In governance, strategy often equates to control: measurable outputs, milestones, and success metrics. However, leadership, especially as Chairman of the Board, requires more than managing checklists. It demands vision. With a one-year term, the Chair’s impact window is short, but the influence can be lasting.
1. Plan Guides: Leadership Inspires!
Annual planning provides structure: objectives, resource allocation, timelines: but strategy is a system, not the essence of leadership. The Chair’s role centers on governance, not execution. The Chair is a steward of purpose, guardian of vision, and culture shaper, not a project manager.
Over-identifying with the strategic plan reduces the Chairmanship to delivery: reactively managing inherited initiatives and legacy goals, measured by short-term milestones. True governance leadership requires a broader perspective beyond deadlines and deliverables.
Instead of focusing on “What do I need to deliver this year?” the Chair should ask, “What legacy do I want to leave?” This legacy rarely appears in the annual plan.
2 Discomfort Drives Transformation
Strategic plans optimize stability, reflecting priorities from past cycles, shaped by familiar assumptions and risks. Yet, transformational leadership often arises from discomfort: embracing ambiguity, provoking tension, and confronting difficult truths that don’t fit into quarterly reports.
The Chair’s short term allows urgency and freedom from long-term commitments. Use this to challenge the status quo by asking:
What’s missing from our agenda?
Which assumptions are held for convenience rather than truth?
What difficult conversations are being avoided due to political risk?
While boards often reward caution, great Chairs reward candor. Normalizing complexity and encouraging inquiry can shift culture far beyond what any plan can achieve.
3. Your Legacy Is Not a Timeline: It’s a Trust Pattern
Annual plans track activities, but leadership is measured by what endures. The Chair’s legacy isn’t the number of documents reviewed or frameworks adopted, but the intangible, human changes catalyzed:
Did the board improve how it listens, debates, and creates shared meaning?
Was ethical scrutiny elevated?
Did the board realign around a purposeful, shared vision?
These outcomes don’t appear on strategy dashboards but are remembered long after plans are archived. Operational success matters, but without deepening trust, clarifying direction, and fostering collective courage, a one-year term results in managing procedures, not progress.
4. Inheriting Isn’t Leading: Interrogating Is
Short-term leadership risks defaulting to continuity: accepting inherited strategic plans without question. But rapid change makes unquestioned assumptions dangerous.
Chairs inherit documents like board charters, DEI plans, or digital roadmaps, but real power lies in questioning:
Are these plans still relevant?
Are we evolving or merely extending past strategies?
Treating inherited strategies as sacred misses opportunities for renewal. Chairs who engage critically prepare their boards for resilience. Leadership means intelligent adaptation: reframing, retesting, and retiring what no longer serves the organization.
5. True Leadership Lives Outside the Plan
Chairs are chosen to expand systems, not echo them. Influence should run parallel to the plan, not be defined by it. Practical actions include:
Setting cultural tone by modeling deep listening, generative dialogue, and reflection in meetings.
Elevating ignored issues such as climate, equity, or technology ethics by naming them and inviting fresh perspectives.
Sponsoring board development to nurture governance evolution.
Embedding legacy thinking that looks beyond one-year returns toward intergenerational impact.
These leadership moves may not fit neatly into planning grids, but they shape governance culture long after the Chair’s term ends.
6. Reframing the Term: 12 Chances
A one-year term can feel limiting, but reframed as an OD challenge, it offers 12 opportunities to embed lasting leadership. Divide the year by thematic quarters:
Q1: Diagnose : Observe culture, listen deeply, and read between the data lines.
Q2: Illuminate : Identify gaps, introduce new perspectives, and reframe legacy goals.
Q3: Catalyze : Sponsor change, elevate emerging ideas, and sharpen ethical focus.
Q4: Transition : Ensure continuity of clarity, purpose, and trust, not just plans.
View the term as a leadership arc, not a checklist race. Plans fade, but bold thinking, values-centered governance, and cultural tone endure.
But Vision Leads
Annual planning is essential for organizational direction, but for a Board Chair, it should be a companion, not the compass.
The Chair’s role is to elevate the purpose behind the plan, challenge its assumptions, and prepare the board to carry its spirit forward. The plan may survive the year, but the Chair’s influence is remembered in how the board sees, speaks, and acts differently because of their leadership.
Use the Chair’s seat to lead beyond the plan!
NOTES:
1. Basic ODPN Courses
1.1. In-person from 8am-5pm in the Meralco Power Tech, Ortigas on the dates mentioned: (a) Designing Effective OD Interventions, Dr Melissa Reyes, PhD, August 20; and (d) Process Observation and Analysis, Dr Josephine Perez, PhD, RPsy, September 18.
1.2. The countdown has began. RESERVE A SEAT NOW! The ODPN’s ODLab25: Force for GoOD will be on July 31 to Aug 1 in Marcian Hotel, Zamboanga City. Get the Brochure and Register here or message or call ODPN Secretariate 0925.553.2342.
2. Forthcoming Ed Canela’s AI Seminar Series
2.1. Multimodal OD Engagements (MODE). A 2-hour free webinar to empower OD practitioner, HR leaders, teachers, facilitators, and content creators in thriving in the digital (and Al!) era. SAIDI Graduate School of Organizational Development and Planning, July 31, 9:00 to 11:00 am Contact: Ms Cynthia Cruz AT cecruz@SA.
2.2. AI for Teachers and Educators (3 days from 8:00 to 12:00 NN Zoom dates to be announced), SAIDI Graduate School. Contact: Ms Cynthia Cruz AT cecruz@SA.
3. Data Analytics for MSMEs, (3 Saturdays, 9:00 to 5:00) Institute for Small Scale Industries University of the Philippines (UP ISSI), July 19, 26 and Aug. 2 In-person. Register here.
4. AId4Business (for MSMEs) UP ISSI, 3 days, 14 to 16, October 2025.