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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
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If youâve been hesitant to try AI, youâre not alone â and youâre not behind. Many board directors are still figuring out where AI fits into their governance work.
The good news? You donât need to be a tech expert to benefit from AI. You just need to be curious and willing to see with your own eyes. Thatâs what it means to be an independent thinker.
This weekâs edition of The Savvy Director explores how AI tools â especially DirectorPrepâs ChatDPQâą â can harness AI to support your role as a ...
At DirectorPrep, weâre obsessed with questions. Asking clear, compelling questions is often the best way that we, as directors, can make a significant contribution to discussions and influence board decisions.
We use questions to clarify information, launch and build on meaningful discussions, encourage dialogue, and challenge assumptions. Without questions, how would we explore fresh ideas, analyze problems, and generate solutions?
The concept is simple - better questions kick start better ...
Hereâs a new acronym for you. BANI. It stands for Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, and Incomprehensible. These four words form a framework thatâs meant to describe the current state of the world.
Futurist Jamais Cascio created the BANI framework as a way of dealing with an increasingly chaotic environment â a confusing world that leaves us with the sense that things are spinning out of control. Cascioâs goal was to uncover an understanding of why weâre getting unexpected outcomes, and how the ...
The Savvy Director blog usually focuses on the director role as it relates to the board as a whole. But in the past few weeks, Iâve found myself spending far more time on my role as a committee member. And thatâs not unusual.
With committee work on my mind, it seems like a good time to write about board committees.
I like to include quotations in these blog posts, so I did a quick Google search on âQuotes about Committeesâ. It pains me to say it, but apparently few have ever had anything goo...
As board directors, we often measure our impact by the weight of our responsibilities, the complexity of the decisions we make, or the prestige of the organizations we serve. But when our board term comes to an end, and our memory of all the meetings fades, what truly remains?
Itâs not the title.
Itâs not the time you spent.
Itâs not the governance rules you learned.
Itâs the legacy you leave behind in the hearts and minds of those you served with.
âThey may forget what you said â but t...
I often close my email messages with the words âStay Curious.â
For me, itâs more than just a closing line like âSincerelyâ or âYours truly.â I mean it as a reminder to the reader â and to myself for that matter â to intentionally focus on always bringing a lively state of curiosity to the board table.
I firmly believe that curiosity is one of the attributes that separates a ho-hum board director from a Savvy Director.
And Iâm not alone in thinking that.
âThe best board members are inhere...
One of the fundamental assumptions about the value of a board of directors is that group decisions produce better outcomes than those made by individuals. The idea is that diverse perspectives and robust debate improve the decision-making process. Thatâs often â but not always â true.
The reality is that, in the boardroom, group dynamics can get in the way. Consider Groupthink. It can cause directors to agree with one another for the sake of avoiding conflict. This group harmony comes at the ...
This is the last in a series of four Savvy Director articles dealing with various aspects of board and director evaluation. The first two articles in the series, âFrom Compliance to Improvementâ and âFrom Evaluation to Action,â explored the board evaluation process, and the third, âEvaluating the Individual Director,â dealt with director self-assessments and peer evaluations.
When it comes to the board of directors, board meetings are where pretty much everything that matters gets done â idea...
Would you rather have a Nobel laureate who wonât engage, or a curious newcomer who asks the right questions?
This isnât just hypothetical â itâs a real dilemma many boards face. As governance challenges grow more complex and stakeholder expectations rise, the composition of the boardroom has never mattered more. But when evaluating potential directors, one question often lingers: Is it more important to have the right skills â or the right mindset?
In this edition of The Savvy Director, we e...
Recently, I worked with a board of directors to prepare a list of potential interview questions for prospective board members. The questions were carefully selected to try to uncover candidatesâ âThree Câsâ â competence, character, and chemistry.
The first two Câs are fairly obvious. Competence questions focus on education, knowledge, skills, and experience. Character questions are meant to reveal the candidateâs integrity and moral courage.
But what is the third âCâ â chemistry? And how doe...
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