Tenure of the times.

• Author: Kristie, James
• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE - Editorial

I'VE BEEN THINKING a lot about tenure lately. Right after the first of the year I began editing a 56-page transcript of a panel discussion on board tenure to adapt it into the cover story for this edition. Editing transcripts is one of the most intricate and intensive editing jobs. I have been known to quip that editing a transcript is like carving a block of marble: There is a statue of David in there somewhere and with a lot of sweat and precision chiseling it will eventually manifest itself.

And a statue of David did emerge, thanks to the quality raw material I had to work with. You will enjoy the comments from the accomplished panelists. They assembled under the banner of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware to candidly address important themes related to director tenure and board dynamics. Charles Elson, the center's director (and a DIRECTORS & BOARDS editorial advisory board member), masterfully moderated the discussion. He prodded the panel to address some thorny topics that are often overlooked in the polite confines of the boardroom. This debate, which I had the pleasure of sitting in on (and a small role to Charles' big role in helping to organize), should contribute to a more nuanced understanding of policies governing director term limits and board evaluations.

Another task any editor faces is to craft an issue of a publication as an integrated package. We definitely apply that concept in the following pages. The article by Peter Spanberger and Susan Jackson, titled "Diversify the Board ... by Personality Type!" (page 27) amplifies some of the panel's interplay over board dynamics. The Heidrick & Struggles Governance Letter (page 49) is also...