Powerful tactics to power up your board: yes, you can create a more open, fluid and engaged board. Why settle for less?

• Author: Thiry, Kent

IT IS ONE THING to state something simple--and quite another thing to achieve it. Famed Prussian military strategist Carl von Clausewitz, for one, has recognized this phenomenon: "Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean that everything is very easy."

This notion has never been more true than when dealing with the challenge of creating a high performing and enjoyable board. Defining the goals and objectives of any board is reasonably straightforward. Formulating a realistic action plan for success is more difficult. The techniques, practices, tactics, and tools used to achieve success are not so simple.

The list below captures several areas where it can be simple to state what reality should be--but it is a reality that is difficult to achieve in real life. As is true in golf, baseball, football, tennis and many other sports, the challenge is to follow through to a degree that at first sounds too extreme.

In order to most accurately explain how a board performs and what improvements it makes over time, you must consider the following:

* Design of the Board

--directors' experience

--directors' behavioral attributes

* Feedback to and from the Board

--Group input

--Individual input

* Operation of the Board

--Setting and maintaining priorities (a "dashboard" for operation)

--Annual agendas

Designing the board

In corporations large and small all over the country, selecting a new board member involves the same basic set of criteria, such as:

* What qualities does an ideal board possess? What personal experience and relationships will be most valuable for successfully driving toward the board's objectives?

While these questions should always be an integral part of developing a board, the real-life answers tend to be highly incremental.

A more extreme "follow through" on the notion of designing a board exceptionally useful for a particular company would be to literally start with a blank page (as in Exhibit 1) and rigorously ask and answer the open-ended question: "What would a great board look like for this company?" From there, pose more detailed questions stemming back to that key question, such as:

EXHIBIT 1 Board member grid Candidates A B C D E Employer Healthcare Relevant Technology Brand Building Expertise Marketing/Sales Healthcare Provider Insurance Selling to Small Business Diversity Comparable Scale CEO Relevant Public Policy * What are the key drivers of differentiated success over the next five years? How much value is the current board poised to add to management's efforts in those key areas, beyond their wonderful generic wisdom, expertise, and networks?

This "blank page" approach is one simple tool that helps elevate a board's thinking into a more fundamental revisiting of how far its current board membership may be from an "ideal" group.

Interestingly, many boards have gone through minimal changes over the years, while the companies they oversee and those companies' realities and strategies have been radically transformed. Many of these "old school" boards were assembled at a time when companies' CEOs had disproportionate influence over the way their companies were run. As times have radically changed, many boards have stayed largely the same.

An often overlooked but important consideration for board selection is the personality of a prospective director. This aspect should be weighted equally with experience and relationships. Boards should be considered a team sport. The wrong chemistry or behaviors among

directors can negate the value of what may look like a "dream...