Orienting the right people to your board bolsters retention efforts.
Recruiting and retaining qualified board members is necessary for the health of any corporation. An effective board must include active members engaged in overseeing the management of a company. The following are guidelines to ensure you recruit and retain the best members for your board.
Know board resources and ask the right questions.
When new directors join a board, they come equipped with tremendous experience, copious contacts and a history of helping companies grow and succeed. However valuable that may sound, it isn’t worth much if company leadership doesn’t know how to leverage what board members bring to the table.
Optimize the board's time to create shareholder value.
Knowing board strengths and weaknesses adds company value.
Seasoned marketing professionals make the difference in a competitive marketplace.
Optimize performance of both directors and the board as a whole.
The recipe for an effective board has 10 key ingredients. Five of these ingredients are for individual directors and five are for the board as a whole.
Jennifer Banner
CDM Smith Inc., Truist Financial Corporation, Uniti Group
The surge of unicorns is a key driver of the effort.
The new top-level focus for private boards is the search for talent across the enterprise. Filling positions with qualified candidates from the C-suite to the mailroom now ranks as the primary threat — and opportunity — for private company organizations of all stripes.
The National Association of Corporate Directors recently selected Lynn Nowicki Clarke, who has served as an independent chair or director on the boards of more than a dozen family-held companies, as its Private Company Director of the Year. Clarke was named a Director to Watch by Private Company Director magazine in 2020. She is a frequent speaker on family business at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, the University of Pittsburgh’s Institute of Entrepreneurial Excellence, and many Family Business Transitions and Private Company Governance Summit programs.
