governance
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Boards At Work: How Corporate Boards Create Competitive Advantage by Ram Charan
Behind closed doors, in corporate boardrooms across America, a quiet revolution is taking place. Boards of directors – long an unrealized source of competitive advantage – are transcending their traditional roles to proactively influence the future direction of their companies. Ram Charan shares an intriguing, first-hand account of how a small but growing number of exceptional boards are changing the face of corporate governance. He also shows how CEOs can tap the vast reserve of experience and wisdom a board’s membership represents.
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Boards That Deliver: Advancing Corporate Governance From Compliance to Competitive Advantage by Ram Charan
Based on years of hands-on experience and building on the breakthrough ideas of Boards at Work, Charan provides practical, actionable ideas to move boards to a higher level of performance—to make a step-change improvement in the quality of their governance. By detailing the evolution of board dynamics in the post–Sarbanes-Oxley environment and providing insight into new best practices, Ram Charan has developed a comprehensive guide to creating and maintaining a next-generation board.
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Boards That Lead: When to Take Charge, When to Partner, and When to Stay Out of the Way by Ram Charan, Dennis Carey, Michael Useem
Is your firm’s board creating value—or destroying it?
Change is coming. Leadership at the top is being redefined as boards take a more active role in decisions that once belonged solely to the CEO. But for all the advantages of increased board engagement, it can create debilitating questions of authority and dangerous meddling in day-to-day operations. Directors need a new road map—for when to lead, when to partner, and when to stay out of the way.
Boardroom veterans Ram Charan, Dennis Carey, and Michael Useem advocate this new governance model—a sharp departure from what has been demanded by governance activists, raters, and regulators—and reveal the emerging practices that are defining shared leadership of directors and executives. Based on personal interviews and the authors’ broad and deep experience working with executives and directors from dozens of the world’s largest firms, including Apple, Boeing, Ford, Infosys, and Lenovo, Boards That Lead tells the inside story behind the successes and pitfalls of this new leadership model and explains how to:
• Define the central idea of the company
• Ensure that the right CEO is in place and potential successors are identified
• Recruit directors who add value
• Root out board dysfunction
• Select a board leader who deftly bridges the divide between management and the board
• Set a high bar on ethics and riskWith a total of eighteen checklists that will transform board directors from monitors to leaders, Charan, Carey, and Useem provide a smart and practical guide for business people everywhere—whether they occupy the boardroom or the C-suite.
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Boards That Make a Difference: A New Design for Leadership in Nonprofit and Public Organizations (J-B Carver Board Governance Series) by John Carver
In this updated third edition, Carver continues to debunk the entrenched beliefs and habits that hobble boards and to replace them with his innovative approach to effective governance. This proven model offers an empowering and fundamental redesign of the board role and emphasizes values, vision, empowerment of both the board and staff, and strategic ability to lead leaders. Policy Governance gives board members and staff a new approach to board job design, board-staff relationships, the role of the chief executive, performance monitoring, and virtually every aspect of the board-management relationship.
This latest edition has been expanded to include explanatory diagrams that have been used by thousands of Carver’s seminar participants. It also contains illustrative examples of Policy Governance model policies that have been created by real-world organizations. In addition, this third edition of Boards That Make a Difference includes a new chapter on model criticisms and the challenges of governance research.
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Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership) by David A. Nadler, Beverly A. Behan and Mark B. Nadler
“We’re nearing the end of an era. The age of the imperial CEO and the ornamental board of directors is waning, but what comes next isn’t clear. Every board of directors is approaching a fork in the road, forging new working relationships at the top of the corporation. The path each company takes will have huge implications for its shareholders, employees, and corporate leaders.
Building Better Boards is a practical and provocative blueprint for helping CEOs and boards create real value by striking the right balance between wp-contention and collaboration. It’s an approach to corporate governance that goes far beyond minimum compliance with legal requirements; this is about enabling the board, for the first time, to perform as a team in a way that significantly improves the quality of management’s decisions without interfering with management’s prerogatives.
In an engaging style, Building Better Boards provides a unique glimpse at the complex interplay of egos, interests, and interpersonal dynamics that dictates how boards and CEOs operate. Based on Mercer Delta Consulting’s unparalleled experience in working with top corporate leaders, supplemented by rigorous research conducted with the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and with the National Association of Corporate Directors, the book is a unique and invaluable resource for all those involved with and concerned about the future of corporate governance.”
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Culture of Inquiry : Healthy Debate in the Boardroom by Nancy R. Axelrod
This book explains how to create a culture of inquiry within the boardroom – one marked by mutual respect and constructive debate that leads to sound and shared decision making. It details how to develop an environment where board members solicit, acknowledge and respectfully listen to different points of view; where they seek more information, question assumptions, and challenge conclusions so that they may advocate for solutions based on analysis; and where board members are able to voice their concerns before reaching a collective decision, which, once made, is supported by the entire board. It includes tools for creating an environment of trust, for cultivating teamwork, for stimulating dialogue, and for sharing information. Written by one of the preeminent experts in nonprofit governance, this guide shows how to engage and energize board members and make better decisions.
