Is Your Board a Strategic Asset or an Untapped Advantage? Q&A with Dave Bergeson of CASSS

I would argue that our key priorities are relevance, impact, and sustainability. We have a unique business model. We don’t charge dues. Instead, we have a “freemium” model in which attendees of our conferences become members of CASSS for three years. When a member attends another one of our meetings, the membership “clock” resets, and their membership renews. This frees the Board and staff from having to discuss issues like “does our membership package bring enough value to justify our dues” or “what should we charge members vs nonmembers.” Instead, we focus first on relevance: “what biopharma issue needs discussion, and how can help to solve this problem?” This both allows and demands us to be responsive and nimble. We also focus on impact in terms of measuring the extent to which we made a difference with our meetings and associated discussion. How many people attended the Forum we convened on this issue? Were the discussions we convened helpful and impactful? What feedback did we get from attendees? Is a part II to this discussion needed? And, of course, we focus on the financial sustainability of our association. Is our business model working? How can we develop a more robust and effective business model so we can more effectively serve the biopharma community?

While we will revisit and reconfirm our mission and vision every few years, these remain relatively stable and unchanged. We need to have a constant “north star” to guide our actions and remind us why we are doing what we are doing. However, our strategic goals and specific strategy are relatively fluid. They have to be – our community and this industry are changing too much. We dwell in the biopharma community, and the change we have seen in the last six months to a year is more than just significant – it is game changing. Had we stubbornly stuck to a strategy we developed a year ago our relevance and impact would be in real trouble right now. Strategic plans need to be malleable these days. They should be a source of guidance, not control. Graham Kenny has a great article on this in HBR. Our strategic plans should not be viewed as blueprints. Instead, they should be viewed as military strategy, in which the strategy is changed based on contact with the enemy. As Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they are punched in the face.

A successful board relationship starts and ends with trust. More specifically, trust that is earned through candor, transparency, and communication. We keep the promises that we make, but we also only make realistic and honest ones. Clarity in roles between the Board and staff is also key to a strong relationship. Our Board and our staff team cannot do a good job when no one has defined what doing a good job means. At the Board level, this starts with a good board orientation in which we review board fiduciary duties and best practices in boardsmanship, and also discuss and clarify the roles of the Board and the staff. Our staff team is 100% virtual, so our two staff retreats per year are important. In these retreats, we discuss and define the expectations we have for each other on this team, as well as review the mission, vision and goals of the Board. Again, clarity in role and clarity in expectations is so important at both the Board and the staff levels. I would also argue that respectful candor is important at all levels. We talk a lot about the importance of psychological safety in our teams, and respecting divergent views is an important part of that. Diverse teams, with diverse experiences and at times diverse views make for stronger teams and help us make better decisions.