Archive

In my new book, The CFO’s Guide to Good Corporate Governance, I start the chapter on the Board of Directors meetings as follows:

“As a former auditor, I attended countless Audit Committee and Board meetings. Some meetings were crisp, lively and energetic. Management came to the meeting prepared and ensured their Board was prepared. Issues were discussed and debated and consensuses emerged. I left these meetings feeling inspired and energized.

Most meetings I attended left me wishing I had brought something sharp with me. Materials were hot off the printer and rushed to the attendees, occasionally as the meeting was in progress. Management awkwardly talked through the PowerPoint slides while Board members checked their BlackBerrys. Rarely would the important issues get adequate time for discussion. The discussions would veer off on some tangent and half the agenda would be squeezed into the last ten minutes.”

When I wrote the above, I had not been to a Board meeting that felt like a soul draining waste of time in a number of years. I was recently reminded that what sometimes made it painful was how management elected to have a strategic discussion with the Board. 

It has been an exciting past few week as my new book, The CFO’s Guide to Good Corporate Governance, finally crossed the finish line. It is now for sale on CreateSpace, an Amazon sister company and Amazon.com and ITunes. An E-version for Kindle will be out very soon. I also have a pdf version that

In my last post, I provided a few tips for the Board to improve communication with management and ultimately improve the corporate governance of the company. This post flips things around and assumes the Board needs a kick in the pants. The good news is that management can really influence Board effectiveness. I have come