A hammer. A saw. A shovel. A level.
Not metaphors — actual tools, sitting there next to the board reading material.
You’d probably pause at the door and wonder if you were early … or in the wrong meeting. Or if someone finally decided the conference room needed repairs.
I spent time on union construction crews paying my way through college. It was hard work with good people and punctuated with lots of “straight talk”. I learned much about life on those job sites. One of the guys watched me one day as I was doing a lot of “hammer work” and said, “You actually know how to use that.” Coming from him, that was about as high a compliment as you could get.
Because on a job site, tools matter but knowing how to use them matters a lot more. (Note: There is a right and wrong way to wield a hammer).
Most boardrooms are built for review. Management’s prepared materials are polished, language is measured and the discussion tends to stay a few layers above where the real friction sits. That’s part of the role — oversight requires distance. But sometimes that distance becomes just enough separation to avoid applying pressure where it’s needed.
A hammer changes the feel of the room.
Not because directors should be swinging it — although that might improve a few meetings — but because it raises a simple question: What needs to be confronted directly? Not explained again next quarter, not worked around, but actually confronted.
Think about the capital allocation or spending decisions that no longer hold up, or the strategy that’s been quietly drifting while everyone politely supports it, or the performance gaps that keep arriving with very thorough explanations attached. A board doesn’t pick up the hammer, but it does decide whether anything gets hit. Experienced directors know the difference between tapping around the issue and actually driving the nail.
The saw is less forgiving.
It forces a question boards don’t always enjoy: not how to improve something, but whether it should still exist. On a construction site, you don’t leave rotted wood in the frame and agree to revisit it next quarter. You cut it out and rebuild from what is sound.
In boardrooms, things tend to linger longer than they should, usually because they once made sense or because stopping them is uncomfortable. Good directors understand that governance includes the discipline to stop.
The shovel shifts the conversation from what’s visible to what isn’t. On a job site, you dig before you build because what the foundation is sitting on matters as much as what’s riding above it. The same applies in a boardroom.
What are we not digging into? Not the presentation, but what’s underneath it. Are incentives actually aligned with the strategy or quietly pulling in another direction? Is risk being surfaced clearly or softened on the way up? Is the board getting the full picture or a carefully filtered version of it?
You don’t have to run the company to insist on seeing it clearly.
And then there’s the level — the simplest tool of all, and the least ambiguous. It asks one question: Is this actually straight?
Is the strategy aligned with market reality? Are management priorities aligned with that strategy? Is the board itself aligned on what actually matters? On a job site, “close enough” means you’ll be doing it again. In a business, misalignment tends to show up later, usually in ways that are harder and more expensive to fix. Experienced builders don’t argue with the level. Experienced directors don’t ignore what it’s telling them.
None of these tools belong on a boardroom table. But the mindset absolutely does.
Governance isn’t just about reviewing what’s happening. It’s about applying judgment clearly, directly and at the right points. The best directors don’t just recognize the issues. They know which tool is needed and when it’s time to use it. The instincts the tools represent — to confront, to cut, to dig, to check alignment — are exactly what the role asks of a director. You don’t need to bring a hammer into your next meeting. But it might be worth asking: Are we actually fixing anything or just getting better at talking about it?