REALBoard Buzz™
Efficiency Lessons for Boards Using Policy Governance®
In an interview on the CBC Radio program SPARK , Roger Martin, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, contends that businesses’ obsession with efficiency over the past two centuries has gone too far. Although efficiency has...
Evidently this is Not Evidence!
Earlier on in my consulting career, it was common to come across boards in which directors thought that the Board Chair should be the CEO’s boss. However, when a board uses Policy Governance®, board members should operate in a manner that recognizes the board as a...
No Matter How The Wind Blows
The arrival of spring is always welcome. For my wife and me, one of the best parts of spring is the return of many migrating birds to our heavily treed yard. Finches of all varieties, woodpeckers, martins, hummingbirds and, of course, the iconic bird of spring, the...
You Want to Measure What?
In my decade-long path of helping boards and CEOs implement practices that support the elegant governance system that is Policy Governance®, I have learned that monitoring is both embraced and cursed. Embraced for its promise of providing evidence that the...
Goldilocks and Monitoring Reports
Among the many things that I wish I’d known when I was younger is: wait for it…how to write effective reports for the board. Okay, I realize that’s not a tantalizing subject for most young men, but in my earlier career it certainly occupied more of my time than it...
We’ve Always Done it This Way…
As I cleared away the remainder of our Easter ham this week, I was reminded of an old story. “Mom, why do you always cut the end off the ham before cooking it?” asked the youngster. “Well, that’s the way my mother always did it.” “But why did she do it...
Maintaining Policy Governance® Muscles
My colleague, Ted Hull, wrote a blog a couple of years ago , about how boards can ensure the gains experienced through Policy Governance are not lost. However, because I think it’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of being intentional about sustaining...
Board Intervention does Not Guarantee Better Decisions
Several years ago, I was coaching a board which had recently issued a public position statement on behalf of its organization. Unfortunately, the position it took was based on inadequate information and damaged the credibility of some of the association’s members, in...
Is it Time to Do Away with Board Values Lists?
I’m not a big fan of boards creating lists of values. There. I’ve finally come out and said it and I’m glad I did! Of course, now I need to explain myself. A few decades ago, I ran a youth leadership development program. Toward the end of my tenure as the program...
The Best Boards Maximize Time on One Type of Information
How many times have you sat in a board meeting wondering why you were discussing what you were discussing and feeling frustrated that the “real” issues weren’t being discussed? Often that frustration can be traced to one key issue: The board doesn’t understand how to...