CEO-specific leadership targets.

One critical element to maintaining a close, productive and enduring partnership with the governing board is a well-designed and executed process for board evaluation of the superintendent's performance.

For the board's evaluation to be a powerful partnership-building tool, it must be based on two sets of performance targets:

* Targets related to overall school district performance, which are primarily established through the annual operational planning and budget preparation process. These reflect not only direct district input but also federal and state requirements; and

* Superintendent-specific leadership targets, reflecting CEO leadership priorities and the broad allocation of superintendent time.

Without question, the superintendent, as the organization's chief executive, is always accountable for overall district performance--educationally, financially and administratively. What you should keep in mind, however, is that superintendent performance targets that are CEO-specific are just as important as district-wide performance standards in maintaining a healthy board-superintendent partnership. Failure to reach agreement on CEO-specific targets is, in my experience, one of the most significant reasons that board-superintendent partnerships crash and burn.

A Sad Scenario

A few years ago, I observed firsthand the cost of a superintendent's failure to negotiate CEO-specific leadership goals with the board. Hired by the school board of a mid-sized suburban system four years earlier with a clear mandate to "shape up the shop" in terms of administrative processes, the superintendent had done his job superbly. Financial reports now were complete, accurate and much easier to read. The vendor contracting and payments system was now automated and functioning efficiently. The last annual audit had found no major management deficiencies.

But the board-superintendent working relationship had become badly frayed over this period of stellar administrative performance, and the superintendent's contract wasn't renewed after his fifth year on the job.

What makes this a particularly interesting case study is that the superintendent's performance problems related to neither the district's administrative performance nor the academic performance of students. Things were running well on those fronts. What happened, judging from interviews with board members, was that the superintendent's distant and often imperious style in dealing with board members over time eroded the line of credit that his superb administrative performance had built.

The superintendent's leadership style was not a topic discussed in the board's annual evaluation process, which focused on districtwide performance rather than CEO-specific leadership. Therefore, by the time the problem had become obvious enough to merit some concentrated attention, the relationship had eroded to the point it could not be salvaged.

Developing Targets

A thoroughly tested approach that the board and superintendent can take to developing CEO-specific performance targets involves two basic steps.

First, the board and superintendent reach agreement on what appear to be the pre-eminent CEO leadership challenges facing the district in five major categories: (1) the board-superintendent relationship, including superintendent support for the board; (2) educational leadership; (3) administrative and financial leadership; (4) external relationship leadership; and (5) superintendent professional development.

Subsequently, agreement is reached on a set of more specific leadership targets aimed at dealing with each of the challenges identified earlier.

Some school districts have taken the approach of having the full board, along with the superintendent and executive team members, brainstorm the leadership challenges in a retreat, after which they are refined by the executive (or governance) committee and the superintendent. Or the superintendent might take a preliminary cut, then review and discuss the challenges with the executive committee.

Having reached agreement on the leadership challenges that deserve special superintendent attention over the coming year, the executive committee and superintendent can now turn to the more specific superintendent leadership targets that are intended to deal with the challenges. The question that the committee asks the superintendent is: "What do you intend to accomplish, as CEO of our district, to make progress in dealing with each of the leadership challenges that we have identified?"

For example, to deal with an anticipated revenue shortfall, the superintendent might promise to appoint an advisory committee involving outside experts to develop a plan for review by the board's planning and development committee. To deal with increasingly vocal and widespread criticism of the schools and negative press attention, the superintendent might commit to putting a formal public relations office into operation within six months and spending approximately a quarter of his or her time in community affairs to strengthen the district's public image.

Armed with superintendent-specific leadership targets along with the more common district performance targets, the board now is equipped well to regularly evaluate its superintendent's performance as a powerful tool for keeping this working relationship healthy.

Doug Eadie is president of Doug Eadie & Co., 4375 Wheatland Way, Palm Harbor, FL 34685. E-mail: [e-mail]. He is the author of Eight Keys to an Extraordinary Board-Superintendent Partnership and co-author of The Board-Savvy Superintendent.