January 18, 2022
Leaders often praise and reward heroic actions, the “dive in the dirt” moves that save the day. Sometimes speed and boldness win the day, but heroics can lure us into using ad-hoc interventions as a default instead of doing the less glamorous work that makes heroics rare and mostly unnecessary.
December 1, 2021
British author Mary Anne Evans, who used the pen name George Eliot, once advised, “The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men.” The same can be said of directors who create disruption that leads to recovery after a crisis...
November 1, 2021
Boards can frequently trace flawed decisions to the process directors used in making the decision: unclear objectives, wrong information, disproportionately weighting options, etc. Often, however, the fault lies not with the process but with the mindset of those making decisions. When directors think about their decision-making in traditional ways, too often they fall through one of these decision-making traps..
October 12, 2021
The role of boards is well understood – they give strategic advice, focus on increasing value, and identify, avoid, or mitigate risk. Yet, sometimes board members, precisely because they are experienced and successful executives, step over the line...
September 28, 2021
Do your board members have a Board Mindset™? How do you know? And how do you strengthen this set of attributes?
July 14, 2021
Directors are usually intelligent, successful people capable of stepping into the same decision traps as other people. Yet, some manage to make fewer mistakes than others. So, are some people more “trap resistant” than others?
June 9, 2021
Research shows that self-awareness—knowing who we are and how others see us—forms the foundation of high performance, smart choices, and lasting relationships. However, people don’t see themselves quite as clearly as they could. If they have always had a stagnant mindset, they are loathe to explore the disruption that truly knowing themselves might bring.
March 3, 2021
When a board has a governance committee, the members initiate action plans with specific timelines for implementation of recommendations, and they should have the authority to shape and recommend policy and structure. While CEOs and board chairs will always steer directors toward making pivotal decisions, to ensure maximum effectiveness, CFOs need to play a bigger role in the processes.
December 1, 2020
In the world of technology, we describe the crippling condition that occurs when two computer programs vie for control—a phenomenon that happens when each program waits and prevents the other from making progress—as a “deadly embrace.” A similar stalemate occurs when board members try to influence others to concede the defects in their arguments, without acknowledging the failings in their own.
