All boards should routinely assess overall governance effectiveness—both foundational and aspirational elements. Advisory Board researchers created this template survey instrument based on our overall research on governance.
Advisory Board members are welcome to modify and customize as appropriate for their organization.
- For example, the instructions ask board members to fill out the survey in hard copy and return to the management team for synthesis and analysis/reporting. However, members may wish to program the survey into a free online survey platform (or, any number of other ways of fielding the survey/collecting results). Please modify as needed.
- Similarly, question 31, which pertains to development, may be appropriate for not-for-profit hospitals and health systems, but not for-profit systems or medical groups.
In this survey instrument, domains progress from most foundational (“processes”) to most aspirational “Top of license board contributions”).
- Processes
- Structure
- Education/information
- Composition
- Culture
- Management-Board Partnership
- ‘Top of License’ contributions by board (i.e., making best possible use of board time and effort)
If not otherwise specified, the time frame measured over this assessment is “currently”. For assessing patterns, consider “the preceding 12 months” (not further back in time, if you have many years of experience with the board).