Exit tickets are a simple but powerful instructional strategy. If you've used them, skip to the next paragraph. Exit tickets are a short list of questions that ask students (or workshop attendees, or, as I describe later, trustees) to reflect on the lesson that is about to transpire and/or to think about the assignment ahead. They're best done low tech: a piece of paper with said questions on each student's desk before they arrive, a scheduled moment to read it before the lesson, a few minutes to write a response before they leave, teacher collects them at the door at the end of class, reviews them for individual student understanding and effectiveness of their teaching.
It's important to note here that although I used exit tickets as a teacher, I was never smart enough to see what a brilliant strategy it is for boards of trustees. It took a conversation with an old friend, Melissa Grubb, Head of St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Austin TX, who described how she uses the strategy with her board. I've since recommended the practice in every board retreat that I've done as a consultant. Here are Melissa's exit ticket questions:
Did you receive sufficient information in advance and/or during the meeting to support strategic discussion today?
Yes/No (please explain)
Did discussion remain predominantly focused on strategic issues?
Yes/No (please explain)
Did you feel free to express your ideas, even if different from prevailing opinions in the
room?
Yes/No (please explain)
Did you participate today by either a.) contributing to discussion b.) actively listening or
c.) participating in committee work prior to the meeting in ways that added value to
today’s board work?
Yes/No (please explain)
Additional feedback on today’s meeting, if any:
Here's why I think exit tickets could be more valuable than formal, year end board evaluation:
It provides boards with the opportunity to iterate quickly by collecting actionable feedback after each meeting. Discovering in the end of year evaluation that trustees have for 9 months felt under-informed, or overwhelmed with too granular information, or silenced by manipulative peers is a fruitless exercise. Conversely, picking up the early signals of practical or cultural dysfunction makes mid-year course correction possible. Even high functioning boards tolerate a couple of fire drills each year (the retreat plan, anyone?), or a committee with an anachronistic or fuzzy charter. Incremental feedback from exit tickets disrupts the traditional, attenuated cycle that allows these pockets of governance immaturity to exist.
It fosters individual trustee accountability. Did you read the packet ahead of time and use this meeting and the preceding committee meetings to clarify, ask questions, contribute thoughts and expertise? Do you understand that these meetings are concentrated sessions for the development of understanding, consensus, decisions, that for any of this to take place anywhere else is an invitation to division and institutional chaos? It's straight up behavior mod.
It gives the board chair a great starting place for preemptive trustee disciplinary conversations, particularly, one of the classic symptoms of governance dysfunction, the meeting after the meeting. The board chair who gets the call from a trustee who wants to discuss "a few things I didn't feel comfortable saying at the board meeting last night" can say, I'm looking at your exit ticket from last night and all the others from previous board meetings and don't see any mentions of discomfort. I'm going to listen to what you have to say right now, but this will be the last time. You'll say your piece at board meetings going forward.
Exit tickets suffer from the same shortcoming of all routines. Unless you vary some of the questions, they invite perfunctory reponses. End of year board self-evaluations are still critical as they collect information about all board best practices, but exit tickets address culture and execution, the two aspects of governance that boards struggle with the most.