Faced with increased scrutiny, corporate boards are undergoing overhauls to diversify and better represent their organizations. In order to serve well and meet the bar of “board readiness,” the Harvard Business Review reports this week that board members are increasingly expected to understand complex business issues to generate sustainable performance.
The readiness shift has an added advantage of placing nontraditional board candidates on a level playing field with those who typically occupy the C-suites, as everyone works to develop the right skills, or boardroom capital.
“We need to help new participants from under-represented groups to develop the confidence of working on boards and to come to know that” while boardroom capital does take effort to build, “this is not rocket science,” investment banker Charlotte Valeur tells HBR.
Based on interviews with more than 50 board members, the magazine reports that boardroom capital is based on five intelligence areas: financial, strategic, relational, role and cultural. Developing those skills and deciding what kind of board member you want to be are two keys to reaching the boardroom.
From the same interviews, the four most common approaches to serving on a board are to embrace the regulatory role; become a data junkie, fluent in mass amounts of financial information; lay a solid foundation that will outlive your time on the board; and take a 30,000 feet, big picture perspective. Read the full story here.
