Post 4: Why Good Intent and Hard Work Still Aren’t Enough
By now, some board members may be thinking:
We care.
We show up.
We do the work.
That’s true for many police boards.
Members attend meetings, complete mandatory training, review materials, and rely on administrative support to keep things running properly. And still, governance can feel uncertain or fragile.
That disconnect is frustrating.
The reason is not lack of effort.
It’s lack of design.
Police governance asks boards to do work that is rarely made fully explicit. The legislation sets expectations, and mandatory training introduces key concepts, but neither automatically translates into lived governance practice.
Training explains the what.
Governance requires working through the how together.
When governance work is not actively practiced:
- board members are left to interpret expectations individually
- administrators focus on structure and compliance, because that is concrete
- continuity is carried by process rather than judgment
- and responsibility quietly shifts away from the board itself
Over time, governance becomes something everyone supports, but no one fully owns.
This is not a failure of training.
And it’s not a failure of people.
It’s what happens when learning is not deliberately activated at the board table.
A practical step boards can try is this:
Take one concept from mandatory board training, such as oversight, employer responsibility, or strategic direction, and discuss it together with board members, administrative support, and police leadership.
Ask:
- What does this expectation look like in practice for our board?
- What would “good” look like, not just compliant?
- What questions should we be asking to exercise judgment, not just receive information?
The goal is not to get perfect answers.
The goal is to move learning from individual completion to shared governance practice.
That shift, from knowing to doing, is where governance begins to mature.
In the final post of this series, we’ll look at what governing well actually looks like in practice, and how boards can begin moving forward intentionally, even within today’s constraints.