A Conversation with 2024 AGB Nason Award Recipient Babson College

Andy Lounder
Welcome and thank you for joining us for this important discussion with uh some representatives from a John W Nason award recipient board and institution, Babson College for 2024. It’s very exciting, thank you for being with me today, uh, president Steven Spinelli, board chair Jeff Perry, and Senior Vice President Kelly Lynch, who works closely with the board. So the three of you I’m going to ask some questions, we’re going to get into the Babson story and what others can learn from it and all of those wonderful important exciting things.

For those who are unaware about the AGB John W Nation award, each year we represent uh multiple Boards of colleges and universities around the country, that have taken some sort of courageous leadership steps to some effect, and we invite nominations for those Awards annually. We have this really prestigious group that we call a selection committee, composed mainly of AGB senior fellows, people who have been in the positions and have led institutions and Boards through some of those decisions, the kinds of decisions that we like to hold up as examples, and also each year we we try and find folks who have uh been involved in the decisions that we’ve recognized, and the boards that we’ve recognized with that award.

AGB leadership is closely involved with it, and it’s important to AGB to share stories of board impact and accomplishment and inspiring stories of aspiration, at a time when college and university governance is not simple, and it is in fact really critical to the future of our institutions and their impact on society.

So once again thank you to my Babson colleagues, and let’s just get right into it.

Kelly I want to ask you because you wrote much of the nomination that was successful, would you share with us just the the the quick version the thumbnail sketch of the story that you are articulated in that nomination?

Kelly Lynch
Sure, thanks so much, and I’d like to start really firstly by saying thank you to the AGB for creating an opportunity for schools like Babson college to be able to share its experiences and highlight some of the important governance work. So the award was a real honor for us, and a great process for us to to undertake as a community. In 2022 Babson College was experiencing I think what we all consider to be historic achievement and success by pretty much every measure and our community had emerged from the covid pandemic in stronger than ever.

But you know with the leadership team of the college and the Board of Trustees together really not wanting to rest on laurels um and rather working to press the advantage you know I think everyone was really committed to making sure Babson would continue to thrive despite all of the disruption our industry has been experiencing, and is likely to continue to experience right at a more significant level so we undertook together, and I think that together is a really important piece of this a very collaborative process, a year-long effort to say okay, we’re really good, we’re achieving operational and academic excellence, our learners are um obtaining a transformational education that delivers probably one of the highest ROIs in the industry, but how do we achieve greatness?

And so the first step was really coming together to say okay, how does Babson define greatness, and that led to six aspirations really being identified and both the board and the leadership team aligning around those, bringing in outsiders, experts, and others, to challenge our thinking and to look down at, you know, many different horizons, and then most importantly, I think at the end of the year creating an actionable plan which really culminated in one the extension of our fundraising campaign, which is now Babson elevates and ensures leadership continuity at the president’s position and the board chairs position, and then creating four specific initiatives that would elevate and expand the student experience.

That’s what we’ve been in, execution mode, on for the last year, quite successfully.

Andy Lounder
Thank you Kelly, I’ll jump back in here and just ask you please to follow up, and say a little bit more about the main players in the story if you would, so I appreciate sort of the walk through the course of the year in terms of plot um share some something about the main characters with us please

Kelly Lynch
Well think you know that I sit at a really important intersection and I’ve have the privilege of sitting at this intersection of kind of strategic planning and strategy management and governance affairs right, and I have to say that the partnership between our board chair and our president is instrumental in actually aligning the institution and and being able to bring everyone together with a really ambitious set of aspirations for the college.

And so that that relationship is key, but we have across to our Board of Trustees, some some 10 committees, and I think six or seven of the committees actually engaged with the team in the formulation of the action plan to make sure that we were staying in alignment all throughout that process um and that that was really uh helpful as well.

