REALBoard Buzz™
The Danger of an Executive Committee
It’s been around since time immemorial and every board has one. It’s the executive committee. This sacrosanct group is usually made up of the officers of the board; typically the chair, vice-chair, secretary and treasurer. Its daunting mandate can include making...
Effective Board Meetings
We live in a society of meetings. In the United States alone, there are more than 11 million meetings a day! If you are a board of directors, you are ultimately responsible for the success or failure of your organization. Most boards are mandated to meet at...
Should the Board Approve CEO Interpretations in Policy Governance®?
I’m often asked what the board should or should not “approve” in Policy Governance. This is an area that sometimes results in confusion because it requires a shift in mindset from traditional governance practices. Traditionally governed boards “approve” (or adopt, or...
Owner vs Customer
It is sometimes said that owner-accountability is the holy grail of governance. Boards are encouraged to understand who their owners are, to differentiate between legal owners and moral owners, to connect meaningfully with those owners in order to understand their...
Revolving Door Boards
Does your board suffer from revolving door directors’ attendance? In other words, some board members attend board meetings on an erratic basis: a meeting here and another there. Even if your board enables distance connection, these board members have spotty in and out...
How a Board can Embrace Diversity
It would be hard not to notice the proliferation of media stories, academic and industry research, anecdotal evidence, and statistics about the diversity – or lack thereof – on boards of directors. Corporate boards, in particular, have been under pressure from...
The Importance of Vocabulary
In the last year, my wife and I have done two things that involved using a new vocabulary. The first was spending 8 months on our sailboat traveling from Maine to Miami and then to the Bahamas and back. For life on a sailboat to be safe,...
Does Your Board Need an Information Diet?
Have you ever received the agenda package for your board meeting and thought “Oh, no – do I really have to wade through all of this information?” If so, you’re not alone. I think many board members, on receiving the package, feel like they are swimming...
Building CEO and Board Success – Part 3 of 3
In our last blog, we discussed the difference between best practices vs. principles and how this can impact on bringing clarity to the board – CEO relationship. We began to examine the Policy Governance® model and how it can bring role clarity and create...
Building CEO and Board Success – Part 2 of 3
Last week, I examined the issue of the board’s contribution to CEO failure and discussed whether best practices could be the answer. What about the principle-based approach? Principles are based on a fundamental or general truth that provides people with guidelines to...