 The role of the Board of Directors in executive management development
Added: 02/14/2006 |
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Involvement of the board of directors in executive management development has become a pressing goal for companies all over the global markeplace. In fact, the heightened sense of accountability on today's boards has made executive development play an important role in the boardroom. Organizational development executives can strengthen their own positions among the top-managers in their companies to ensure that the board takes part in contributing to executive management development as a key means in improving an organization's performance.
Talking about board involvement in executive management development, experts do not focus on potential liabilities, but rather, on what is possible. Adding value, thereby increasing the possibilities for the company, ought to be the primary motivation for board members. "Everything is in service of the creation of higher value and the delivery of higher performance in a company, and boards, as stewards of the owners, have that as their primary obligation and duty," said Chris Gibson-Smith, chairman of the London Stock Exchange.
Best progress in elevating an organization's performance is achieved through the activation of talent and opportunity. Revealing and improving the right talent ought to be a top priority for directors, involved in executive management development. Boards operating in today's market environment have to deal with formal and informal aspects of management development.
Putting the right executives in place and developing succession plans proves to be not enough to achieve expected results of a company's work. Members of the board of directors ought to be engaged in the process of executive management development. Kohler, a former member of the board of directors at ORINCON (now Lockheed Martin ORINCON), explains, "We not only put a new senior management team in place, we invested in leadership development for the entire team, and ultimately, the company sold for a whole lot more than anybody ever thought it would." Less formal, but equally important way for executive management development,with the board members involved, is one-on-one mentoring of key management players. Yet, the director's contribution has to be welcomed, whether it is made off-line or in the boardroom. Many boards present perfest resources to assist in executive management development, but management needs to be receptive so that the process is realized commonly without breaking the certain distinctions between board and management responsibilities. A healthy board-management relationship can ensure that management will ask for - and be receptive to - the board's contributions to their development. If the board members can get their working relationship right, they not only become more effective, they become a role model for management as to how to behave and work effectively as a group. Developing the skills to have the right conversation is a core term of this success. "The degree of effectiveness of a board is contingent upon their ability to have the right conversations with one another", says Tom Knudson, the former ConocoPhillips executive. "The message that came out of the Enron case, the WorldCom case, the Disney case was these boards didn't have the right conversations. But that skill set is not something that just naturally happens." To move an organization forward, directors and senior managers do not always have to follow one way, but they have to know how to talk with one another and how to have the most productive conversations.
There exist eight sipmle rules which are to be followed by effective executive management leaders get the right things done and in the right way:
- ask what needs to be done,
- ask what's right for the enterprise,
- develop action plans,
- take responsibility for communicating,
- focus on opportunities, not problems,
- run productive meetings,
- think and say "We", not "I"
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