Board to Death

Does your company have any board members who are not employees, owners or family members? If so take a moment to think about who is on it, what their backgrounds are, and what may influence their input. Even if you do have outsiders this may still be a worthwhile exercise.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of each board member one at a time and then consider a number of challenges your company faces. Imagine what decisions might serve their personal goals or biases that might not be in the best interest of the company.

Possible scenarios are endless, but here are a few to ponder as you look within your company:

The owner’s son: He may be in charge of Sales and Marketing but has a Finance background and is really not well suited to a role in sales let alone sales management. Imagine his perspective and input when the board is discussing what it will take to increase sales. Is it likely he would be resistant to bringing in strong and aggressive sales talent for fear they will eclipse his work and expose his shortcomings? If so he may be able to convince the rest of the board that he is going to “try harder” or change some comp plans, or some other changes. If no one realizes what is going on you will just get more of the same. Isn’t this just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

The Age Demographic: What if all your board members are over 65. How open do you think they might be to investing money in new technologies and social networking like Twitter and Facebook? How will this bias to the old way of doing things impact your company?

The Role: What if most people on the board are Engineers? How will that impact the perspective of the board? Nothing against Engineers, my father is one, but if you have too many people with the same perspective or mental hard wiring you may not be seeing the bigger picture. The same would be true for all Accountants, Sales People, HR People, etc.

Hopefully you get the picture that everyone brings their own unique perspective to a board meeting both positive and negative. If you get it wrong and ignore the obvious red flags you will be holding your company back and may be contributing to its demise. This makes it even more important to make sure you have a wider representation of perspectives and why bringing in an outside Advisor to your board is worthwhile.