Saving The Corporate Board

Ward reveals ten specific failings that are built into our boardroom model and provides real-world fixes to get boards back on track. Ward mixes tart, insightful analogies (what do boards have in common with volunteer fire departments, the U.S. electoral college . . . and Howard Hughes?) with proven nuts-and-bolts advice for putting any board back on track. Order your copy today!

Directors, chairpersons, executives, recruiters, and other professionals who assist corporate boards all agree that becoming a corporate director is a journey. The process may take one to five years and involves a lot of learning, networking, and strategic positioning. In other words, just like everything worth pursuing, it involves a lot of hard work! Yes, there are occasional glimpses of luck, but there are no magical moments, invisible hands, or other miracles. Get on Board: Earning Your Ticket to a Corporate Board Seat is a practical beginner’s guide for anyone considering becoming a director, from young professionals seeking corporate board service in the distant future to seasoned professionals contemplating an imminent career change. This book demystifies the process, breaks down the steps, and answers the most common questions about corporate board service. It also provides examples of successful corporate director biographies and resumes. Finally, it shares actionable strategies and worksheets to help identify your unique value proposition, elevate your profile, and refine your networking strategy. You can use all of this information to start your corporate board journey today. After reading this book, you will be convinced that corporate board service is within your reach—and will be ready to pursue it actively!

In Boardroom Excellence, author Paul Brountas, a corporate attorney with more than forty years experience, discusses the qualities and components of effective boards in today’s post-Enron environment. Written in a concise format, the book is filled with informative practical advice for board members of private, public, and nonprofit organizations. Boardroom Excellence contains an informed discussion of fundamental corporate governance issues, including the duties and responsibilities of directors and the proper interaction of the board with the CEO and management. Brountas reveals how board members can be most effective when they are independent, possess integrity, are well-informed and involved, and are proactive. Boardroom Excellence offers timely information about Establishing the values and qualities that board members should possess Developing an environment in the boardroom where skepticism and serious discussion are encouraged Understanding what the CEO expects of the board and what the board expects of the CEO Creating effective independent audit, compensation, nominating, and governance committees Formulating guidelines for periodic evaluation of the performance of the board and individual board members

Board-Seeker: Your Guidebook and Career Map into the Corporate Boardroom is the first practical guide written specifically to help board-ready leaders and executives gain the knowledge, resources, and confidence to shape their personal “onboarding” program. Assess your experience that makes you valuable to a board–there’s more than you think. Shape this into a powerful outreach portfolio, such as board resume, online image, and personal pitch. Gain the targeted network and mentors you’ll need, especially your boss! Learn step by step how board searches really happen and how to master each stage. Prepare for the board interview and vetting process, and get ready for your first board meeting. With leads, links, checklists, and first-hand success stories, Board-Seeker spells out each step you’ll take into the boardroom—and beyond.

For generations, the cozy, standard model of boardroom leadership was simple: The CEO was also Chairman of the Board, and directors rubberstamped his initiatives. The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act forced radical change on all U.S. public corporations: The board must now hold sessions without management, key committees have tough new independence rules, and all board members now face an unavoidable legal responsibility to provide truly independent oversight of the corporation. Missteps can put companies and individual directors in serious legal danger. The result is an urgent demand that corporate boards develop their own confident, independent leaders from within. But how? That's something that governance expert Ralph Ward, in The New Boardroom Leaders, explains in detail. Until now, no one has tracked and compiled answers to new, basic governance questions. What should a lead director's job description include? Why is a separate chair not necessarily an independent chair? How do you shape an agenda for meetings of independent directors? How do CEOs and the new board leaders divide their roles? How much power should a separate board leader really have? This book answers these questions and more. Companies are scrambling to create new procedures and roles. But there are few job descriptions for these new boardroom leaders—something this book provides, as well as a wealth of insights and tips. The New Boardroom Leaders offers the first inside look at how board leaders actually do their jobs, based on extensive interviews and research. The emphasis will be on practical advice from real board leaders on what worked in their boardrooms, what didn't, and what they expect in the future. It will become a longtime, worthy guide for board members in the new world brought on by Sarbanes-Oxley and the quest for ever-better, and strictly ethical, corporate performance.

How to make your Corporate Board a Strategic Force in Your Company's Success. A practical handbook for directors, officers and all those who care about boards of directors. The most practical, reader friendly guide available to recruiting and managing on-track, top-notch boards - the kind that serve as pivotal success factors for all companies, large and small, public and private. Learn how to avoid the 10 most common mistakes, The author's guidance is backed up by massive research and hundreds of interviews, examples and anecdotes. Great boards mean great companies.

Written for practitioners, this book addresses corporate governance and the role of the board of directors in multinational corporations. Throughout the world, corporations are experiencing the second major transition in corporate governance of this century. The nature of the relationship between the corporation and the rest of society is changing fundamentally. The corporate board has unique responsibilities during this transition, but as it tries to respond directors are faced with destabilizing paradoxes: resolving who is in control--management or the board, achieving critical judgment while maintaining detachment, and avoiding becoming either a cozy club or a collection of all-stars. This book, based on interviews with 71 directors serving on more than 500 boards in eight countries, shows the nature of the challenges and suggests ways to analyze and confront them. This major international study compares the experiences of board members in Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Venezuela.

Finally, a book that brings the vision of truly good governance down to earth. Ram Charan, expert in corporate governance and best-selling author, packs this book with useful tools and techniques to take boards and their companies to a higher level of performance. Charan puts his finger on a growing problem for boards: the disconnect between directors' efforts and their results. The added time and attention boards invest is not translating into better governanceâ??that is, governance that adds value to the business. Boards That Deliver gets beyond the rhetoric of corporate governance reform. It captures the tried-and-true practices used by high-performance boards. In contrast to experts who base prescriptions on number-crunching exercises, Charan identifies the real problems that drain directors' time and suppress their best judgmentsâ??and explains clearly and succinctly how boards can solve those problems. These battle-tested solutions help boards achieve what rules and regulations alone cannotâ??to get succession right, refine a winning strategy, and design a rational CEO compensation package. Good governance requires leadership. Boards That Deliver is the no-nonsense guide for directors and CEOs who are rising to the leadership challenge to make their boards a competitive advantage.