What makes great boards great pdf

The original episode is available here. Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. Corporate Board Member. Webcast: Raising the Bar on Board Evaluations. We were teasing out the differences between the inspiring ones and the boards which are struggling.

We came up with our top 10 things that those inspiring boards do when they are well led:. Great boards are packed with board members who are really clear about their role and their responsibilities to the organisation.

They know they are there as directors, rather than an executive team, and are committed to fulfilling their legal duties. There is a clear understanding of the authority that lies with the board, and what has been delegated to board committees or staff. Great boards lead the organisation. They delegate effectively, have honest conversations, are committed to the organisation, can inspire others and are creative and innovative, particularly when it comes to problems solving.

Great boards talk, and more importantly, listen to others. They know what staff, investors, funders and clients think of their organisation, and value their opinions. This is demonstrated by stakeholders having a real say in the strategic direction of the organisation. Great boards know the difference between strategy and operations, and stay much more in the strategic realm.

However, great boards really focus on strategy and policy areas, and are confident that the staff have the abilities, aptitudes and delegated authority needed to ensure operations run smoothly. However, study after study has shown that a more diverse board makes better long-term decisions. Great boards plan for this by having fixed terms of office and regular board turnover to introduce fresh thinking and new opinions. Allied to regular board turnover is the need for strong succession planning.

And yet a close examination of those boards reveals no broad pattern of incompetence or corruption. In fact, they followed most of the accepted standards for board operations: Members showed up for meetings; they had money invested in the company; audit committees, compensation committees, and codes of ethics were in place; the boards weren't too small or too big, nor were they dominated by insiders.

In other words, they passed the tests that would normally be applied to determine whether a board of directors was likely to do a good job. In-deed, the New York Stock Exchange sCorporate Accountability and StandardsCommittee recently proposed requir-ing that the majority of a NYSE-listedcorporation s directors be indepen-dent this in response to the recent gov-ernance disasters. Governance reformproposals are also being developed bysuch business groups as the ConferenceBoard and the Business Roundtable.

By contrast, at various times intheir histories, Home Depot had five in-sider directors on its person board ,Intel had three on a nine-person board ,and Southwest Airlines had three on aneight-person board. Typically, half ofMicrosoft s board are insiders. Cur-rently, three of Warren Buffett s sevenBerkshire Hathaway board membershave the Buffett name, and another ishis long-term vice Parcel Service hasranked high on Fortune s list ofmost-admired companies sincethe list was started, and half ofthe UPS management commit-tee is on its board.

Three out-side board members have toldme how well plugged-in theyhave felt over the years because the in-side members are very candid and wellinformed.

Takeboard size. Small s considered good,big s considered bad. Executive sessions are alsosometimes coupled with a designatedlead director. But GE, the most-admiredcompany in the country in , didn tallow executive sessions in Jack Welch sday. GE s not alone; many good Boards neverhave meetings that exclude the supposed safeguard of goodgovernance audit and compensationcommittees turns out to be near uni-versal.

Sun-beam, Enron, Cendant, McKessonHBOC,and Waste Management all had the req-uisite number of committees and guide-lines, yet accounting scandals still pene-trated this governance shield.

Let s notforget, either, that the audit committeeat Enron was consulted about suspend-ing the conflict-of-interest guidelines and willingly agreed to Importance of the Human ElementSo if following good-governance regu-latory recipes doesn t produce goodboards, what does? Handbook , Members , Board , Board member s handbook. What Makes a Great Teacher? This is the case with students. Policymakers and educators seldom seek their advice on how to ….

What , Make , Great , What makes a great. Both boys were African American fifth-graders.