Sometimes, it can be difficult to find great directors for your board. Other times, candidates just come flooding to you. Bill Etnyre, fourth-generation chair of Etnyre International’s board, found himself in just that sort of scenario two and a half years ago when his company used a search firm to find a new director for his family company. In response to that posting, the search firm ended up with 388 responses. Luckily, the search firm was able to knock the number of candidates down to enough to fit in a jury box.
“We ended up with 12, which seemed like a good number,” says Etnyre. “And after the first couple interviews, we could clearly see that at least two of those 12 didn’t have the basics.”
So after narrowing a field of almost 400 candidates get down to 12, you find that there are candidates who lack the basic skills to serve your board. Sounds like a daunting challenge. It’s why Alyssa Gelbard, advisory board member of Peterra Kitchen LLC and founder and CEO of Point Road Group, believes it is often better to be working with less than with more when looking for a new director.
“Sometimes, quantity doesn’t always mean quality,” says Gelbard. “And depending on how you’re going about the search, if just going through a network of directors you end up with five really great people, you don’t need to find five more just because someone said you have to have 10.”
Sally Washlow, who has served on the nominating and governance committees of both of her boards, Orion Energy Systems and Data I/O, says board composition is an issue she frequently thinks about. When she does, she always keeps one thing in mind.
“I always try to remember the skills matrix and matching it to the strategy of the organization,” says Washlow. “Once we have that in mind, I think it’s a continual process. As I meet people and engage with them, I’m thinking, ‘Could this be a potential candidate in the future for the board?’”
Recently, one of Washlow’s boards was looking for a new director, one who could help her company become familiar with a new technology and a market they were not fully experienced in. To find the right person, they waded into an area that does not always jump out as a good source of director prospects: the customer pool.
“We found a great candidate. He was able to not only be a great director and bring other skill sets to us, but have this inherent knowledge to really help us think through how we were going to launch this product,” says Washlow. “There were a few product issues that he helped us uncover. So he was somewhat of a de facto consultant to us and fit a customer-facing need that we did not have on the board.”
While Etnyre’s experience with a search firm clearly resulted in an embarrassment of riches, it is possible to conduct the search without one. When one of Washlow’s boards is on the hunt for a new member, they lean on the nom/gov committee as well as other board members. While always keeping the skills matrix as the guide, each director will have five to seven conversations with possible candidates. They then come back together as a group to decide who might move forward so the candidates will have the opportunity to talk with additional directors.
“I think it’s really important during the process that a candidate has the opportunity to talk to multiple members of the board, and probably some members of the management team as well,” says Washlow. “We’re constantly vetting and narrowing down, and it’s often a very tough decision. We usually keep in touch with those that we don’t choose to move forward with because boards shouldn’t be like Supreme Court seats. I think evolving boards at the appropriate time is very relevant.”
Of course, when looking for “great” board members, you must bear in mind that everyone has a different definition of “great.” To Gelbard, a great director is “someone who is not afraid to speak up, but also knows when to stop speaking.” But it is also someone who comes to meetings fully prepared.
“We’ve all sat in boardrooms where there’s someone who didn’t prepare, and then they start to ask questions that were very obviously answered if they had prepared appropriately.”
Etnyre, who has served half a century as a social worker, says it is vital that a board member bring their whole self to their work in the boardroom.
“I think a lot of this is soul work: heart, mind and soul,” says Etnyre. “Because businesses can do good for themselves and businesses can do good in the world. We as directors can really give it that extra push.”