The job of a board is to provide direction and oversight of the executive management team, ensuring that the company’s policies are in place and that all fiduciary responsibilities are met. Some boards give too much power to the executive leadership. The majority of boards don’t. Unfortunately, the media is overflowing with stories of business failures which are the result of poor or incompetent management teams.
To avoid these disasters it is crucial to ensure your board has many perspectives and skills. It should also work effectively as a team. This requires the establishment of guidelines for managing your board such as accepting diverse perspectives and assuming leadership positions, fostering an agile structure (e.g. setting up committees to deal with new risk areas) and involving in continuous evaluation of the board and individual members.
Another board management principle is to avoid getting too involved in the day-today operations of your business. This is because a major portion of the role of a company’s board is to set the long-term goals for your company and how it is integrated within the wider society.
Although this might seem like a straightforward idea, many companies have a hard time with this idea. Some board members, for example, start direct meetings with the management without the CEO’s knowledge or immediately jump you can look here to conclusions to be useful. This can put the CEO in a difficult situation. The ideal scenario is for the CEO to work with the chair of board and other directors in resolving the issue and establish trust once more.