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Forces for Good, Revised and Updated: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant
In the first edition of Forces for Good, the authors studied 12 nonprofits that achieved extraordinary levels of impact and distilled six counter-intuitive practices that these organizations used to change the world. This revised and updated edition explores how the recent economic and social upheavals has impacted those noteworthy organizations.
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Generations: The Challenge of a Lifetime for Your Nonprofit by Generations: Peter C Brinckerhoff
This hands-on guide includes the Generational Self-Assessment Tool. This tool gives you a baseline to measure your success as you bring generations into your planning. Throughout the book, you’ll find real-life examples that illustrate key points. You’ll also find practical ideas that you can use immediately. Finally, the book includes keys points and discussion questions because you need to get your staff and board involved in this discussion today. The wake-up call been given to nonprofit boards and staff alike: now is the time to plan for generational change.
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Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present by Bob Johansen
Nobody can predict the future, but you still have to make sense of it to be successful. Leaders are facing a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity – a world laced with dilemmas. Get There Early shows how to sense the future to provoke new ways of understanding the present. Institute for the Future’s Distinguished Fellow Bob Johansen uses 35 years of 10-year forecasting to unpack complex dilemmas and help leaders seed innovation and strategy. Get There Early helps leaders resolve the constant tension between judging too soon (the classic mistake of the problem solver) and deciding too late (the classic mistake of the academic).
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Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards by Richard P. Chait, William P. Ryan, Barbara E. Taylor
Written by noted consultants and researchers attuned to the needs of practitioners, Governance as Leadership redefines nonprofit governance. It provides a powerful framework for a new covenant between trustees and executives: more macrogovernance in exchange for less micromanagement. Informed by theories that have transformed the practice of organizational leadership, this book sheds new light on the traditional fiduciary and strategic work of the board and introduces a critical third dimension of effective trusteeship: generative governance. It serves boards as both a resource of fresh approaches to familiar territory and a lucid guide to important new territory, and provides a road map that leads nonprofit trustees and executives to governance as leadership.
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Governance Committee (Boardsource Committee Series, 1.) by Sandra R. Hughes, Berit M. Lakey, Outi Flynn
All things must be properly fed and cared for in order to thrive and succeed…. A nonprofit board is no different. The governance committee ensures the constant health and effectiveness of the full board and the work it performs for the organization. It expands the traditional idea of a nominating committee, clarifying the variety of responsibilities a governance committee truly has. Governance Committee discusses this group’s challenging responsibility in overseeing the performance of the board and managing compliance to the organization’s mission. Discover how this committee can help all boards – new or seasoned – live up to their highest potential, keeping board members energized and engaged in maintaining value and control.
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How to Help Your Board Govern More Manage Less (Boardsource Governance Series) by Richard P. Chait
This resource was developed by the National Center for Nonprofit Boards, now called Boardsource. It outlines ten ways to help nonprofit boards maintain governance accountability and develop clear boundaries between responsibilities that should appropriately be held at the Board level versus the management level.
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Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World by Margaret J. Wheatley
Leadership and the New Science launched a revolution by demonstrating that ideas drawn from quantum physics, chaos theory, and molecular biology could improve organizational performance. Margaret Wheatley called for free-flowing information, individual empowerment, relationship networks, and organizational change that evolves organically – ideas that have become commonplace. Now Wheatley’s updated classic, based on her experiences with these ideas in a diverse number of organizations on five continents, is available in paperback.
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Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty: Managing in a Downturn by Ram Charan
In Leadership in the Era of Economic Uncertainty, Ram Charan helps you steer your business through the minefield of contracting markets, cash shortages, and ongoing uncertainty. In this concise and highly accessible guide, the author provides practical actions you can execute immediately to protect cash flow vigilantly, even daily, and use cash more efficiently; use ground intelligence to survive the storm and position your business to thrive in the aftermath; develop a better understanding of your customers; reevaluate your pricing strategy and capital expenditures; and use cost cutting strategically.
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Leading the Association: Striking the Right Balance Between Staff and Volunteers by James J. Dunlop
Leadership in associations is a responsibility shared between staff and volunteers. The most effective associations are able to maximize the contributions of staff and volunteers by appropriately defining their relationship. This relationship is not a static one, nor is there a perfect formula for splitting the responsibility. There are, however, some important principles that point to an appropriate direction for your association. This study identifies these principles for the first time. It introduces objective measures of staff-driven and volunteer-driven associations, based on careful research. It explores the relationships between staff and volunteer leaders and examines how and why their roles differ from one association to another. Finally, it identifies specific strategies that leaders may employ to shift the base of influence within their association.
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Leveraging Good Will: Strengthening Nonprofits by Engaging Businesses by Alice Korngold
Leveraging Good Will shows how nonprofit organizations can access the extraordinary resources of businesses, and how for-profits can benefit from partnering with nonprofits. Written by Alice Korngold – an expert in matching business professionals with nonprofit organizations – this important resource clearly demonstrates how nonprofits can gain valuable experience, expertise, relationships, and funding that will elevate and advance their organizations while businesses can build stronger relationships with the community and develop the next generation of leaders. Filled with illustrative examples and real-life success stories, Leveraging Good Will is an insider’s guide to what it takes for nonprofits to transform their organizations through partnerships with businesses. Step by step, the book outlines how to create a solid plan based on proven-in-practice techniques.