The Savvy Director Blog

We all believe that groups make better decisions than individuals. There’s power in numbers, isn’t there? Otherwise, a board of directors might just as well consist of one person.

But is it true? Do groups really make better decisions?

How do groups go about making decisions, anyway? More importantly, how should they be making decisions to improve the odds of achieving the best outcome?

And what is the boardroom reality when it comes to decision-making? Do boards really make decisions? Or h...

Have you noticed that even a board made up of individual creative thinkers can prefer the status quo over change? If you’ve noticed this tendency, what you’re seeing is status quo bias – just another cognitive bias that affects our decision-making.

You know the saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In other words, if things are working, we’re content to keep them that way. Simply put, status quo bias negatively affects our ability to make decisions – our ingrained preference for stabilit...

There are no HiPPO’s in the boardroom, are there? Yes, there are when HiPPO stands for “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.”

The HiPPO effect is when the highest paid person’s opinion carries more weight than anybody else’s in the room. That’s because we subconsciously endow highly-paid people with a degree of authority that they don’t necessarily deserve. It’s human nature to believe they are smarter, savvier, and more strategic than the rest of us.

In a boardroom context, the HiPPO is probably...

It’s happened to all of us. You’re at a board meeting involved in a lively discussion. But when you take a moment to step back from the conversation, you realize that the topic is rather trivial. In fact, it doesn’t deserve the time and energy that board members have been pouring into it.

Nevertheless, everyone has an opinion and insists on having their say. The discussion goes on and on, well past the time the relatively unimportant matter should have taken. It seems odd, because a more impo...

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 happens if?’ It’s about objectivity, having an open mind, and relying on evidence to understand what’s really going on.

And when your understanding is deeper, your co...

There are days when it’s just not obvious what the subject of the next weekly Savvy Director blog should be. So, we happily welcome reader suggestions.

A couple of weeks ago, Jim sent an email with a link to an article from The Globe and Mail, ‘Introverts, time to add some extrovert skills into your repertoire.’ The gist of the article is that, to be effective, introvert leaders sometimes need to act like extroverts.

Jim’s comment was, “Interesting article. You may wish to write about introv...

Ever since I decided to write this blog post about logical fallacies in our boardroom debate, I’ve had this refrain going through my head. I’m hoping that by sharing it with you, I will finally be free …

“Let's get logical, logical,
I wanna get logical.
Let's get into logical.
Let me hear your logic talk, your logic talk.
Let me hear your logic talk.”

- with apologies to Olivia Newton John

But seriously, logical fallacies, which are flaws in the way we apply basic logic to make arguments an...

Let’s face it, a board director’s main job is to think – to think about finances, risks, strategy and people, and about all the other matters that come before a board of directors over the course of a governance year.

And while there is room around the board table for diverse thinking styles - analytical and strategic; people-focused, data-focused and process-focused; big picture thinkers and detailed thinkers; idealists, realists, and pragmatists; risk tolerant and risk averse – there’s no u...

Over the years, I’ve reviewed countless proposals, reports, project plans and other documents in the course of my board work and as an advisor to boards. Somewhere in the document, often buried, there should be a section labeled ‘Assumptions.’ It lists the conscious decisions taken by management to treat the unknown as known. Typically, the list of assumptions will include finances, people, resources, schedules, logistics, etc.

Articulating these assumptions is necessary in order to make a de...