Stephen Spinelli
You know, I would take it just a half a step back, and part of this relationship starts with the hiring of the president and the clear expectations from the board about what they expect of the president. And that led into a strategic planning process that allowed us to have a firm foundation so when we the strategy I think was working pretty well and I think articulated by Kelly through 2022 when we that gave us a platform for discussing how we would define greatness. So it really is the hiring, the diligence, and the intensity of the hiring process by the board. The relationship between the board chair and the president and the construction of a strategy that we believe has long-term impact, so sort of foundational of core issues like that I think are important.

Kelly Lynch
And one other thing that I’ll just jump in and add, our chair Jeff Perry I’m sure will elaborate on this, is that when when Jeff became board chair he took a really important step with our trustees and that was to articulate a shared value statement, and to really start to engage the board in a more generative space so that you know, the oversight responsibilities were clearly met by the board but more and more of our meeting design more and more of our engagement with the board was in that insight and foresight space, so that there was um the conditions were ripe then for everyone to engage in an aspirational kind of effort such as this.

Jeffery Perry
Yeah you’re stealing my thunder Kelly, but as we all know, that was a major piece, and I’ll elaborate on that shortly. An additional point that I’d like to make is that based on what Kelly had mentioned in terms of the success of the institution, it actually created more challenging for us across our shared governance model, because yes when things are like very clear in terms of headwinds and some of the things that you hear about from other institutions, being very challenged when Babson had significant success across all of the different dimensions that we highlighted, it actually creates more of a challenge in terms of continuing that position or elevating that position. So we were fortunate to be in a situation where it actually amplified the the impact of what everyone could do, as as we move forward. And having that be something that was positively engaged in, in a very intentional way.

Andy Lounder
Thanks all three of you. You know, I was struck during the conversations with the selection committee, that you know, this term that that Jim Collins popularized, ‘good to great’, was really something that I mean, the fact is when folks think about Babson college ,if they thought about them in 2020, they thought of you all as a leader in the field, as a very prestigious, accomplished, selective, successful institution, right, and so for the board to think about things in terms of ‘good to great’ and to work with the institution and leadership, to really have an organization-wide conversation, it was a very compelling idea, and continues to be. Let me just ask, so let’s go first, Jeff, and I’ll ask a similar question of you Stephen in a moment, but you know, tell me a little bit about the the board leadership story behind the, you know, the the narrative that Kelly articulated for us a moment ago.

Jeffery Perry
Yeah, so just to provide some additional context, I became a trustee in 2016, and for several years chaired our academic Excellence committee. So I’ve been part of the executive committee during that time in the summer of 2021. I became a chair of the Board of Trustees, and one of the things that I knew at that point from just a board leadership perspective, is that we were effective as a board, but we had more ways to be even more effective going forward.

So I viewed it as an opportunity to really elevate our role in terms of our effectiveness as a board. We also talked about our commitment to Shared Governance across the administration, and the faculty, and in order to be successful in that, it was very important for our board to be more effective. So we embarked on a journey of basically trying to improve our effectiveness and things like, being very clear about what our guiding principles were, our Rules of Engagement.

Kelly mentioned the shared value statement. What’s really important to us as a board and embedded in that shared value statements are things like the commitment to the mission of the college, of valuing civil debate, but the ability to do it respectfully. And to be aligned on decisions once decisions are made, responsiveness to staff, continued philanthropic support.

But as important in that value statement was also how we wanted to balance our role from not just our fiduciary or oversight role, as Kelly mentioned before, but to be involved in more strategic and generative conversations. As we know that many boards talk about wanting to be involved in generative and strategic, but what they actually end up doing is being more involved in their oversight role or fiduciary roles or things that are like fully baked, and we felt that if we had more of a balance that included being involved early on in the generative and strategic space, that it would keep us from being a rubber stamp on the one end, and then also it would keep us from being micromanagers on the other.

