A new venture's most productive director.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - Brief article - Reprint

From If You Really Want to Change the World by Henry Kressel and Norman Winarsky. Copyright [c] 2015 by the authors. Published by Harvard Business Review Press (www. hbr.org).

Board inattention is frequently a problem. There never is enough time at routine board meetings, which last a few hours, to review fully the company's activities and provide useful feedback to the management team. So items for discussion need to be selected carefully. But if board members are not adequately informed ahead of time, the value of the discussions is questionable. Therefore, it is essential that board members be prepared to spend the time between meetings to understand the company's activities and have a continuing awareness of the external industry developments that impact the company's performance. In our experience, it's difficult to find board members willing and able to do their homework. Often, people are not prepared and expect to be briefed at the meetings--a hopeless task. Finding productive board members is hard. In that quest some caveats are in order.

The most productive...