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THE BOARDSPAN LIBRARY


The Boardspan staff reviews and selects the most informative articles from business news sources, including:

Bcg perspectives Working knowledge Strategy business Rock center Corporate executive board

We categorize articles to make them easier for you to find.


  • Board composition
  • Who should sit on your board and what they should bring to the table.
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  • Strategy & innovation
  • Provocative pieces for forward thinking boards and executives.
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  • Board supervision
  • How the best boards are managed and how they contribute to others.
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  • Culture
  • How culture affects the board room and the entire organization.
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  • Blog
  • Boardspan's perspectives on what's happening around the table.
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  • Team building
  • Creating, growing, and being part of a highly functional team.
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  • Compliance
  • Policies and processes to help board members fulfill core requirements.
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  • Leadership
  • How leaders at the board and executive level influence others.
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  • Risk management
  • What board members need to know about reducing risk.
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  • Exec. evaluation & comp
  • Critical information about evaluating and compensating the executive team.
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  • Cyber security
  • Addressing the board's role around cyber security challenges.
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  • Featured
  • Boardspan's rotating recommendations for timely and relevant reading.
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  • Featured
    Harassment Not Tolerated: 6 Questions Every Board Should Ask
    OCTOBER 16, 2017
    by Abby Adlerman, Mary Cranston, and Amy Schioldager
    Boardspan

    Workplace harassment – it’s been going on too long and will no longer be tolerated. It’s hurtful, unethical, career limiting and expensive. And boards are where the buck stops. While no approach can be foolproof, a thoughtful proactive program can help a board and the organization it serves get ahead of this growing crisis and keep their heads high. It’s morally right, and a clear governance responsibility.

    Boards: Ask these 6 questions to take a stance and stay vigilant. Everyone will be better off for ...read more...

  • Featured
    In Boardrooms, the Same Is a Shame
    JUNE 3, 2016
    by Paul Michelman
    MIT Sloan Management Review

    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.” The problem of a lack of ...read more...

  • Featured
    Agitators and Reformers: How to Respond to Activist Investors
    JUNE 10, 2015
    by Josh Hinkel, Henrik Poppe, Martin Toner and Chuck Whitten
    Bain & Company

    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 well. In ...read more...

  • Featured
    Hiring For Cultural Fit At The Top
    JANUARY 2, 2015
    by Eric J. McNulty
    strategy+business

    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 embraced the concept ...read more...

  • Featured
    CEO's Guide To Working With A Board
    DECEMBER 6, 2013
    by MaRS
    MaRS

    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
    Your board of directors is busy and ...read more...

FEATURED ARTICLES

Board composition
How to Triple the Number of Women Appointed to Boards in Three Years
November 14, 2016  |  by Glenn Kelman and Bridget Frey

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...

Strategy & innovation
Killing Complexity Before Complexity Kills Growth  
April 14, 2017  |  by Ron Kermisch and Jed Fallis

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...

Board supervision
The 3 Essential Things Your Board Must Get Right
May 25, 2017  |  by Boardspan

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...

Culture
6 Ways to Promote a Healthy Company Culture
August 3, 2017  |  by Ann Skeet

Given allegations of bad behavior by employees and leaders of a number of companies, board directors might be asking themselves how best to insure that corporate cultures are healthy. Of course the most direct way to find out is to ask. Many companies are reluctant to do so, concerned that con...

Blog
Which is mightier: The Carrot or the Stick?
March 13, 2017  |  by Abby Adlerman

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....

Team building
Are Next-Gen Leaders Ready to Rise to the Board Challenge?
December 15, 2015  |  by Tom Monahan, Chairman & CEO, CEB

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...

Compliance
Environmental & Human Rights Assume a New Urgency for Boards
December 11, 2015  |  by Olivier Jaeggi

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...

Leadership
The Best Way to Align Leaders: Disagree, Debate, Repeat
June 27, 2017  |  by David Michels

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...

Risk management
Why Getting Directors on Board with Risk Management Matters
September 11, 2015  |  by Christopher Ittner

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...

Exec. evaluation & comp
Haven’t Done a CEO 360 Review? You Should!
January 26, 2017  |  by Boardspan

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...

Cyber security
Corporate Governance in the Age of Cyber Risks
December 1, 2015  |  by In collaboration with RANE (Risk Assistance Network and Exchange)

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...

Featured
Harassment Not Tolerated: 6 Questions Every Board Should Ask
October 16, 2017  |  by Abby Adlerman, Mary Cranston, and Amy Schioldager

Workplace harassment – it’s been going on too long and will no longer be tolerated. It’s hurtful, unethical, career limiting and expensive. And boards are where the buck stops. While no approach can be foolproof, a thoughtful proactive program can help a board and the organization it serves get a...

BOARDSPAN LIBRARY

Board composition +
Strategy & innovation +
Board supervision +
Culture +
Team building +
Outgoing CEOs Shouldn't Pick Their Replacements
 David F. Larcker, Stephen A. Miles, and Brian Tayan
Five Things Every CEO Must Do in the Next Era of Globalization
 Hans-Paul Bürkner, Arindam Bhattacharya, and Jorge Becerra
The Creative Power of Many
 Jen Swetzoff
Are Next-Gen Leaders Ready to Rise to the Board Challenge?
 Tom Monahan, Chairman & CEO, CEB
Executive Comp: Five Guiding Principles for Better Shareholder Communication
 Sharon Podstupka
Compliance +
Leadership +
Risk management +
Exec. evaluation & comp +
Surviving the Sophomore Slump: Moves That Matter The Most
 Roselinde Torres, Judy Johnson, James M. Citrin, and Susan S. Hart
Leapfrog Succession: Trend in Appointing CEOs
 Roselinde Torres, Gerry Hansell, Kaye Foster, and David Baron
Haven’t Done a CEO 360 Review? You Should!
Boardspan
The Myths of Executive Compensation
 Edgar S. Woolard Jr
CEO Pay Ratio Disclosure: SEC Proposal Implementation
 Deloitte
Cyber security +
Corporate Data Privacy: Time To Grow Up
 Dan Currell
Are you in the dark about Shadow IT?
 Ryan Shadle and Brian Turley
Corporate Governance in the Age of Cyber Risks
 In collaboration with RANE (Risk Assistance Network and Exchange)
Cyber-Threats: The Board’s Role
 Lauri Floresca & Priya Cherian Huskins
The Board's Role in Cyber-Security
 Richard Clarke and Jacob Olcott
Featured +
CEO's Guide To Working With A Board
 MaRS
Hiring For Cultural Fit At The Top
 Eric J. McNulty
Agitators and Reformers: How to Respond to Activist Investors
 Josh Hinkel, Henrik Poppe, Martin Toner and Chuck Whitten
In Boardrooms, the Same Is a Shame
 Paul Michelman
Harassment Not Tolerated: 6 Questions Every Board Should Ask
 Abby Adlerman, Mary Cranston, and Amy Schioldager

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Assessments
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