The Savvy Director Blog

Sustainable success depends on asking the right questions. This article shows how boards can drive innovation and strategy through inquiry.

Whether your board serves a non-profit that competes for funding or a business that competes for market share, having a sustainable competitive advantage continues to be the holy grail.

Your competitive advantage is what you do better than anyone else. If you’re lucky, you could have more than one such advantage. The ‘sustainable’ part of the phrase refe...

How should boards approach AI? This post provides practical steps to create a structured AI workplan.

For me, reading and learning about artificial intelligence (AI) has been like drinking from a firehose. I could choose to ignore it and get a nice glass of water from the filtered jug in my fridge. But that wouldn’t end well.

Instead, I’ve been learning that boards today aren’t yet seeing AI as an important education topic for their meetings or board retreats. There’s some curiosity around ...

This blog explains how boards evolve alongside the organizations they serve. It highlights the importance of aligning board capabilities with life cycle stage.

Businesses naturally progress through different stages as they grow and mature. So do non-profit organizations. Their boards of directors need to change along with them, otherwise there’ll be a serious mismatch between what an organization needs from its board, and what the board can actually deliver.

As a board moves through these st...

Every board of directors depends on a stream of reliable information to fulfill their oversight role. A whistleblower program is a tool for directors to access information that would otherwise not reach the boardroom.

Whistleblowers give the board a window into what is happening inside the organization. But for whistleblowing to work properly - so that both the whistleblower and the accused person are protected – the program must be handled with care. The board plays an important role in esta...

 

The COVID-19 pandemic is finally receding into the rearview mirror, and so is the crisis mindset that affected so many organizations around the world. Board directors everywhere are eager to get back to a more “normal” rhythm.

While this kind of global health crisis is rare, it’s a good bet that sooner or later every organization – private, public, non-profit, or government – will face some kind of crisis. Getting through it will take skill, commitment, and judgment on the part of both the ...

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This blog introduces AI and its implications for the boardroom. It highlights how AI can enhance decision-making while requiring responsible use.

Today’s post is by David Jaworski, Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Teams and co-founder of DirectorPrep. Dave serves on the board of INEO Solutions (TSXV: INEO) as well as non-profit boards. He previously served on the Advisory Board of Payworks and the public board of PNI Di...

Your board work should be an enjoyable experience, especially if you like dealing with interesting, complex issues where the best way forward is often difficult to discern. At their best, your board meetings should be intellectually stimulating, engaging, and rewarding – a place where you have the opportunity to exchange views with people you respect and dig down into all sorts of fascinating data.

Then why are so many board meetings boring? And why are so many board directors frustrated, di...

This blog explains what it means to apply critical thinking in the boardroom. It shows how directors can analyze information objectively and make better decisions.

Critical thinking is a key skill for board directors. But does that mean a director is expected to be constantly negative, cynical, and hyper-critical?

Not at all.

Critical thinking isn’t about criticizing. It’s about how you approach problems, issues, and arguments. It’s about asking questions like ‘Why?’ or ‘How?’ or ‘What hap...

Board minutes are more than a formality, they're a legal record. This article outlines how to prepare, review, and approve effective minutes.

One of the first things to happen at every board meeting is the approval of the minutes of the previous meeting. Until that happens, the minutes are still considered a draft.

It’s an important step, even though it might just take a few seconds. That’s because minutes are the official record of what happened at the previous board meeting – who was there...

Our too-short summer is drawing to a close, and, with that, DirectorPrep’s hiatus from weekly blog production has ended. Fortunately, the news cycle has brought us the gift of content.

Hockey Canada is the governing body of Canada’s most beloved sport - a non-profit organization with a board of volunteer directors. But don’t kid yourself – this is big business. And now it’s in hot water and its board is under public scrutiny. That makes it fodder for our third installment of “Governance in t...