One Possible Annual Agenda Development Process

  1. Board brainstorms a list of issues (appropriate to this Board’s job) they feel could or should be the focus for the Board’s upcoming year’s work.
  2. Those ideas are combined and collapsed into themes.
  3. The themes are ranked by the Board.
  4. An appropriate number of topics are defined given the Board’s number and length of meetings.
  5. The defined number of topics is taken from the ranked list.
  6. The group conducts a meta-analysis of the issue:
    • What is the nature of this issue?
      1. From what frames do we want to explore this issue?
    • What would we need to learn about from the external environment?
      1. Who would we want to talk to?
      2. How should we link with the community on this issue?
    • What would we need to learn about from the internal environment?
      1. What data would be helpful?
    • Plan the annual calendar with installments of information.
    • After each installment presented, ask and discuss:
      1. From what we heard in this report/conversation, what implications does the information have for us as an organization?
      2. If we were to develop policy from what we heard today, what elements would we want to address?