Managing the board of trustees as an entity rather than the sum of its parts represents a significant responsibility for any head of school. While there will inevitably be a steady and personal communication stream with some number of individual trustees, the HOS should make an annual goal of ensuring that the board of trustees’ work on the whole is purposeful to the school, personally edifying, and worthwhile overall. In that regard, much of the board’s work comes at or around the yearly group of trustee meetings, numbering as many as ten for day schools or as few as two for boarding schools; most schools, day or boarding, fall somewhere in between those numbers. And it is all too easy to fall into a routine of having the meeting boil down to a few dozen people sitting around a long table listening to reports of past data or events. Indeed, the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company asserts that around 70% of most board meetings—profit and non-profit—are spent listening to past performance presentations rather than focusing on matters crucial to future prosperity.