Board Effectiveness

The role of the Board is changing. Boards must rise to meet the challenges of increased complexity, scrutiny and a rapidly changing socio-political, environmental and economic context.

How could your Board be more effective?

Board effectiveness is an untapped driver to enhance and protect value. This is about much more than meeting legislative requirements. It involves ensuring the right Board composition and leveraging that diversity and collective expertize. It involves ensuring the management team has the right strategy, purpose, leadership and culture to enable sustained performance. It requires managing an increasingly diverse set of risks. It entails driving value in new ways, to meet the needs not just of shareholders but an expanding set of stakeholders.

This can only be achieved by the Board focusing on the right issues in the right way, with skill, curiosity, courage, and connection. How a Board operates, makes decisions and sets the tone is as critical as what it focuses on.

We partner with you via a four-phased approach to evaluate and enhance your Board effectiveness

Define

Defining measures of success with the Board upfront helps to align expectations and create a roadmap for optimizing the Board’s effectiveness. Partnering with Investors and the Chair throughout the process helps to support their role in leading and developing the Board.

Evaluate

Drawing on qualitive and quantitative data against agreed criteria enables a rigorous, objective and targeted evaluation of the Board’s effectiveness. This is underpinned by YSC’s Board effectiveness model. Gathering data via a Board effectiveness survey, stakeholder interviews, review of relevant Board materials, and observations enables a structured analysis and holistic evaluation. It helps to identify the implicit, underlying factors that contribute to functioning. It allows them to be surfaced in a constructive way.

Insight

Actionable insights and recommendations create a shared understanding of enablers and inhibitors of the Board’s functioning. Facilitating a Board session and individual profile review sessions creates alignment around the development phase of the process.

Development

Advisory and development support to the Board maximizes the impact of the insights and recommendations and ensures return on investment. Activities can include: facilitated group development for the whole Board; individual Director development; bespoke offerings, such as embedding DEI or the ESG agendas; and Chair advisory. YSC works with Boards on a regular basis to evaluate progress, and support development for the next phase of growth. As leadership strategy consultants, we draw on over 30 years’ experience working with public and private company Boards and executive teams. We bring deep insight and expert facilitation, underpinned by proprietary tools. This enhances genuine diversity and inclusion, mitigates risk and accelerates the Board’s performance and growth.

Rigor & insight

The key to meaningful and sustainable change is to understand the Board’s current functioning, likely future context, and the individual and collective shifts required. YSC’s rigor, understanding of Board requirements, psychological depth, and expertize in individual and group leadership enables that insight. This accelerates a Board’s development.

Integrated approach

Truly effective Boards have a shared sense of purpose, and effective ways of operating that drive value in their organizational, market, societal and environmental context. This also requires managing tensions, balancing risk and navigating complex ethical issues. It is underpinned by effective dynamics. YSC’s systemic approach helps Boards to understand themselves as a collective in their unique context and improve their ability to achieve their goals.

Individual
styles

Enabling Board effectiveness starts with an individual and collective understanding of a Board’s performance and functioning against the right success measures. Facilitating insight into individual and collective strengths, development needs and culture, and providing tailored support, enables sustained change.

Team
dynamics

While a Board is not a typical team, in many respects it needs to operate as such. Key to improving its effectiveness is understanding its underlying functioning. This includes its interpersonal dynamics, the balance of focus that is dependent on the Board’s composition, its history and context and the degree of psychological safety that supports effective debate and decision-making. YSC facilitates insight into those dynamics with sensitivity and skill. This enables constructive dialogue and challenge that underpin Board effectiveness.

Organizational
culture

The Board needs to not just react to, but anticipate, a broad range of shareholder and stakeholder needs in a rapidly shifting context. In doing so, the Board helps to create the conditions for the executive team, and the whole organization, to drive sustainable change.

Case Studies

Cultivating Board purpose and effectiveness with a multinational, luxury fashion retailer

Partnering with the Board of this luxury fashion retailer, we identified that they were not comfortable taking calculated risks, which led to missed opportunities for innovation that would drive them forward in the marketplace.

Building Board effectiveness with a national television broadcaster

As a newly formed Board, this client required support in how best to move forward and add value beyond regular governance responsibilities.

Board Effectiveness With A Portfolio Company Of A Top Ten Global PE Firm

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CEO Succession: A very human transition with extensive commercial implications

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Boards need real diversity, not tokenism

In his Harvard Business Review article, Simran Jeet Singh provides guidance on blockers and steps Boards can take to achieve meaningful change.

Succession science: Equipping boards to optimize their CEO succession planning

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Take a look at YSC’s most recent paper to avoid ‘buyer’s remorse’ around CEO succession and what role NEDs can play.

Plan now for a smooth transition in anticipation of a steady flow of CEO turnover

Getting CEO Succession right, and how to overcome natural biases to choose the CEO which optimizes true value for your Board and organization.

5 questions leaders should ask before taking a big risk

Robert Sharrock, Managing Director, Board & CEO Advisory Practice, covers 5 questions leaders should ask before taking a risk for CNN Business.

Towards gender diversity in the Boardroom

Ambica Saxena, Head of Singapore and Hong Kong, contributes to The Business Times' "Views from the Top" column on gender diversity in Singapore.

Relationship-building tips for boards

Carmel Pelunsky writes an article for Financial Executives International on best practices for facilitating the succession process.