Evaluating individual board members is important but often overlooked Most reputable companies want to comply with good corporate governance and hence, among other things, do an annual board evaluation. These national governance codes normally state that the effectiveness of each board member should also be evaluated. However, often boards avoid tackling this part of the
Does your board benchmark vs other boards? While top leadership teams and boards usually put in a lot of effort benchmarking the company to competitors, only a few boards benchmark themselves against other (competitor) boards. Hence most boards miss out on understanding what other boards do well in terms of composition, types of committees, number
Questions the Board should ask the CHRO (to ensure talent management rather than crisis management!) One of the board’s responsibilities is to help ensure leadership talent, so that the company has the human competencies to execute its strategy. For this reason, the board needs to feel confident that the company is promoting, recruiting, and retaining
Did you know your Board is responsible for having a plan for who can succeed the current CEO in short and long term? Imagine this scenario: You are on the board of a large, publicly listed company, and the CEO of the company unexpectedly resigns, or worse, becomes ill or unable to perform the CEO
This report from the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) provides good inspiration for boards of directors of listed European companies, on why and how to move away from treating governance reporting as simply a compliance exercise, using it instead to build transparency and stakeholder trust. For the 2nd year, the FRC reviewed how a random
Time after time, board members tell us that too much time is spent during board meetings hearing from the CEO and the CFO or having overly long discussions on small side issues, leaving too little time for strategic discussion. Focus is on the past, on reporting latest financials or on resolving immediate operational issues, at
Does your board focus on the KPIs that matter most? As human beings, we tend to stick with what we are used to and what we know works well. The same goes for boards and the company KPIs they monitor. When working with boards, we ask what KPIs (beyond traditional financial figures) will tell
Business strategy solution jigsaw puzzle Is your board or leadership team meeting agenda addressing the key strategic questions? In our work with boards and top teams we see a magnificent number of meeting agendas! We notice that the level of innovation in terms of creating a real value-adding meeting agenda can be
Does your board know how well the company purpose, culture, and values are embedded in the organization? Board members on the forefront agree that company purpose, culture, and values are significant levers of profitable long term company growth. If defined and implemented well, these can be strong driving forces guiding the strategy and decision-making
Why your board should have written, updated Committee Charters Do your Audit, Nomination, Remuneration or other committees have written, updated charters setting out the roles and responsibilities of each committee? Have these been discussed and agreed at board level? As described in our recent article What is a Board Charter and why is it
