The Essential School Board Book highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country--boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning.
Build a more effective board with insight from the forefront of corporate governance The Handbook of Board Governance provides comprehensive, expert-led coverage of all aspects of corporate governance for public, nonprofit, and private boards. Written by collaboration among subject matter experts, this book combines academic rigor and practitioner experience to provide thorough guidance and deep insight. From diversity, effectiveness, and responsibilities, to compensation, succession planning, and financial literacy, the topics are at once broad-ranging and highly relevant to current and aspiring directors. The coverage applies to governance at public companies, private and small or medium companies, state-owned enterprises, family owned organizations, and more, to ensure complete and clear guidance on a diverse range of issues. An all-star contributor list including Ram Charan, Bob Monks, Nell Minow, and Mark Nadler, among others, gives you the insight of thought leaders in the areas relevant to your organization. A well-functioning board is essential to an organization’s achievement. Whether the goal is furthering a mission or dominating a market, the board’s composition, strategy, and practices are a determining factor in the organization’s ultimate success. This guide provides the information essential to building a board that works. Delve into the board’s strategic role in value creation Gain useful insight into compensation, risk, accountability, legal obligations Understand the many competencies required of an effective director Get up to speed on blind spots, trendspotting, and social media in the board room The board is responsible for a vast and varied collection of duties, but the singular mission is to push the organization forward. Poor organization, one-sided composition, inefficient practices, and ineffective oversight detract from that mission, but all can be avoided. The Handbook of Board Governance provides practical guidance and expert insight relevant to board members across the spectrum.
Are you new to a board and have no idea what’s expected of you? Do you know what a board’s six key responsibilities are? Do you know what your relationship with the Executive Director should be? If not, this book is for you. So many board members—especially of small nonprofits—want to support a nonprofit and readily accept the invitation to join the board. It’s only then that they discover they are in over their heads, with no idea of their expectations and responsibilities. The Little Book of Boards is here to throw that drowning board member a rope. Told with a conversational style, this book will lead you through the basics of being on a board, how meetings work, and what’s expected between meetings. In addition, at the back of the book are several in-depth resources for understanding Roberts Rules of Order, bylaws, committee structures, board leadership, and much more. Perfect for any new board member—or for an entire board that is feeling lost—this book and its common sense approach will serve you every year you are on the board.
“This book merits every American’s serious consideration” (Vice President Joe Biden): from the Secretary of Education under President Obama, an exposé of the status quo that helps maintain a broken system at the expense of our kids’ education, and threatens our nation’s future. “Education runs on lies. That’s probably not what you’d expect from a former Secretary of Education, but it’s the truth.” So opens Arne Duncan’s How Schools Work, although the title could just as easily be How American Schools Work for Some, Not for Others, and Only Now and Then for Kids. Drawing on nearly three decades in education—from his mother’s after-school program on Chicago’s South Side to his tenure as Secretary of Education in Washington, DC—How Schools Work follows Arne (as he insists you call him) as he takes on challenges at every turn: gangbangers in Chicago housing projects, parents who call him racist, teachers who insist they can’t help poor kids, unions that refuse to modernize, Tea Partiers who call him an autocrat, affluent white progressive moms who hate yearly tests, and even the NRA, which once labeled Arne the “most extreme anti-gun member of President Obama’s Cabinet.” Going to a child’s funeral every couple of weeks, as he did when he worked in Chicago, will do that to a person. How Schools Work exposes the lies that have caused American kids to fall behind their international peers, from early childhood all the way to college graduation rates. But it also identifies what really does make a school work. “As insightful as it is inspiring” (Washington Book Review), How Schools Work will embolden parents, teachers, voters, and even students to demand more of our public schools. If America is going to be great, then we can accept nothing less.
Is your firm’s board creating value—or destroying it? Change is coming. Leadership at the top is being redefined as boards take a more active role in decisions that once belonged solely to the CEO. But for all the advantages of increased board engagement, it can create debilitating questions of authority and dangerous meddling in day-to-day operations. Directors need a new road map—for when to lead, when to partner, and when to stay out of the way. Boardroom veterans Ram Charan, Dennis Carey, and Michael Useem advocate this new governance model—a sharp departure from what has been demanded by governance activists, raters, and regulators—and reveal the emerging practices that are defining shared leadership of directors and executives. Based on personal interviews and the authors’ broad and deep experience working with executives and directors from dozens of the world’s largest firms, including Apple, Boeing, Ford, Infosys, and Lenovo, Boards That Lead tells the inside story behind the successes and pitfalls of this new leadership model and explains how to: • Define the central idea of the company • Ensure that the right CEO is in place and potential successors are identified • Recruit directors who add value • Root out board dysfunction • Select a board leader who deftly bridges the divide between management and the board • Set a high bar on ethics and risk With a total of eighteen checklists that will transform board directors from monitors to leaders, Charan, Carey, and Useem provide a smart and practical guide for businesspeople everywhere—whether they occupy the boardroom or the C-suite.