A real evaluation of your CAO, executive director, or president.

The kind that's actually useful. Run by an independent third party. Built on evidence.

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Why DIY senior-leader evaluations fail.

The people on your council, board, or commission are smart and well-intentioned. Most of them have never been trained to evaluate a senior leader.

So one of three things happens.

The evaluation gets postponed for another year.

It gets rushed through in a single closed session that doubles as a settling-of-scores.

Or it happens, but it produces a one-page memo nobody trusts — full of feelings, light on evidence, and politically charged enough that the leader being evaluated leaves within the year.

These aren't process failures. They're structural ones. A part-time, elected or volunteer body cannot fairly evaluate a full-time senior executive without external rigor. The roles are wrong. The training isn't there. The political incentives are pointed in the wrong direction.

An independent third party fixes that. The chair stops being the bad guy. The evaluation gets done with the rigor it deserves. Everyone — including the leader being evaluated — walks out of the room knowing where things actually stand.

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What a BlueChip governance evaluation looks like.

Six stages. Roughly ten to twelve weeks from kickoff to board presentation.

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What you walk away with.

• A written report — themes, evidence, leadership strengths, development priorities, and observations on the governance-leader relationship.
• A validated leadership assessment with a private debrief.
• A board or council presentation that doesn't read like a slide deck.
• A forward-looking performance plan, written down, with concrete commitments.
• An optional half-year check-in to verify the plan is being executed.

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How the leader being evaluated is treated.

Most CAOs, executive directors, and presidents have been through evaluations that felt like ambushes. The first time the leader sees the report is the same meeting where the board reads it. Surprise findings, no time to clarify, no chance to correct factual errors before the room reacts.

That's not how this works.

The leader being evaluated:

• Is briefed on the process and the kinds of stakeholders being interviewed — board members, direct reports, key external partners — before interviews begin.
• Completes the leadership assessment and self-reflection alongside the stakeholder interviews — not as an afterthought.
• Reads the draft report before the board sees it, with a private debrief to flag factual errors and clarify any misreadings.
• Is in the room for the board presentation, not waiting outside it.
• Gets a personal copy of the final report, the assessment results, and the performance plan.

Confidentiality runs in both directions. Stakeholder interviews are non-attributed — themes go into the report, names don't. The leader's responses during their debrief stay between BlueChip and the leader unless the leader chooses to share them.

The final report is treated as confidential personnel information. It goes to the council or board chair and the leader being evaluated, and is reviewed by the full council or board in closed session. It is not posted publicly or shared outside that room. Where Alberta's Access to Information Act and Protection of Privacy Act (formerly FOIP) apply, the report sits under the same personnel and personal-information exemptions that protect any other senior-leader performance record.

A good evaluation isn't done to a leader. It's done with them.

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Why BlueChip.

Senior-leader evaluations live at the intersection of performance review, political navigation, and risk management. Most firms specialize in one of those. BlueChip brings all three.

An undergraduate degree in education and a Master's in coaching, for the development conversation and the plan that follows it. Senior HR background — training and development, recruitment, investigations — for the risk and governance work. Public sector administration experience, for understanding the kinds of organizations BlueChip evaluates from the inside. Twenty-five years in high-stakes competitive environments, for reading people who are guarded, defensive, or actively managing the narrative — which most senior leaders being evaluated are, at least at first.

That last piece matters more than it sounds. Most HR consultants have never had to read someone who was actively trying not to be read. The competitive piece is decades of doing exactly that, with money and ego on the line.

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What it costs and how long.

From $18,000. Pricing scales with organizational complexity — post-secondary boards, multi-site operations, and unusual governance structures sit at the higher end.

Approximately 10–12 weeks from kickoff to board presentation. The optional half-year check-in extends the engagement to roughly six months. Best practice is an annual full evaluation, with the check-in landing at the midpoint.

The fee includes everything: stakeholder interviews, leadership assessment and debrief, written report, board or council presentation, and the forward-looking performance plan.

BlueChip is based in Edmonton. Travel is broken out as a separate line item in every proposal.

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Not sure where to start?

If your council or board is approaching evaluation season — or if you've already postponed one and you don't want to wing it again — start with a Clarity Call. Thirty minutes. We talk about what your organization needs, what a BlueChip engagement would look like for you, and whether we're the right fit.

For some organizations, a governance evaluation is the right starting point. For others, a Leadership Academy makes more sense — particularly when the gap is leadership development across a team, not the performance of a single senior leader. We'll talk through both on the call.

Or, for a free starter: take the Org Pulse — a 5-minute organizational health audit.