presidential transition?
Yes. That includes onboarding design for a new chief executive, the first ninety days with the board, evaluation process design, and interim advisory support while a search runs.
Can you brief our board on AI?
Yes. Board and cabinet AI briefings are one of our most requested sessions. They usually pair with our AI literacy work so trustees and the executive team are working from the same understanding.
Tell us what you’re facing.
Most engagements start with a thirty-minute call and no deck.
Related