Good relationships lie at the heart of every successful organization. Yet no relationship is more important-or more challenging-to navigate than the one between the board and the CEO.In this practical and concise book, Peter Greer and David Weekley draw from their years of experience to equip board members and organizational leaders to enter into an impactful, life-giving partnership.With this pivotal relationship in place, individuals and the organizations they serve can truly flourish.
Shortlisted for the Business Book of the Year (International Books category) 2022 Every year, companies spend billions of dollars in board time and headhunter fees on CEO searches. In fact, the selection of the next CEO is the single most important task of the board of directors. Yet, despite the huge amount of time, money, and attention given to the task, many CEO changes fail, with disastrous consequences for all concerned. With so much at stake, it is natural to ask what companies and their boards can do to increase the odds of success. Illustrated with an abundance of real-life examples from interviews with CEOs, C-suite members, members of the boards, and headhunters supporting CEO searches, The Next CEO explains how boards can improve the odds of success with CEO succession by identifying clear CEO mandates and associated CEO profiles and by selecting CEOs that are fi t for purpose. It further explains how the CEOs of leading corporations effectively take charge and create results, providing a roadmap for incoming CEOs. These ideas are brought to life with case studies and interviews with well-known corporations such as ABB, Alibaba, Freudenberg, GE, Google, HNA, HP, Microsoft, Nestle, Nike, Nokia, Novartis, Roche, Sony, Tata, and Zurich Insurance. The book is invaluable practical reading for board members of medium-to-large-size fi rms involved with CEO succession, and for those preparing for their fi rst CEO position. It is also relevant to headhunters who are involved in the process of CEO succession as a working tool for them and their clients. In addition, the book will be relevant to courses on corporate governance and strategic transformation at the executive and MBA levels.
The CEO’s Boss, originally published in 2010, is the definitive guide to a productive working relationship between corporate boards and CEOs. Speaking to an era when company directors must monitor the actions and day-to-day operations of their CEO, William M. Klepper offers eight essential lessons to help boards operate more effectively in this bold and independent role. Since the publication of the first edition, Klepper has continued to develop and apply its lessons for a variety of businesses and settings. In this second edition, Klepper renews the paradigm set forth in the first, with new case studies of companies such as Wells Fargo, BP, Hewlett-Packard, and Proctor & Gamble. Giving directors, executives, investors, and stakeholders the tools to make crucial relationships work, Klepper details the best techniques for selecting the right CEO, establishing a working relationship, and giving effective feedback. He affirms the importance of the social contract between directors and their CEOs, encourages directors to embrace their independence, and teaches executives to value tough love. He revisits the first edition’s case studies and derives new insights from how these companies followed—or failed to heed—the book’s precepts. He also takes a close look at the predictions he made almost ten years ago, providing new forecasts and integrating core knowledge to ensure that The CEO’s Boss remains essential in our ever-changing business landscape.
Despite the many changes in governance regulation over the past decade, few boards function as a true corporate asset to the companies they oversee. In this book, Behan offers practical advice that a CEO, Chairman or board member can introduce at the very next meeting. Boardrooms are filled with intelligent, accomplished people—yet seldom achieve their full potential and add the kind of value for the CEO, executive team and company shareholders that many boards are actually capable of. Beverly Behan draws on her experience working with more than 100 boards over the past 14 years—from major Fortune 500s to recent IPOs—offering no-nonsense insights that can take any board from mediocrity to the top of its game including establishing a constructive working relationship with your board; addressing some of the dysfunction that may lie within the board you’ve inherited, and making your board a significant asset to you, your company, and your executive team. Working with the Board of Directors is one of the most important components of any CEO’s job—and most will admit it is something they wish they knew more about. Nearly all CEOs want to change at least something about their board, yet many are unsure how to go about this in the right way. This book not only alerts the reader to common pitfalls that CEO's can make with their boards, it provides workable approaches to a tackle a variety of boardroom issues from getting new talent into the boardroom to engaging effectively with the board on strategy and succession planning.
Corporate governance for public companies in the United States today is a fragile balance between shareholders, board members, and CEOs. Shareholders, who are focused on profits, put pressure on boards, who are accountable for operations and profitability. Boards, in turn, pressure CEOs, who must answer to the board while building their own larger vision and strategy for the future of the company. In order for this structure to be successful in the long term, it is imperative that boards and CEOs come to understand each other’s roles and how best to work together. Drawing on four decades of experience advising boards and CEOs on how to do just that, Thomas A. Cole offers in CEO Leadership a straightforward and accessible guide to navigating corporate governance today. He explores the recurring question of whose benefit a corporation should be governed for, along with related matters of corporate social responsibility, and he explains the role of laws, market forces, and politics and their influence on the governance of public companies. For corporate directors, he provides a comprehensive examination of the roles, responsibilities, and accountability the role entails, while also offering guidance on how to be as effective as possible in addressing both routine corporate matters and special situations such as mergers and acquisitions, succession, and corporate crises. In addition, he offers practical suggestions for CEOs on leadership and their interactions with boards and shareholders. Cole also mounts a compelling case that a corporate culture that celebrates diversity and inclusion and has zero tolerance for sexual misconduct is critical to long-term business success. Filled with vignettes from Cole’s many years of experience in the board room and C-suite, CEO Leadership is an invaluable resource for current and prospective directors, CEOs, and other senior officers of public companies as well as the next generation of corporate leaders and their business and financial advisors.
