board of directors

Bad boards have been in the news lately. The ongoing debacles at HP and Yahoo seem almost comical, to the point that you can literally imagine clowns running around in the board room. Of course, the easy thing for many people to assume is that they are just made up

  Recently a lot has been made of the relationship between a CEO and their board of directors. Mark Hurd recently ousted by the HP board is a case in point. This had nothing to do with performance, and everything to do with the relationship, communication, and trust. Last week

In my last post on the theme of looking at metrics as either valid or reliable and the balance between them, I wanted to examine the impact on decisions in the board room. So far we have covered the following: Valid or reliable – take your pick Valid or reliable

  What should boards of directors be focused on? Strategy? People? Competition? There might be several choices that could receive votes that you could feel comfortable about. Would you feel comfortable knowing that the board’s top priority is keeping up with new regulation? That’s exactly what is at the top

Last week I spotlighted some success and failures in family-held businesses in Zildjian versus Viacom. When done poorly, the family can destroy the business, or the business can destroy the family. How can you avoid some of the bad outcomes? I think two major factors must be considered: influence and

Publicly held businesses create most of the news. But family-created and held business are a bigger part of the economy than most people realize. They might be a brand-name you use every day, or something deep in the supply chain that you’ve never seen. But there are a great many

Noses In, Fingers Out is a long-standard rule of thumb for boards of directors and the organizations they govern. What does it mean? Well, that’s not so clear especially as the world has gotten more complicated. Fundamentally it means that board members should have their noses in the business. They

True lean thinkers in positions of power are hard to come by, but Paul O’Neill may be one of the best examples we have in the US. Former head of Alcoa, former Treasury Secretary under President Bush (for a very short period), and founder of the Pittsburgh Regional Healthcare Initiative