Maintaining your currency.

• Author: Mueller, Robert K.
• Position: Endnote - Column

With increasing public concern about corporate behavior, critics are asking, "Are directors boardworthy?" A second question is seldom addressed when directors are retired from gainful employment, "How do they maintain their currency?"

Boardworthiness is often assumed to accompany the original election of a director. But too few boards, board chairmen, and chief executive officers ever really tackle the effectiveness of a director or the question of maintaining currency even when in a boardroom seat. Andrew P, Zaleta of The Heidrick Partners notes that marketplace perception is that 18 months after a CEO retires, he/she likely loses qualification to serve effectively on a board due to "lack of currency." A Texas friend, CEO of an oil field services company, refers to inactive retirees as "non-load-bearing" persons -- the same specie as unproductive employees in a bloated bureaucracy.

With some celebrity exceptions, currency half-life is surprisingly short for any influential or power role associated with most prior employers. Corporate cache, public perception of prestige of your past relationships, is a dissipating asset. Any aura of achievement previously attained is likely to be affected by the vagaries of continuing distinction (or indistinction) of your former employer.

Vacating your board seat affords an opportunity to embark upon another career stage. Such transition involves repotting one's emotional investment into new soil -- perhaps a new directorship, especially in a smaller startup enterprise or a trusteeship in the non-profit sector; an independent consultancy; an executive job in a new field; teaching; or a new intellectual interest.

This repotting process is an art form and its time has come. Novel, tailored guidance may be needed. Remaining boardworthy after retirement from the board and/or primary gainful employment involves a person-specific repotting plan.

If your goal is to continue to be active and effective in corporate governance, rethink these seven attributes of a boardworthy director.

1. Your true commitment and life interest in either the ethic of service, intrinsic in not-for-profit endeavors, or the ethic of competition, which drives business directorships. In either pursuit, there must be some balancing of these two ethics.

2. Your understanding, capacity, and competence related to the needs of a target institution when you have one or more of these in your periscope.

3. Your availability for, and talent in...