But really having that sweet spot where our trustees can provide perspectives, their insight and foresight that helps the institution, but it also becomes a more fulfilling experience for our trusties themselves in terms of being able to fully engage. And you know, Kelly mentioned where the school was in 2022, so we started that work in 2021 so the progress that we made in that actually was the perfect timing with the new strategic efforts, and the greatness agenda, and the strategic efforts going on at the school. And so it allowed us to not just put down on paper, hear our shared values, and we voted on that shared value statement, but it gave us a way to actually activate it in terms of demonstrating how we would move forward.

And I think our trustees really appreciated being able to be involved in some of the shaping from a generative and strategic perspective. It also had a positive impact on Steve and his team in terms of getting that a perspective, and then it just drove greater alignment.

You know as we move forward, two other points I’d like to share in terms of the the board story is, one another aspect that we committed to was committing ourselves to ongoing board education, and the reason why that’s important is because the environment continues to change in higher education, and so it’s important to equip our trustees with the latest perspectives, and points of view that’s relevant, and at the same time there’s personal benefit to trustees understanding different aspects that are relevant to the school.

So things like that, we’ve had education sessions on artificial intelligence, technology entrepreneurship on lifelong learning, on the impact of the mental health crisis, the upheaval in higher education. And being committed to that, and that continual learning, is another element that’s really helped us in our overall effectiveness.

And then the last thing that I would say is we also have focused a lot on faculty engagement. We knew that one of the things that was an opportunity was to have a stronger shared governance model across the institution, and a piece of that was how we actually engaged with with the faculty, and recognize that in any institution you’re you’re going to have some issues and perspectives, and how well are the faculty points of view reflected or incorporated, etc. So we were very transparent in terms of, one, our commitment to faculty engagement; two, to inform people around the protocols and the processes to encourage faculty involvement, so, for example, we have faculty representatives on all of our committees. I meet quarter at every trustee meeting, I meet with the Senate executive committee.

And then there are other aspects to incorporate the voice of the faculty. By the same token we’re very clear about those elements where we want to consider perspectives, and hear voices, versus our fiduciary role as as a Board of Trustees, as well as management’s role through the administration, and do it in a very, you know, transparent way, so by us also making significant progress around that faculty engagement piece was another element that I think has helped us be successful, and I think part of the reason why we were able to do that was that we were able to show the administration and the faculty that as a board we were working on our own effectiveness, and that kind of gave us license to challenge other aspects of the model to do the same.

Andy Lounder
Jeff, I was struck as I was rereading your nominating packet, that in the course of the 12 months that resulted in the adoption of the greatness agenda, you all actually engaged 54 distinct faculty members in the various board meetings and board education sessions, etc. That’s a pretty remarkable part of your story, and thanks for raising it. Let me ask you this question, and then Stephen same question. How did the board and the president at Babson come into alignment as to what needed to be done and how to go about it with the board?

Jeffery Perry
Yeah I would say that, and Steve I’m sure would have perspectives on this. I think Steve and his leadership team had an idea around the overall, ah, direction in terms of wanting to go from ‘good to great’, but I also think that they recognized that it would be important to have the partnership and support of the board to actually bring that about. So rather than coming to the board with a fully baked plan that was like 90% done and then presenting to the board and then expecting a vote or quote unquote, that would be what I would call like a rubber stamp, rather than that approach, because of all the work that we were doing as a board, it actually created the opportunity for us to be involved early early on, to kind of understand the aspiration as it was being articulated.

And then you have the additional benefit of additional perspectives, or have you thought about this, have you thought about that, is it bold enough, is it too bold, do we have the capabilities to do it or not? All of those kinds of conversations are the ones that we actually had, so that as we move forward by definition there was alignment, because there was involvement in the process, and I think that makes a huge difference, and that I would say that even if Steve came to the board with a fully big plan, which would have been exactly where we would have arrived if we had worked on it together, but by the fact that that didn’t happen and that involvement early on, I think that just makes a huge difference in terms of engagement alignment and support going forward. Because as you knows anytime you try to execute a plan you’re going to have like challenges along the way and and bumps along the way, so you want to make sure that you’re partnered in a way so that you can, you know, anticipate those challenges and everyone is informed about what the objectives are, and everything like that, so I really do think that that’s a model, rather than presenting to the board and expecting approval on something that did not have board involvement previously. I think it creates a win-win all the way around.

