Boardspan Library

Expert Strategies for Joining Boards of Directors

by Thea Singer


“Joining a board is a two-​​way rela­tion­ship,” said Michael Jeans, board director of AMICA Insur­ance and former pres­i­dent and chairman emer­itus of New Direc­tions Inc. “It’s about giving as well as receiving. It’s not ‘Here’s what I want’; it’s ‘Here’s what I can bring to the board.’”

How do you get on a board?

Net­working, agreed pan­elists at “Recruiting Beyond the C-​​Suite: How Do Win­ning Com­pa­nies Recruit to Max­i­mize Board Effec­tive­ness?” is one of the pri­mary ways to get on a board—and net­working, they stressed, means not sending out numerous emails but devel­oping and main­taining ongoing rela­tion­ships with everyone from exec­u­tive recruiters and lawyers to col­leagues from past and present jobs. The event was co-​​hosted by the Boston Club, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to diver­si­fying lead­er­ship at For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, and 2020 Women on Boards, a national non­profit cre­ated to raise the per­centage of women on cor­po­rate boards to 20 per­cent by the year 2020.

“Eighty per­cent of board seats are filled through net­working,” said Michelle Stacy, board director of iRobot Cor­po­ra­tion, Tervis Tum­bler, Coravin, and Young Inno­va­tions Inc. “Every con­nec­tion you make is a poten­tial place where you might get a board appointment.”

Indeed, Stacy said, some­times com­pa­nies, hearing about you through that net­work, will come to you “because they see a strategic fit—you have the exper­tise the com­pany is looking for.” That’s how she came to join the board of iRobot, she said: The com­pany needed her con­sumer back­ground, which she’d gained in sev­eral posi­tions, including as pres­i­dent of Keurig, a $2 bil­lion divi­sion of Keurig Green Mountain.

“Con­sider: What is the exper­tise strate­gi­cally, busi­ness­wise, that you’re bringing and find the net­working bridge that goes in that direc­tion,” she said.

How do you network?

Ellen Rich­stone, board director of Vioamber, eMagin, Pro­teck Val­u­a­tion Ser­vices, and Pax­er­amed, sug­gested taking your cue from cor­po­rate exec­u­tives themselves.

“Think about it from a gov­er­nance per­spec­tive,” said Rich­stone, who is the former CEO of Entre­pre­neurial Resources Group and former chief finan­cial officer for sev­eral public and pri­vate com­pa­nies. “Com­pa­nies go through a com­plex matrix process in choosing board mem­bers: What do we need in global skills, industry exper­tise, now and going for­ward?” Then, she said, they look at those cur­rently on the board and do a “gap” analysis—what exper­tise is missing? Next they develop a “pipeline” of pos­sible can­di­dates. “The pipeline,” she con­cluded, “comes back to networking.”

What is the work of a board?

While the pan­elists were careful to stress that every board is dif­ferent, they noted some gen­er­al­i­ties regarding com­mit­ment: Five to six board meet­ings a year as well as indi­vidual com­mittee meet­ings, some of which may involve travel, and about 400 pages of mate­rial to read before board-​​director meet­ings. Prepa­ra­tion is cru­cial, said Stacy. “You are on your own. At the meeting, you must dive right into dis­cussing the key issues.”

Jeans cited a survey from the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Cor­po­rate Direc­tors, noting that board ser­vice, on average, is 250 hours per year.

“It’s a job,” said Rich­stone, adding with a laugh, “but you have no staff. You really have to eval­uate the needs and your time.”

The type of issues boards cover run the gamut. Jeans, in his role on AMICA’s audit com­mittee, under­lined the impor­tance of risk man­age­ment. “I make sure the right ques­tions are asked,” he said. This con­cerns not only finan­cial aspects, he added, but rep­u­ta­tion risk, cat­a­strophic risk, and the risk of losing key talent.

Stacy brought up the impor­tance of suc­ces­sion plan­ning: How will the com­pany move for­ward as roles in the C-suite—the senior-​​executive positions—change? “You may be asked as well to spend time with people in the C-​​suite, to under­stand their skills,” she said.

How do you pre­pare to be on a board?

An audi­ence member won­dered how she might go about acquiring the skills to serve on a board, given that she was not yet a senior exec­u­tive. The pan­elists pro­vided a range of suggestions:

  • Serve on the board of a nonprofit or a small private company. There you can learn about decision-making, how to interact with board members, and ways to make a board dynamic. “As a byproduct, someone may know of a corporate board looking for someone with your skills,” said Jeans.
  • Serve on an advisory board of a company or an organization.
  • Strive in your workplace to reach the highest level of responsibility. If you can’t be a CEO or a chief operating officer, get to the point where you run a division or are a subject matter expert, perhaps a research-and-development or marketing pro.
  • Educate yourself by attending conferences and reading everything you can.

Closing the dis­cus­sion, Jeans pro­vided three key ques­tions to ask your­self in assessing any board posi­tion: “Are you learning? Can you have an impact? Are you having fun?”

Adapted with permission from the author. Click here to go to the original article. 

More on New To Boards
Back to Basics: Board Meetings

by Natalie Cooper, Robert Lamm, and Randi Val Morrison

New To Boards

Keywords: