|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sales rank 13,623
Customers rating (based on 6 reviews)
|
|
|
|
|
"This book is a most important contribution for both new and experienced directors, addressing contemporary corporate governance. The 14 practical questions represent the most vital issues that boards need to proactively address and are particularly crucial now as boards deal with the aftermath of the global financial tsunami." —Thomas J. Neff, chairman, U.S., Spencer Stuart "If Corporate America's board members had answered these questions, the crisis of '08 would have been avoided. The book is that powerful. It should be required reading in every boardroom, executive suite, and business school on the planet. This book with its singular wisdom could change the face of corporate governance—with huge dividends to shareholders and society." —Ralph Whitworth, principal, Relational Investors LLC "Ram Charan always seems to get it right. Owning Up not only asks the right questions, it gives answers that can make a real difference for improving board performance." —James M. Kilts, former chairman and CEO, The Gillette Company "As always, well-reasoned, insightful, and thought-provoking. A work that every director will find of value, particularly given the intense pressure of these unprecedented economic times." —Professor Charles M. Elson, director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware "Here is the book that every corporate director needs today. With his decades of insider experience, Ram Charan brings more wisdom and insight to this subject than anyone else I know." —Geoff Colvin, Fortune editor and author, Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else
|
|
|
| Publisher | Jossey-Bass | | Release date | 04/2009 | | Availability | Usually ships in 1 to 2 weeks | | Edition | Hardcover |
| | List price | $29.95 | | Our price | $19.77 (you save 33.99%) | | Used price | from $15.55 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Primary action guide for corporate directors
Corporate directors have their hands full. They must help their companies prosper, keep their shareholders happy, establish sensible CEO performance standards, and evaluate strategy and risk in a volatile business climate. How can board members keep all those balls in the air? These dilemmas have no easy answers, but Ram Charan, best-selling business author and leading expert on corporate governance, provides excellent suggestions for this formidable balancing act. Though his text sometimes digresses - interestingly - from its mission, Charan provides board members with many useful, if not entirely new, insights. If you are a corporate director or even if you sit on a nonprofit's board, getAbstract believes you can gain a lot from reading this superb, savvy book.
CEO Shelf Life
Ram Charan says that "if you have no appetite for risk, you shouldn't be on a board; it will inhibit the CEO from making bold and necessary moves and potentially company-saving bets."
This "go-to adviser" for corporate boards and CEOs, also says that boards must "own up" to its accountability for the performance of the organization and reinvent the content of their work and modus operandi. He preaches, "Governance now means leadership."
Board governance often has fuzzy boundaries and is never easy, but this excellent author/authority has 14 cringe-type questions. If you're a long-time reader of my eNewsletters and/or my Amazon reviews, you may recall my enthusiasm for two of Charan's other books: the best-seller Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, with Larry Bossidy, and Leaders at All Levels: Deepening Your Talent Pool to Solve the Succession Crisis (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership). His stuff is reliable, insightful and best of all, highly practical.
Charan doesn't waste words, firing this question onto the board table in the first paragraph of Chapter 1/Question 1: Is Our Board Composition Right for the Challenge? He writes, "The role of the board has unmistakably transitioned from passive governance to active leadership with a delicate balance of avoiding micromanaging. It's leadership as a group, not leadership by an appointed person." He adds, "With the right composition, a board can create value; with the wrong or inappropriate composition, it can easily destroy value."
He recommends that every board member and board prospect complete a "skill assessment matrix" to assess the board's overall strengths and weaknesses. "The process is important because a board full of generalists is not good enough anymore," he warns. Reference checking of board members (well beyond the basic level) is now an absolute necessity. The biggest red flag to avoid: a board nominee with a big ego.
The discussion of board member succession is worth the price of the book. Insights: 1) the process may take up to three years; 2) many CEOs are limiting their service on other boards to just two, or often just their own board; 3) to get the right mix of board members--for rapidly changing needs--many boards are encouraging incumbents to step down early. (Not easy--but critical.) Perhaps most critical: "Board service is always more attractive when the prospective director knows the board has its act together--that the board is thorough in covering its bases and functions well as a group."
Effective boards will want to use this book at an annual board retreat--or address one or two questions per board meeting over the next year or more. The book can also be read topically, based on your current hot issues. I started with Question 13: How Do We Stop From Micromanaging? All 14 have zinger qualities to them. My favorites, based on my board consulting work, include:
--Question 11: How Can Executive Sessions Help the Board Own Up?
