The Boardspan staff reviews and selects the most informative articles from business news sources, including:
We categorize articles to make them easier for you to find.
Today’s boards operate amid the pressures of ever-increasing business complexity, technological disruptions, fluid regulatory environments, shareholder activism, cybersecurity threats, and more. Through these choppy seas, a board is charged with keeping the ship pointed toward success in both the short and long term, while scouting risks and opportunities, steering the organization to respond appropriately. It’s a lot to navigate, and yet—that’s the job, mates!
How, then, does one do it ...read more...
The spring of 2016 brought another round of reports on the pale state of the U.S. boardroom. It remains a whiter shade of pale, predominantly male. In its annual review of corporate board appointments, the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. labels the latest crop of Fortune 500 directors “the usual suspects,” noting “stalled progress for women appointees” and “generally flat numbers for directors of Hispanic, African, and Asian descent.” T ...read more...
Arguably, the single best way to ruin a CEO’s day is to report that an activist is on the phone and has just taken a position in the CEO’s company.
More and more CEOs are getting this call, as activist investing has exploded in recent years. We examined more than 400 activist engagements and found that the targets are getting larger and the industries more diverse. We also found that the activists’ attention is not limited to so-called laggards; it includes a number of high-performing companies as ...read more...
Bringing a new C-level executive on board is always fraught with risk: Any misstep can be expensive and embarrassing. As a result, companies may play it safe by looking for someone with just the right CV or perhaps a recent stint at a high-flying competitor. Who does the board like? What will the analysts think?
The challenge has become even more daunting as an increasing number of companies use their culture as a point of differentiation and strategic advantage. Look, for example, at the companies that have embrace ...read more...
Once you have recruited or re-structured your board of directors as part of the financing, make sure to establish a good working relationship with them.
BOARD MEETINGS WITH YOUR DIRECTORS
You must hold regular board meetings to discuss the business of your company. The following tips from Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start and Reality Check can guide you as you cultivate your board, especially with respect to board meetings:
SAVE TREES: DO NOT BURY YOUR BOARD IN DOCUMENTATION OR PAPER
...read more...
Only a month before Twitter hosted 2013’s most highly anticipated public offering, The New York Times’s Claire Cain Miller asked why the company’s board of directors was entirely male. The article jolted an industry accustomed to seeing itself as an enlightened alternative to traditional business...
How to restore a Founder’s Mentality, including intolerance for bureaucracy Why do so many companies lose their way? When companies are just starting out, they have no problem identifying the path before them. The founders know where they’re headed, who their customers are and how they hope to...
We’re living in times when what we say and what we do matters. We want our leaders to be role models. And no leadership role is more important or influential in the corporate world than that of the board. Thus, the bar for boards is high and getting higher. Given the access to information, expe...
Don’t rely on intuition for something this important. Trust is the basis for every business exchange and all consumer behavior. But as important as it is for leaders, organizations, and brands, the fundamental concept is surprisingly hard to pin down. “Whenever any two people talk about tru...
State Street Global Advisors last week announced that they will no longer support companies that allow boardroom one-sidedness. That’s a fresh approach to an old problem, according to one money-manger interviewed by the Washington Post. She likened the announcement to a carrot-and-stick strategy....
Anyone who has ever gone to the “investors” section of a company’s website knows that corporate governance is not the sexiest of topics. While it seems that almost every category of people and/or type of profession has become fair game for reality television, one of the last safe places may actua...
The regulatory landscape around these issues is changing, and company leaders need to know. Board members are at risk of being seen as negligent — and therefore potentially accountable — if they fail to pay adequate attention to environmental and human rights issues. In 2015, regulators exp...
When Uber announced in mid-June that it would organize a 14-person governing body to run the company while its CEO had a time-out, critics immediately pounced on the idea. How on earth could you run a fast-charging tech company with such an unwieldy group? How would all those leaders align? Th...
When the idea of corporate risk management was only related to financial risks, it was simple to see where on the org chart responsibility for it should fall. In today’s business world, it’s much more complicated, and regulators have been pushing boards to do more oversight. Wharton accountin...
Every board wants its CEO to thrive--and there’s one simple thing all boards can do to improve the odds: Offer FEEDBACK. It’s surprising how many boards expect top performance from their executives, but only give feedback when they have a specific disagreement or concern about performance metrics...
Corporate Governance in the Age of Cyber Risks Corporate boardrooms are waking up to the encroaching, systemic threat of cybersecurity risks. But while awareness is growing — more than 80% of boards now discuss cybersecurity at most, if not all, of their meetings — many directors simply are no...
Today’s boards operate amid the pressures of ever-increasing business complexity, technological disruptions, fluid regulatory environments, shareholder activism, cybersecurity threats, and more. Through these choppy seas, a board is charged with keeping the ship pointed toward success in both the...
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