The Political Life of Heads and Board Chairs

An item this week from NAIS on the lessons private, independent school trustees can teach their higher education counterparts about governance make the point that "governance should be divorced from politics and outside influences." Well, sure, governance should be, but in my experience it seldom is. Indeed, heads and board chairs can make a sometimes fatal mistake when they under-estimate the political forces at play in their schools and on their boards.While less intense (and deadly) than the politics and ambition playing out, say, in the American version of the television series, House of Cards, politics is not less central to what gets done (and what doesn't get done). Heads and chairs often flounder by not taking the political side of school (and board) life seriously enough.