Hacking the Boardroom: Tips and Tools to Make Your Board Survivable

It’s scary in the boardroom. Global board members now face punishing hands-on oversight demands for risk, technology, liability, diversity, and sustainability. Yet the “board of directors” system, our universal governance model, was never designed for such a demanding, tactical role. Board members urgently need solid tips, tools, and advice to make this exploding governance transition survivable. Ralph Ward’s new book gathers these first-hand, best-practice “boardroom hacks” from around the world – intelligence that boards must have now to do a better oversight job, with less time, less effort, and fewer legal dangers. These are “how-to” insights from front-line board members, CEOs, corporate staffers, top consultants, and legal advisors. Such intelligence is learned the hard way, through trial and error in most boardrooms. Now, readers can discover this valuable boardsmanship insight, collected in a single volume. Topics include: What are the hottest new demands on boards (tech oversight, risk, ESG, etc.), and how are boards managing them? How on earth does a director absorb the huge amount of data, reports, and research required for governance now? How board committees are taking on the heavy lifting of oversight, and blueprints for committee management. How smart boards and staff are turning technology, online board portals and meetings, and AI into practical tools to shake up meetings. What sticky “behind boardroom doors” leadership, liability, personal, and process flashpoints bring the most danger, and how are directors resolving them?

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1 First hack … board meetings themselves 2 Unclogging your board info pipeline 3 Meeting prep: Before you walk through those doors 4 Board meeting timesavers 5 Committees: Where the real work happens 6 Hacks for new directors, new boards 7 Board presentations don’t have to suck 8 Tech tools: More board savvy, smarter board use 9 Different strokes for different boards 10 Building your board career 11 Boosting board/staff chemistry 12 Better board talent: Here’s how 13 Board leadership lessons 14 Keeping out of governance danger 15 Sticky situations you’ll face

About the Author :
Ralph Ward is an internationally recognized speaker, writer, and advisor on the role of boards of directors, how “benchmark” boards excel, setting personal boardroom goals, and the future of governance worldwide. Ward is the publisher of the online newsletter Boardroom INSIDER, the worldwide source for practical, first-hand tips for better boards and directors (www.boardroominsider.com). He also edits The Corporate Board magazine (www.corporateboard.com), the nation’s leading corporate governance journal, with subscribers who are directors and senior officers across the United States and in 27 foreign countries. He is author of six acclaimed books on board and governance for today’s corporate boards, the challenges they face, and the answers they need to excel, these are Board Seeker Guidebook (2018), Boardroom Q&A (2011), The New Boardroom Leaders (2008), Saving the Corporate Board (2003), Improving Corporate Boards (2000), and 21st Century Corporate Board (1997).