Successful CEO board relations are universally guided by certain overarching principles and considerations. Inside this handbook, you will find practical advice on achieving successful CEO board relations, including how to appoint and elect candidates and develop new recruits, strategies for communicating effectively and addressing compromised board relations, and best practices for hiring and evaluating CEOs. Basic structures, functions, roles, and responsibilities of CEOs, boards, and committees are also detailed."
An essential guide to understanding the dynamics of a startup's board of directors Let's face it, as founders and entrepreneurs, you have a lot on your plate—getting to your minimum viable product, developing customer interaction, hiring team members, and managing the accounts/books. Sooner or later, you have a board of directors, three to five (or even seven) Type A personalities who seek your attention and at times will tell you what to do. While you might be hesitant to form a board, establishing an objective outside group is essential for startups, especially to keep you on track, call you out when you flail, and in some cases, save you from yourself. In Startup Boards, Brad Feld—a Boulder, Colorado-based entrepreneur turned-venture capitalist—shares his experience in this area by talking about the importance of having the right board members on your team and how to manage them well. Along the way, he shares valuable insights on various aspects of the board, including how they can support you, help you understand your startup's milestones and get to them faster, and hold you accountable. Details the process of choosing board members, including interviewing many people, checking references, and remembering that there should be no fear in rejecting a wrong fit Explores the importance of running great meetings, mixing social time with business time, and much more Recommends being a board member yourself at some other organization so you see the other side of the equation Engaging and informative, Startup Boards is a practical guide to one of the most important pieces of the startup puzzle.
One-of-a-kind and real-world tested, this practical volume is a comprehensive guide to building and maintaining a really solid transit board-CEO partnership. You'll find it to be a deep reservoir of practical, tested guidance you can put to immediate use in transforming your board into a higher-impact governing body.
High Growth Handbook is the playbook for growing your startup into a global brand. Global technology executive, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high-growth tech companies including Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Stripe, and Square as they’ve grown from small companies into global enterprises. Across all of these breakout companies, Gil has identified a set of common patterns and created an accessible playbook for scaling high-growth startups, which he has now codified in High Growth Handbook. In this definitive guide, Gil covers key topics, including: · The role of the CEO · Managing a board · Recruiting and overseeing an executive team · Mergers and acquisitions · Initial public offerings · Late-stage funding. Informed by interviews with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz), and Aaron Levie (Box), High Growth Handbook presents crystal-clear guidance for navigating the most complex challenges that confront leaders and operators in high-growth startups.
The success of any Chief Executive Officer depends in no small part on their relationship with the Board of Directors. Author Beverly Behan draws on her experience working with nearly 200 Boards of Directors over the past 25 years in developing this practical book that can help any new Chief Executive Officer build a great board relationship - and a great board. The first section of the book focuses on steps required to build the foundations of a terrific CEO/board relationship - from initial one-on-one's with board members (a critical opportunity most CEO's squander) to developing a constructive working relationship with the Chair/Lead Director. It outlines the different modes in which most boards function and offers insights about the shift nearly every board in the world currently wants to make in working with management. New CEOs need to understand the type of board they've inherited from their predecessor in order to determine how best to work with that board effectively. The second section focuses on steps a CEO can take to transform the board they've inherited into one that adds significant value for management, shareholders and other stakeholders. This section covers genuinely impactful board and director evaluations - and discusses how to deploy these tools effectively in dealing with thorny issues of director performance management, one of the biggest shortcomings in governance today. It also introduces the concepts of Board 2.0, Board Composition Benchmarking and the New Director 360 - three innovations every new CEO should know about.The final chapter, Building a Board-Worthy Executive Team, discusses proactive steps that CEOs can take to dramatically improve the board's effectiveness while earning kudo's from directors for these efforts. This is "low hanging fruit" in the boardroom that any Chief Executive would be wise to leverage.Replete with practical ideas - some time-tested, others highly innovative -this book offers a wealth of constructive advice that a new CEO can begin using immediately to lay the foundations of a terrific CEO/board relationship and create notable improvements in the Board of Directors, itself.
