Blog: Boards of Directors

Many people have the impression that a Board of Directors is a group of very wise people who sit in a very special room and make very complex deliberations and decisions. Actually, most Board members are people just like us who are trying their best to understand what’s going on and what to do about it. However, recent history has shown that some Board members are not doing their fiduciary duties — they’re merely doing whatever the CEO tells them to do. The irony is that the law expects the CEO to work for the Board, not the other way around.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the role of a Board of a for-profit and nonprofit corporation. We’ll discuss Board members’ roles and responsibilities, how members are selected and trained, how they make decisions and how they are supposed to ensure their operations are always high-quality. We’ll discuss how the members and CEO can best work together. We’ll also review how members can accomplish strong governance of each of the most important functions in an organization.

There is an increasing number of laws and regulations about Boards and for a variety of reasons. Recent and very public scandals have resulted in massive layoffs and losses in investments, along with some executives going to prison. Also, there is public outrage at the sizes of CEO compensation. We don’t know all of these laws and regulations, so I’m hoping readers with that knowledge will chip in to enlighten the rest of us.

This list of topics gives more detail about the types of topics we’ll likely cover and their order. However, it’s not uncommon that the topics in a blog tend to follow the wishes of the readers — a blog should be about the readers at least as much as about the blogger’s opinions.

What topics would you like to read? What questions do you have about Boards?