Stephen Spinelli
The relationship between the board and the management team is super dynamic, and for it to be effective I think it has to be dynamic. So there has to be a set of communications that gives a board enough information to have formed opinions and insights and guidance and frankly voting. So when we went through this strategic planning process, it was a full year, and it was a pretty comprehensive engagement.

We then do an annual operating plan that calls for critical objectives. What we are in point A and we need to get to point B or C or D or F or E, we need to move good forward. What are the things we need to do this year that are really critical, and that we’re going to talk to the board about? And we’re going to have an agreement about what those critical objectives are, and then the management team has to have a set of metrics that says we succeeded or not, and it gives you a road map for discussion that is supported by metrics. So each time we come together for a board meeting we talk about where are we in the strategy how are we fulfilling the critical objectives what are the metrics are they going south or north or which direction are they going in. Should we make some changes? And you can you help us understand how to do that dynamic interaction gives you momentum into the next year. And then when you achieve a lot of what you wanted to get done, there is this natural inclination to say “what’s next?” and in an aspirational community, that frankly the board is, and it be really frank. The board at Babson in particular, and I’ve dealt with a lot of boards, says what’s next? It’s a very aspirational community, so you better have some thinking about that, because you know, they are, and so that whole process, strategy critical objectives measuring that interactive discussion. Dynamic planning leads to this, you know, we want to be great, but we got to agree what that is, and so that whole process I think was a five year dynamic process.

Jeffery Perry
Yeah, and Steve, as board chair I can tell you that what you just described brings to life what we said we wanted to do when we established the shared values in the first place, around being engaged in generative and strategic conversations, in addition to our fiduciary roles. So it just didn’t just exist on a piece of paper, we actually tried to live it in terms of how we engage with each other, and engage you know, across the model.

Stephen Spinelli
I have to say in the reflection on the series of critical objectives each year, so you go back and you say, okay, what were they last year and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that? What is the arc of achievement that is constructed out of understanding this and you go into a discussion saying, here’s the strengths and here’s the weaknesses. Some are surprising, some are not, but they’re not revelations, they’re a construct that allows you to architect the next steps.

Andy Lounder
Thank you gentlemen. Stephen I want to make sure I ask you, because I see year after year when presidents accompany their board chairs and their board staffs and others to the National Conference on Trusteeship, and you know the folks that are really forefront in these conversations tend to be the board leaders rather than the presidents. The joy that I see on the president’s faces when their colleagues who are board leaders are recognized for the work of the board is just fascinating to me. I saw that on your face, and I’m wondering if you would would share from your perspective what was remarkable about the story that we’ve been talking through that resulted in that experience for you and your board.

Stephen Spinelli
You know, it does it goes back to a shared vision and some clarity in that vision. That clarity sometimes you get so enthusiastic that you know, maybe it is rose-colored glasses, or maybe I’m so excited and third party validation of a shared vision is incredibly energizing, so you know, but we sit down and we say, you know there are clear metrics. What is the financial performance? Where are our graduates going, what are our graduates achieving, what is our rankings for all of those kinds of things? And there’s a construct there that you get pretty excited about, but when you get an organization like AGB that says, we think you’ve done something special in architecting a future that makes the accomplishment more durable. It says, there could be something we could you know in not for-profits, and specifically in colleges and universities, there’s there’s no harvest at end of this ,there’s no Exit Plan, the exit is, you know, can I steward this in a manner that hands it up to the next set of leaders. To get AGB’s, ah, sort of endorsement that there is a platform here, there is a foundation that could be special for a longer period of time, is incredible, it’s the capital gain of being a college President.

