My life on boards, from the one-star (ugh) to the six-star (yes!): here are half a dozen stories that illustrate both how important boards can be and how, when poorly managed, they can be meaningless, or worse.

• Author: Malloch, Theodore Roosevelt
• Position: BOARD LEADERSHIP - Reprint

I have had the pleasure, fiduciary duty, and responsibility, I would say, to have served on some 36 boards to date. I counted them up and eight were for-profit companies, three were mutual funds or asset management-related, five were related in some fashion to universities and higher education, most were not-for-profit corporations, and three were philanthropic foundations. I have chaired three boards and served as president for another for five years. I started three companies and served as chairman and CEO, and founded another not-for-profit where I served as chairman and founder. So, I do have some limited experience with boards of directors, what they do or don't do, and how they are, and often are not, run and organized or governed.

Corporations are critical to modern life, and they emerged in the Middle Ages as groups of people sought to organize around the labor of guilds and the education of universities and in contradistinction from the omnipotent church. What we call "civil society," or the mediating structures between the state on the one hand, and the individual on the other, is made possible largely due to the definition and formative powers of these corporations. They have unique legal status and serve to organize much of what we do and how we spend our time, treasure, and talent.

Think of it: schools and universities and voluntary associations and charities and clubs and religious parachurch organizations, and most important, companies, where most of us work, are all corporations. We simply couldn't live without them. They would have to be invented to get anything done.

It has only been in the last decades or so that many of us have become more concerned with their proper and good governance and have started to articulate best practices, rules, and even laws on how these corporations are to be ruled. The headlong march in this direction is mostly for the good. But there is still much more to do.

My honest experience with boards has been, in all truth, very mixed. Some boards are far better than others, some are led well, some are rubber stamps, and some are meaningless or worse; and the worst are corrupt and often do harm. I still believe they are necessary. Here are half a dozen stories of my life on boards, which are illustrative of both how important they can be, and how, when poorly managed, they too can become destructive. I will offer a typology of boards using my own real-life placements as examples to guide you. I would rank boards from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest) with these identifiable characteristics and names.

The Destructive Board (1 Star)

I was on the Chesapeake Wetlands Trust board for three years, before a group of us resigned in protest. The outfit inherited a large parcel of land, mostly endangered wetland, on Maryland's Eastern Shore, at Kent Narrows. Development had run amok and trampled all the ecosystems and the wildlife. The Trust was supposed to protect it, educate the public, and be a sort of touring ground for school and scout groups to experience their pristine environment in all its natural glory. Some rich person gave an aviary, another wanted to bring in canoes for tourists, and still other board members wanted to sell the land for a big profit and walk away. The Trust had very...