The Savvy Director Blog
Welcome to our blog.
Wherever you are on your governance journey, you'll find this is a place to build your knowledge, discover the latest thinking, and explore valuable insights about your director role.Â
If you want to up your game at the board table, no matter the size of your board or the type of organization you serve, subscribe below to receive a weekly link right in your inbox.
From Compliance to Improvement
This is the first of a series of four Savvy Director articles dealing with various aspects of board and director evaluation. Our next article, âFrom Evaluation to Action,â will explore key success factors, followed by articles on the topics of individual director evaluations and meeting evaluations.
âHow do you take a board thatâs good â and make it truly great? How do you take a board thatâs great and retain its vibrancy over the years? The answer, believe it or not, is with a board evalua...
Bringing Design into the Boardroom
One of my favorite things about my role at DirectorPrep is that, when I come across a new idea or an interesting concept in the world of board governance, I get to share it with our Savvy Director readers.
Thatâs how todayâs blog came about. While researching an entirely different topic, I came across a series of articles from the Institute of Directors of New Zealand (IoD NZ) about applying the principles and practices of design thinking in the boardroom.
I found the concepts to be quite ...
Shifting into High Gear
Living in a VUCA World
This blog introduces the concept of a VUCA world defined by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It explains how VUCA reshapes the environment we operate in and highlights why traditional approaches to strategy and governance aren't sufficient.
This article is the first of two dealing with our VUCA world and how the board of directors can help their organizations to navigate its challenges. Part 2, Navigating our VUCA World, was published on April 3rd.Ever-Changing Tech
Who owns technology awareness in the boardroom? This post emphasizes shared responsibility and proactive engagement with tech issues.
Would you agree that staying on top of technology developments shouldnât be left to the one tech-fluent director on your board?
Just as itâs no longer acceptable to defer all the responsibility for understanding the financial statements to the accountant on the board, I feel that keeping up with the techies has to become a shared responsibility for all board d...
Is Your Board a High Value Team?
by Alice Sayant, ICD.D
âWhen most people think of high-performing teams, they think of sports teams, trauma center professionals, or fire department crews. They rarely think of ⊠boards. Still, if you want an exceptional board, you need to create a h...
Making Arguments with Impact
This blog explains how directors can structure and deliver arguments that influence board decisions. It provides practical techniques for clarity, logic, and persuasive timing.
The Fading Bright Line
Boards are told to stay out of operations, but the reality is more nuanced. This post highlights how governance roles shift depending on context and situation.
Directors - both new and experienced â often struggle with differentiating their role from that of management. As a board member â whatever the nature of the organization you serve â you want to get a handle on your governance role.
âI would like to find out more about / receive a refresher on the division of governance and operatio...
The Road Ahead
Sharpening the Saw
âSharpen the Saw means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have â you.â â Stephen R. Covey
Itâs been 30 years since Dr. Stephen R. Covey published his bestselling book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, but itâs still going strong. And one of the most enduring of Dr. Coveyâs seven habits is to âSharpen the Saw.â Itâs about taking the time for self-renewal - constantly improving to become our best selves.
For the Savvy Director, that means investing the time and energy t...
Scott Baldwin, ICD.D
Co-founder | Director
Scott has served on boards and provided governance advisory services to boards since 2001. Private company, nonprofit and government agency boards have been his focus. He is now leveraging that expertise with his own director work while helping directors prepare for their board role so they can collaborate, contribute and influence decisions.
