Some may argue that this history has no relevance to the operation of a Board of Trustees in the 21st century. My own view is that it helps us understand and interpret the difficulties that public sector boards can get themselves into if they are not careful and do not exercise due care over the way they operate.
My observations come not just from my history of the National Gallery but from my experience of three different boards of trustees, first as Director of the National Portrait Gallery from 1994 to 2002, then as Director of the National Gallery from 2002 to 2007, and now as Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy.
These relations all differed according to the nature, character and history of the institution – what Helen Scott Lidgett of Brunswick calls “the psychopathology of the organization”. But when I left the National Gallery in 2007, and it was widely reported in the press that I had not enjoyed an altogether harmonious relationship with my Chairman of Trustees, I quickly discovered that problems in the relationship are extremely common. Chief executives generally do not speak about it publicly for fear of retribution, or because they accept that it is necessary to live with the difficulties in private.
So, in looking back and reflecting on my own experience of the operation of boards of trustees, and since I have been asked for many years to talk about trustee relations to students on the Museum Leadership Programme at the University of East Anglia, I have gradually developed a set of general precepts regarding the relationship between public sector boards and their chief executive. Here they are:
The operation of boards is often as much an issue of culture as it is of procedure. New members of boards intuit very rapidly how much is expected of them and what level of involvement and interference is tolerated. This is as much an issue of the example set by the Chairman as of any rules or induction program.
The relationship between Chairman and Director (or Chief Executive) is central to the operation of any board and benefits from very regular meetings and the development of mutual understanding over time. It is just as much the responsibility of the Chief Executive to build a good relationship with the Chairman as it is of the Chairman to do so. These things are reciprocal.
It is increasingly common for boards to elect – or for nomination committees to select – as Chairman the person who is regarded as the toughest, the most experienced, and the most senior person available. But the relationship between the Chairman and Chief Executive should be one of trust, not authority: patience, clarity and human sympathy are just as important as robust decision-making.
Board members need to remember that they are numerically dominant. Some boards have as many as 18 members (never a good idea) and a single Chief Executive. The role of a board should be 80 per cent encouragement and moral support and 20 per cent gentle, and occasionally (but only occasionally) tough criticism. It is too often the other way round.
Looking at the history of the National Gallery, the key problem has been the nature of the relationship between amateur and professional. In English life at least, there is a long-standing tradition that the amateur knows best and that birth (or success in another field) confers the right to make judgments over professionals. This is not necessarily the best way to manage things. On the contrary, professionals are trained to make judgments over issues of policy and strategy and non-specialists need to exercise care and restraint in assuming that they have superior judgment.
The role of Chief Executive is frequently uncomfortable and requires tenderness and understanding from trustees. Chief Executives will not always have the support of their staff, indeed will normally not have that support, and staff will commonly seek alliances with individual trustees in order to establish private relationships outside the operation of the board. This is nearly always disastrous.
I do not know how far these precepts can be applied to private sector boards, which tend to be smaller and to have a more obvious focus on the bottom line. And the relationships are different in Europe, where the executives in charge of museums are commonly directly answerable to city or national governments. What is clear to me is that the relationship between Chief Executive and board is an issue of increasing concern in the Anglo-American model of Trustee governance and deserves analysis for its pitfalls as well as its benefits.
Charles Saumarez Smith is Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy, London. His book The National Gallery: a short history was published by Frances Lincoln in July 2009.