Andy Lounder
Well thanks for that,I want to ask each of you the same question. I’m going to start with Kelly, and Kelly I just want to say that the indispensable nature of really excellent board support from the staff level, no president can do it on their own, and presidents really in this day and age shouldn’t try. It’s important that you’re a part of this conversation, I just want to say that out loud and thank you. I’d love to hear from each of the three of you, starting with Kelly, so you know, one practical insight that you gained from Babson College’s ‘good to great’ story, if you will, that might be helpful to others, something sort of tactile, replicable, perhaps Kelly, would you start us off please?

Kelly Lynch
Sure, I think for us it was extremely helpful that we time bound this initiative, that we worked it into every single meeting design so that it stayed a continued focus and a sustained track throughout kind of the curriculum of the board’s experience that year, and the management team’s focus that year. And I think that in the meeting design the importance of bringing in outside facilitators right to really pull out objective conversation and perspectives. The candid nature and the direct engagement that we saw across all of the stakeholders, I think really really helped the effort too, but that took a lot of work right? There’s a lot of hours, there’s a lot of, you know, meeting time is precious when we have a Board of Trustees coming in from all over the globe. Literally you know, just three times a year, so I really commend chair Perry for carving out that space, bringing in the expertise that would challenge us and really allowing for us to stay focused on this and then move into action mode. And the execution has been just as important right, in terms of getting get the work done and we’re really excited that today as we sit here preparing for the start of the next academic year, we are opening kind of you know what will be I think one of the largest investments in entrepreneurship education ever in this country, the hiring entrepreneurial leadership village. We are expanding our lifelong learning so we’re already seeing the results very very quickly.

Andy Lounder
Thank you, let’s go with Stephen next and we’ll reserve the last word for Jeff.

Stephen Spinelli
A takeaway for me is how the process when it is dynamic creates a sense of community, and community isn’t necessarily kumbaya, you know there was there’s a lot of really heated debate, but when you have a sense of community, the heat brings you together instead of tearing you apart, and I had the sense that there was a bigger vision. So you were thinking more institutionally as we drove additional components of this, as we started talking about greatness, as we define greatness as a community, not as a a third party standard. What do we believe in? How will we achieve this? And that sense of community I think is difficult to measure but essential to your success in the long run and so you know, a Renewed belief in community and the power of community comes from this.

Andy Lounder
Thank you Steve. Jeff please take us home.

Jeffery Perry
Yeah I would build upon what Steve said, and I fundamentally believe that it’s not always going to be smooth sailing, and I would never want anyone to believe that, because of the success that we’ve had, the execution of the greatness agenda means that everything has been smooth sailing, or will be smooth sailing, but if you have a trusting um partnership you’re actually able to navigate through all of those challenges and quite frankly, some of those challenges are outside of the Strategic plan. So just think about what’s been going on on college campuses related to the the climate on campus, on Supreme Court decisions, other things that are happening.

But as a community, back to what Steve was saying, if you have those trusted partnerships, and trusted relationships that have been manifested through efforts like our greatness agenda, effort that it gives you the muscle to be able to really weather any challenge, that the institution may have going forward, so I would say that the one practical thing is if you invest the time and effort in the kinds of efforts that we’ve had here, it will have dividends in areas, even outside of that in terms of how your community comes together more broadly.

Andy Lounder
Really powerful. Let me just thank you all one more time and say reiterate what’s really important to AGB, is that through this award process we develop stories that are worth sharing, stories that others can learn from and adapt different techniques, but also, understand what it means to be aspirational with board governance, what board leadership looks like, what board courage looks like.

I want to say thank you all for the many times we’ve gotten together over the the past several months, in order to help facilitate that for AGB members and thank you for joining me today.

Stephen Spinelli
terrific organization we’re appreciative also that we you bring us together as a larger community and that’s great work

Jeffery Perry
Thank you.

Kelly Lynch
Thanks so much.