The single biggest predictor of whether an association thrives isn't its strategy or its balance sheet. It's the working relationship between the Chair and the CEO.
Get it right and the organisation moves. Get it wrong and everything underneath it stalls — staff feel the tension, decisions stall in the gap between "governance" and "management," and good people leave.
The trap is that almost nobody defines it. A new CEO and a Chair are expected to simply know where the line sits between governing and managing. So they improvise — and improvised boundaries are where most board–management conflict is born.
The fix is unglamorous and powerful: a short, written working agreement. How often we meet. What I bring to you before a decision versus after. What's yours, what's mine, what's ours. It takes an hour to draft and prevents a year of friction.
I've sat on both sides of that relationship, and I've learned it's not chemistry that makes it work — it's clarity.
This is one of the modules executives tell me changed how they lead. It's covered in depth in What Every Association CEO Needs to Know.
Explore the Association CEO course
Or grab the free CEO–Board Working Agreement template and have the conversation this month.
Annie
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