Boards Behaving Badly

We’re doing things a bit differently this month. It’s time for some audience participation. Click on every example of board bad behavior that you’ve experienced. And fill in any that we missed below or in the comments. We hear about a lot of these privately. But we don’t hear about these being called out and addressed. That’s a problem. 

Make sure you click the “Vote” button at the bottom. You’ll be able to see the results as well. 

So, how do you tackle these behaviors? Yes. Some of these are worse than others. This is a governance issue … for the whole board. Sure, we’d like to see the chair handle some of these with private, one-on-one conversations. But you’ve heard me harp on it before: written policy to address norms and expectations requires the board to discuss, then vote. It’s then easier to talk to an individual about these issues. (But I’ll also point you to last month’s episode about being too nice in the board room, which can be deadly.)

One of our readers suggested this approach should address things like the definition of a “prompt” response to an email or voicemail. Yes, these things sometimes need to be spelled out. People have different definitions. Our characters above, like Ivan Idea and Mum’s-the-Word Mary, don’t see a problem with what they’re doing. Calibrate!