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Board
Transformation
One of the most important factors in facilitating strategies
leadership and change in a company is direction from the
board. As representatives of stakeholders' interests, the
board is responsible for actively monitoring and controlling
the actions of the management team. Many boards fail in this
role because their directors have been made subservient by
aggressive managers to whom they are indebted, on whom they
rely for internal information about company operations, and
who find it relatively easy to suppress dissent and conjole
directors into complacency. Not getting the appropriate
information for decision making or reading the concerns of
regulators, as some boards of nuclear plants have learned,
can be very costly.
For effective strategic change to occur, successful CEO's
don't surround themselves with yes men. They build
conditions where the top management is more likely to
disagree. A good CEO cultivates less structured interactions
in meetings, less formalized roles, and less reliance on
bureaucratic procedures and processes. They manage through
an open problem solving culture and decision making process
which is open to disagreement. They observe what is going on
in their firms by walking around, and by listening to a
broad cross section of employees. A board that doesn't
remain independent is likely to succumb to the status quo.
Instead, it must receive information that compels strategic
change. A strong board fosters a questioning attitude and
challenges its management team to confront events, opinions,
and possibilities it would otherwise choose to ignore.
Qualification of board members is vital. Many a CEO who
opted to paper the board with celebrities and inactive
directors has learned that this can be disastrous,
particularly after lawsuits have been filed against
directors for mis-management. MDI helps the CEO and other
executives make the fundamental, surgical, and quantum
changes to respond to changing contexts, to alleviate
competitive pressures, and to align culture with strategy.
MDI provides the following
services to improve the board of directors:
- Assessment
of the strengths and weaknesses of the board, with
improvement recommendations.
Guidance
or executive coaching during restructuring, turnaround,
or transformation.
Assessment
of director and executive competence, ethics,
independence, and practices.
Setting
objectives, developing, and managing the board.
Training
board members in: clarification of objectives;
pro-active versus reactive response to problem
resolution; change management; legal liability; crisis
management; establishing the appropriate organizational
and nuclear safety culture; running effective meetings;
prioritization systems; managing committees; monitoring
human performance and using feedback; accountability;
pay for performance; the importance of trust and
professionalism; and, incentive/reward systems.
Development
and upgrading of board policies and procedures.
Establishing,
managing, monitoring and evaluating board effectiveness.
Conducting
surveys and interviews to determine employee attitudes
and opinions concerning board governance and its
effectiveness.
Other
Services
Management Diagnostics, Inc.
P.O. Box 240, Port Royal, PA 17082-0240
Tel: 717-527-4399 Fax: 717-527-4398
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