Advice to new CEOs: get the board on board; Effective bridge-building techniques to help a new CEO establish a productive working relationship with the board.

• Author: Neff, Thomas J.
• Position: Chief Executive Officer

WHEN A NEW CEO is appointed, he or she inherits someone else's board. Aside from conversations with the search committee--especially in the case of an outside hire--neither the board nor the new CEO have had many dealings with each other. Yet now they are going to be partners.

If this is you, how do you lay the right foundation for a productive working relationship?

As in any business partnership, you always need to know who your partners are. "Boards are like any group or anybody," says Arthur Martinez, former CEO of Sears Roebuck & Co. and a current member of the PepsiCo board. "There are probably a third leading the charge, a third going along with the charge, and a third that are asleep."

The question is, which third is which? Which members are strong and experienced, and on which issues? Which directors are less engaged? Which are truly independent in their thinking? Which feel they owe their loyalty to the previous CEO, a dynamic that can cause considerable problems if the former CEO retains a seat on the board?

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Complicating the matter, boards have their own culture, one that may or may not be similar to the culture of the broader organization. There can also be a jarring disconnection between the private thoughts of individual directors and the amalgamated opinion of the group. And even though many boards encourage independent opinions, they always have a natural inclination to move toward consensus.

A too-easy pattern

Group thinking does not necessarily mean that the board automatically supports or opposes the CEO--either extreme can be dangerous. But the pattern of the board automatically agreeing with the CEO may be easy to fall into.

Bill Kerr, chairman and CEO of Meredith Corp., explains why: "You go to these five or six meetings a year, and you generally don't have the knowledge base to truly challenge a part of the strategy in a line of business. You've got to trust management on a lot of stuff. And you might feel that to you it's the wrong thing. But the CEO says, 'Well, we've done X, Y, and Z. We have McKinsey's support. We don't see anything wrong. We think this is the right approach.' I think a lot of board members at that point back off."

At the other end of the spectrum, group thinking can skew the board's loyalty to what they know best: the board. The result is the erection of an intangible wall, a pin-striped code of silence shutting out the CEO.

An essential step

Recognizing the culture of the board is an essential early step toward establishing credibility and building a healthy, productive relationship. Jacques Nasser, former chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Co., suggests that new CEOs, whether promoted from within or coming in from outside, conduct the same "on-boarding" process of mutual introduction with the board of directors that you would hold with your...