Beyond the business case for adding women to boards ?Bookmark: Talal Rafi, a Deloitte consultant based in Sri Lanka, makes a fact-filled, succinct case for having sustainability experts on corporate boards in this London School of Economics blog post. She also sparks an insightful discussion about “the hard work of leadership” and who is cut out for a chief executive role. ?Listen: Angela Duckworth, the social psychologist known for grit, explains why she’s quitting her CEO job at a non-profit she founded in the latest episode of No Stupid Questions. Daimler’s piece was recently making the rounds again after the New York Times reported that Andreessen Horowitz is backing WeWork’s famously shoe-averse and fiscally irresponsible co-founder Adam Neumann in his second act. ? Read: In an essay for Fortune this May, Melissa Daimler, a former senior vice president at WeWork, described the corporate culture that could have saved the co-working company. Steven Givens, a Tokyo-based lawyer, in an op-ed for Nikkei Asia about the limited power of corporate boards.
But they do not hit home runs or get A’s on their exams.”
“Like baseball umpires or exam proctors, they play a valuable role in helping to enforce rules and prevent cheating. The only “wrong” position might be one that’s too static. Directors may need to steer overly cautious CEOs away from too-defensive strategies one day, and keep greed and ambitions in check the next. Outwardly, board members will say they’re mainly concerned with protecting investors and other stakeholders, and monitoring the firm’s impact on society, he continues but privately, they’re motivated to protect their own reputations, “and excessive caution seems to protect them more than excessive zeal.” Sonnenfeld calls for prudent risk-taking instead.īoth suggestions are reasonable in an economy bolstered by rising stock prices and low unemployment, yet tainted by an abundance of recession fears, geopolitical crises, droughts, and now two viruses. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, professor of management at Yale University, has a more direct message for boards: This is no time to be a wet blanket.Ī board often sees itself “as a countervailing force,” Sonnenfeld explains, but directors are often too conservative, “sitting with their arms crossed and their lower lip protruding.” That has a chilling effect “on a CEO’s entrepreneurial enthusiasm,” he adds. “They can’t control inflation, they can’t control whether a recession is coming or not, but what they can control is their own business strategy, and growth should be a significant part of their strategy.”Įxecutives are also more agile than they were before the pandemic, which has given them the confidence to make changes and charge ahead, she adds, saying “They’re not going to let the outside world and the threat of what’s coming slow them down.” Against this backdrop, she adds, the board’s job remains to ask the tough questions, drawing on their experiences and “muscle memory” of past recessions-the better to stress-test ambitious ideas. Kathryn Kaminsky, who runs PwC’s Trust Services business, says the ostensibly unexpected optimism in her firm’s new report shouldn’t actually come as a surprise: Executives are managing what’s within their control, she says.