The Savvy Director Blog

I was recently surprised, and to be honest, somewhat embarrassed, to learn a professional organization I thought I knew well was legally structured as an ‘Unincorporated Association’ as opposed to a Non-Profit Corporation.

Initially, I have to admit I didn’t know what that meant. In all my board and related governance training, the focus has been on corporate governance of all types: non-profit, for profit, family businesses, private companies, and government crowns, boards...

Like many fields of human endeavour, corporate board work is rife with acronyms. Remember CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility)? How about DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)? And of course, today’s topic, ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance).

I don’t know about you, but lately I can’t open my email box without reading about ESG. I guess it’s time for The Savvy Director™ to dig a little deeper to find out what it’s all about and what it means for...

It feels like now is the right time to write about board diversity and inclusion. As always in these Savvy Director™ blog posts, we’ll eventually guide the conversation to how an individual board director might approach this topic in the boardroom.

This week, I asked Alice Sayant, co-founder of DirectorPrep.com™, to share her views on the topic.

Alice’s thoughts on board diversity and inclusion

First of all, let me say that I believe board diversity and...

This edition of The Savvy Director is inspired by feedback from one of our readers about the maturity lifecycle of boards. As this reader pointed out, “It’s important that directors understand the maturity of their organization, where they fit on the maturity scale, and where the board aspires to be.”

These comments got me thinking about governance models. We all need to appreciate the range of governance models from the hands-on working board to the hands-off policy...

Being on a governance board is like running a restaurant. Let’s say you are the original owner but now you have other investors.  You’ve hired a renowned chef to run the kitchen. If you keep going back there and adding salt to the soup, you will be looking for a new chef before you know it. You know what I mean? On the board, you represent the owners' interests. It’s time to get out of the kitchen and leave the cooking to the pros.

You may have started the business as...

I’m happy to welcome back Alice Sayant as today’s guest blogger. Alice is a certified corporate director (ICD.D) and co-founder of DirectorPrep.com.

Alice’s thoughts on board orientation

Lately, my guilty pleasure is binge-watching old episodes of Friends on Netflix. Something that happened in the first season prompted me to think about board orientation for new directors.

I know, I know. It’s quite a stretch to compare the characters in a 1990’s sitcom to board...

From time to time in this space, I’ll be asking guest bloggers to share their thoughts about various board-related topics. Today’s blog is written by Alice Sayant. Alice is a certified corporate director (ICD.D) and co-founder of DirectorPrep.com.

Alice’s thoughts on board committees

Recently I was asked to join a board of directors. I was already serving on a couple of other boards, where I was quite busy with committee work, and so I agreed to join the new board but...