April 24, 2020
The challenge
Recognising the significant role and importance of good corporate governance, this firm wanted to ensure that its, the board of directors was as effective as possible. The firm had been through previous board effectiveness reviews, but had decided that they wanted to engage with an organisation that, in addition to governance expertise, had deep industry knowledge and experience, and could help them move beyond merely good enough and into to best practice.
Our approach
We first built a picture of where the firm had come from in their governance and board effectiveness journey by taking into account prior board effectiveness reviews, both internal and external. It was important for the client to see how far they had come over time. Hence, our approach aligned to the previous reviews in order to show the history of improvements and sustainability of effectiveness over time.
We used various methods from our Board Effectiveness Assessment toolkit, which included:
- Assessing board engagement, through director questionnaires and face-to-face interviews
- Assessing the dynamics and behaviours of the board as a collective, through observation of board meetings
- Reviewing relevant constitutional, evidential and director onboarding and training documents
Our impact
Having analysed the results from our assessment, we produced a report of key findings. This included best practice industry guidelines, recommendations and priority actions. The report was presented to the board.
As a result of our recommendations the client restructured its board membership to improve its effectiveness – in particular, to ensure that board members were able to dedicate enough time to address all elements of best practice.
