“Best Practices, National Consultants and Common Sense”
Dear Bank of Prairie Village Shareholders and Clients ~
During the last year, I attended a Community Nonprofit/Advisory Council Board Meeting. I have served with this Advisory Council for roughly 30 years. During this time, we built a new building which has been considered widely successful. The primary purpose of the Advisory Council is basically honorary. Members are recognized for giving money or helping to raise money for the enterprise. ~ Our latest mission statement does not state this directly. Common sense, however, makes it implicitly understood ~ and has withstood the decades.
When I joined, some 30- years ago almost everyone on the Board had either made a significant donation or worked for a company which gave or could give based on the member’s input. There were many second, and third generations represented on the Board.
In the construction of the new building, I watched the power of multigenerational families serving on the Board and providing a significant share of the construction donations.
Further, during my thirty years, the non-profit has been led by five different CEOs/leaders. As new leaders came and went, I watched each push their new ideas and try to understand the difficult budget.
Shortly after the new building’s construction, and with yet another CEO/leader, I noticed a major push to end the multigenerational family Board members and attempt to bring in new, specialized perspectives to the advisory process. I thought this was odd. Rarely have any of the CEO/leaders ever used the advice given to them by the Advisory Board in terms of its operations and strategy. Rather the CEO/leaders attend non-profit conferences, meetings and retreats, and use non-profit consultants from whom they actually take their operational and strategic advice.
In fact, I’ve increasingly noticed more of the Advisory Board’s time being spent by the CEO/leaders telling us the newest national trends and best practices being advanced at their conferences. They almost have a mindset if this works well in New York, California or Dallas, it must work well in our community.
All the new, specialized-perspective Advisory Board members seem to always heartily agree as to whatever advice is presented by the national consultants ~ whatever it might be. I thought this was odd, as many had not been with the Advisory Board long. In fact, many were not from the community. I wondered how they knew so much about an institution or even a community in such a short time.
It was about this time I kept hearing about various “Best Practices” we needed to implement. Apparently, these Best Practices evolve at some generic non-profit conference. Supposedly, the idea is so good as to be applicable to every non-profit in the country, regardless of mission, purpose, size, or community idiosyncrasies. My gut is that every Best Practice is dreamed up and articulated by some national fee-seeking consultant, who then sells it first at the conference and then to various conference clients across the nation as the “cut-and-paste” solution for each nonprofit client.
Over the years, I’ve watched numerous “Best Practices” initiatives enthusiastically implemented, struggle, fail and then get quietly discarded. Simultaneously, I watched other “Best Practices” initiatives struggle, only to hear the consultants come up with a new “Best Practice” that corrected the shortcomings of their prior recommendation. (I always wondered why the consultants felt entitled to charge additional fees to correct the recommendation mistakes of their last paid engagement.)
The irony during this time was that commons sense, institutional knowledge, as well as geographic and community insight could have easily foretold which national Best Practices would actually work in our unique circumstance and which would not. However, since the Advisory Board members were not paid “consultants”, our insights were rarely taped. Knowing this, I usually just bit my tongue and watched the “Best Practice” phenomenon continue and our consultants become wealthier.
At our Spring Meeting last year, a new “Best Practice” proposition was presented regarding Advisory Board membership. Although not obvious in wording ~ the commonsense impact would be to end multigenerational membership on the Advisory Board. (Yes, the same intergenerational impact that built the new building.) This seemed obvious to me, but the impact seemed to be lost on all the other new board members who readily embraced it as a “Best Practice.”
Accordingly, I asked the question every consultant dreads. Specifically, “1) Who drafted this Best Practice? 2) From where did it come and why has it been brought to us? 3) What is its purpose? And, 4) What current problem or potential issue would it serve to address as to our particular institution given our history, geography and community role?”
I realized I had put my neck on the line, and I braced myself, for the Non-Profit CEO to give me a long lecture on all the problems this new best practice would solve. To my surprise, she completely froze. She looked at me and then around the room and said, “This is a Best Practice.” ~ She said it as if this description completely answered my question.
I said, I understood it was a “Best Practice ~ but why? How did it originate as a Best Practice, what does it do, and for whom is it the Best Practice?” Again, she froze. After about 20 seconds, she looked around the room as if pleading for help. Her assistant, jumped up and explained with mustered authority, “This is a Best Practice as recommended by our consultants!”
His tone and body language acted as if this statement answered my question. He scanned the room as if to reassure himself his answer was sufficient. I scanned the room as well. In doing so I realized all the new advisory members were nodding as if the simple label “Best Practice” gave all the insight necessary to justify its passage. I also noticed the older advisory members all smiling seeing the point I was making. It was as if there was a generational divide between the members who had been on the advisory board during the building campaign, and the new members who never knew anything but the ambience of the new building and the fantasy it materialized from thin air, and probably taxpayer funding.
Since the nonprofit had an academic orientation, I again asked my question ~, “From where did this Best Practice originate, what purpose did it serve and whom decided to label it a Best Practice?”
I thought the CEO was going to burst into tears in not being able to answer my question. Her angry assistant glared at me for putting her on the spot.
I kept waiting for one of the new advisory members to answer my questions, since the CEO and her assistant could not. Instead, they all blankly stared as if they had never contemplated or even thought a “Best Practice” initiative could be questioned for commonsense, logic or institutional fit.
Over the years, I have watched national consultants’ recommendations under the banner of “Best Practice” wreak havoc in a variety of ways and on a variety of institutions.
Ten years ago, national college consultants advised universities to issue bonds and build new dorm buildings for the swarms of incoming freshmen. Only five years later they belatedly explained the potential pool of new incoming college freshmen will fall off the ledge in the coming years. (I am sure they will soon be selling advice as to how to repurpose all those new dorms.)
I listened to national banking consultants advising bankers to build numerous new branches to capture immense overdraft fees from unsuspecting clients under sneaky new programs the consultants had devised. Ultimately, the banks who implemented their “Best Practice” overdraft fee programs were sued, and now they have a bunch of unprofitable branches. (The consultants now sell advice on closing unprofitable branches.)
City councils and municipalities have been busy implementing national conference driven regulatory ownership laws which the national consultants have deemed “Best Practices” for “community interests”.
However, when examined, such municipal dictates override the property owners’ constitutional protections. These cities seem surprised, baffled and angry when they are sued and lose on constitutional grounds.
In the end, the best practice for businesses, nonprofits, academic institutions, municipalities, hospitals and life in general is not to buy a “one-size-fits-all cut-and-paste solution” for problems that might not be even problems.
The Best Practice is to approach every problem with common sense and an open mind. Once you understand the problem, devise a solution which specifically fits your very specific problem. This will save money, anxiety and the need to spend time correcting hastily purchased and implemented “cut-and-paste” national “Best Practice” solutions that are ill-tailored for your specific issues.
That said, as we head into the Spring, let’s together make it a “Best Practice” to enjoy all the wonders of this fine blooming season!
Dan Bolen ~ Chairman
Bank of Prairie Village
“The Bank of Prairie Village ~ Home of Blue Lion Banking” ~ cited March 2020, April 2021, April 2022, April 2023 and April 2024 by the by the Kansas City Business Journal as one of the “Safest Banks in Kansas City for Your Money.”
Small Batch Banking ~ Once Client at a Time.