--Question 12: How Can Our Board Self-Evaluation Improve Our Functioning and Our Output?
--Question 2: Are We Addressing the Risks That Could Send Our Company Over the Cliff?
--Question 4: Are We Well Prepared to Name Our Next CEO?
--Question 5: Does Our Board Really Own the Company's Strategy?
The best practices for the strategy question are both brilliant and practical, but the CEO will need to dramatically increase face time with board members. But the pay-off could be huge. He notes, "Strategy should always be in the back of directors' minds. It helps to have the strategy brief or a two-page sheet of bullet points in the binder for every meeting." Then Charan cautions us, "If the board and the CEO have lasting substantive differences, they have a choice: stay with the strategy or replace the CEO. Consider that management has a shelf life too, just like the strategy."
 business focus
The service and condition of the product was excellent. I was not quite as pleased with the actual material as it did not relate to the issues I wished to study.
Profound and Abstract
Ram Charam's Harvard Business School doctoral thesis was on Boards of Directors. For nearly four decades, he has continued to expand and to deepen in this area of expertise. He works with boards on board self-evaluations, CEO evaluations, and director succession planning. Charan also serves on the Board of at least one major public company.
Former CEO of DuPont Jack Krol describes this book as both practical and wise.
My own sense is that people will have one of two reactions to this book: (1) concise, focused, and on target and (2) vague and idealistic. For example, Charam states that "the role of the board has changed forever. `Governance' now means leadership, not just over-the-shoulder monitoring and passive approvals." If you think that is an easy concept, then you have not been doing a lot of board work recently!
Charam raises a number of thoughtful questions. Question #1 "is our board composition right for the challenge?" And his response is that in too many instances, the answer is "no." Boards tend to over focus on functional/industry expertise and systematically overlook over factors. Charam provides a useful Director Skill Matrix for the benefit of the Nominating & Governance Committee.
We think people who lack significant board experience will find this book abstract and preachy. Those with board experience who also find the book abstract and preachy are probably the same board members who waste too much time talking about how great things used to be before Sarbanes-Oxley. Those with significant board experience and who are thinking about the future will find this book provocative and challenging.
###
Larry Stybel & Maryanne Peabody
Board Options, Inc.
www.boardoptions.com
Tel. 617 594 7627
"Specialists to Nominating & Governance Committees on Board Talent"
Excellent Material on a Timely Topic!
The managements of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Washington Mutual clearly recently failed, but so did their boards. (The author probably should have also added G.M., Chrysler, Citibank, etc.) Charan posits convincingly that boards must change to address ensuring liquidity in the context of the global financial crisis, setting CEO performance targets in an uncertain economy, assessing strategy and enterprise risk under an increased climate of volatility. In other words, boards must "own up" to their accountability for the corporation's performance.
"Governance" now means leadership, not just casual monitoring and granting passive approvals. The bulk of "Owning Up" consists of 14 questions identified by Charan after interviewing a number of respected board members.
"Owning Up" is not comprised of pagefuls of useless generalities. Charan, for example, points out that a board full of generalists is not good enough anymore - they also need domain expertise, be it in IT, logistics, or Indian culture. (When the need for domain expertise is only temporary, Charan suggests bringing in a consultant.) Continuing, Charan also warns that boards with deep operating expertise and limited exposure to strategy naturally skew towards productivity improvement or cost-cutting, and could easily ignore areas like innovation and future market development. And a board with a purely domestic orientation might miss asking questions about global context.
Selecting board members with constructive personalities is also emphasized by Charan. He depicts two extremes - 1)someone hyper-interventionist and contrarian, and 2)someone who never opens their mouth. Identifying helpful personalities is aided by Charan's suggestion for asking a candidate how he/she helped the CEO of another board - this should help the evaluator determine if the individual was in fact a nit-picker without the ability to contribute broad strategic thinking.
CEOs selecting buddies, probably the most prevalent selection method, is not good either. A strong governance committee should handle this task, with consultant assistance, if necessary. The governance committe should also be responsible for evaluating current members to determine if they meet the corporation's future needs, identify who should leave, and report annually.
Other key questions addressed by Charan include "Are we addressing the risks that would send this company over the cliff?" and "How do we get CEO compensation right?"
Bottom Line: Charan's "Owning Up" clearly illustrates how the responsibility of corporate boards nees to be expanded, identifying key areas to think about. Sometimes his proposed solutions are more difficult than one would wish - however, that's what is required and why board members are paid the "big bucks."
|
|
| | |
|
