Building a Board of Advisers


Recent Building a Board of Advisers Articles

Hot Tip: The Smartest Phone Call A CEO Can Make

By Ralph Ward |  Feb 2, 2001

Bob Neuschel is a business professor at Northwestern University, and serves on many boards. He shares a gem of a CEO board communication tip that he finds...  Read more

My Most Awkward Boardroom Moment

By Ralph Ward |  Feb 2, 2001

The board of directors is an expert body that engages in highly professional, serious deliberation -- except when it doesn't. The next time a foul-up in y...  Read more

Take Advice for What It's Worth

By Rhonda Abrams |  Dec 4, 2000

It seems the minute you start a business, everyone gives you advice. Suddenly, your unemployed brother-in-law Sheldon, a failure at everything, is now a b...  Read more

Four Ways a Board Can Help Manage a Merger

By Ralph Ward |  Dec 1, 2000

A fidgety economy is doing nothing to slow the tide of mergers and acquisitions, but it is making more and more of the last decade' s brilliant deals look...  Read more

Board Searches: What's Hot in 2001?

By Ralph Ward |  Dec 1, 2000

The search for boardroom talent continues, with the stakes growing ever higher as we demand more time, effort and specific skills of our directors. Every ...  Read more

Give Your Board a Style Audit

By Ralph Ward |  Dec 1, 2000

Every corporate board develops its own unique chemistry based on such factors as membership, leadership, company history, and power blocs. But is your boa...  Read more

Hot Tip: Board Conflict Resolution

By Ralph Ward |  Dec 1, 2000

To paraphrase a business cliché, a board where everyone thinks alike is a board where no one is thinking. As boardroom risks have increased, so has board...  Read more

A Boardroom Generation Gap

By Ralph Ward |  Dec 1, 2000

The booming digital economy of the last decade has spawned lots of twentysomething zillionaires. Though their stock options may not be as rich as they wer...  Read more

Finding Diverse Candidates for Your Board

By Ralph Ward |  Dec 1, 2000

Q. Our company is a major presence in our community, but we recently settled a discrimination suit that has brought local attention t...  Read more

Common Boardroom Blunders of Novices

By Ralph Ward |  Nov 1, 2000

No one likes to be the new kid on the block, especially since it offers so many ways to make a fool of yourself. The boardroom is an even trickier venue f...  Read more

New Rules of Etiquette for Board Communication

By Ralph Ward |  Nov 1, 2000

In the good old days (and they' re still not so " old" at a lot of companies), all communication between the board members and company staff was funneled ...  Read more

Board Building Tips from the 2000 Inc. 500 #1 Company

By Ralph Ward |  Nov 1, 2000

The Parson Group just came in at #1 on the 2000 Inc. 500 list ( see article ), and Pa...  Read more

Five Tips for Savvy Board Travel Planning

By Ralph Ward |  Nov 1, 2000

First, let? s accept that corporate travel gets more and more frustrating hassle every year. Next, let? s acknowledge that arranging travel for board meet...  Read more

Best Practices: Boardroom Orientation

By Ralph Ward |  Nov 1, 2000

Orientation is crucial to bringing new board directors up to speed quickly, and it' s useful to see what a best-practice board puts into something as basi...  Read more

Tough Love: What You Really Want from Your Advisory Board

By David E. Gumpert |  Nov 1, 2000

The scene was the quarterly meeting of the advisory board for NetMarquee, the online direct marketing agency I cofounded. My partner, Paul Baudisch, and I...  Read more

Building a Great Board

Oct 17, 2000

A rethinking of business governance is taking place, as Tahl Raz points out in the March 2003 story, "Read more

Hot Tip: Advisory Boards

By D.M. Osborne |  Aug 1, 2000

Christine Comaford, managing director at Artemis Ventures, in Sausalito, Calif., has a method for making the most of an advisory board. S...  Read more

Using Technology to Better Your Board

By Ralph Ward |  Jul 1, 2000

All of the new pressures hammering corporate governance lately boil down to one simple (if brutal) operational equation -- less time, plus more oversight,...  Read more

Compensating an Advisory Board

By Ralph Ward |  Jul 1, 2000

Whether as a short-term, single-issue think tank or as a long-term panel of counselors, advisory boards offer companies valuable insights. But how (and ho...  Read more

The Fundamentals of a Family-Business Advisory Board

By Ralph Ward |  Jul 1, 2000

Advisory boards are growing popular at family-held companies, where a "guidance but not governance" role is well suited to dealing with family owners. Jac...  Read more

Five Tips for First-Time Board Members

By Ralph Ward |  Jun 1, 2000

For too long, corporate directors have been supposed to know everything, so much so that they're afraid to ask when they don't know something. This is mos...  Read more

Shake Up an Inbred Board

By Ralph Ward |  Feb 1, 2000

Whether it's the board of a start-up, a family firm, or a closely held company, there always comes a point when you need to crack open the boardroom door ...  Read more

Star Boards -- Nothing but Star Boards

By Mike Hofman |  Dec 1, 1999

Operating under the theory that celebrities are money magnets, America's largest companies have long stocked their boardrooms with a ration of star power....  Read more

Coping with the Boardroom Talent Pinch

By Ralph Ward |  Dec 1, 1999

The search for good directors to serve on corporate boards has become tougher and tougher, a toss-up between opposing trends. The tide of mergers has free...  Read more

A Boardroom Pro's Governance Gems

By Ralph Ward |  Nov 1, 1999

William Adams, a retired chairman of Armstrong World Industries and a member of several other corporate boards, is a pro on good boardroom procedures. Rec...  Read more

Boards and CEO Succession

By Ralph Ward |  Jul 1, 1999

Despite talk of "imperial CEOs," the average tenure for chief executives has steadily shrunk over the past decade. This trend, combined with the proven da...  Read more

Board Pay: Five Hot Trends

By Ralph Ward |  Jun 1, 1999

Rhoda Edelman, of Pearl Meyer and Partners, a New York-based consultancy specializing in board pay, identifies five hot trends in director compensation ba...  Read more

Five Tips for Putting Your Board Online

By Ralph Ward |  Jun 1, 1999

Using Communications Technology for Better Board Results June Klein, president of Technology & Marketing Ventures in New York City...  Read more

Who Administers Your Board?

By Ralph Ward |  Jan 1, 1999

If a good board is important to your company, why leave its administration a part-time afterthought? More companies are aiming for boardroom excellence wi...  Read more

The Start-Up Board

By Ralph Ward |  Jan 1, 1999

Randal Walti, head of Oaktree Consulting in Rancho Palos Verde, Calif., specializes in CEO coaching, but he's also been a director of more start-up compan...  Read more

Let Some Outsiders Govern the Family Business

By Ralph Ward |  Jan 1, 1999

A productive, tough-minded, independent board of directors is just the ticket for many family-owned businesses -- but unfortunately few ever get one. "It'...  Read more

Turn Your Directors into Floor Walkers

By Ralph Ward |  Jan 1, 1999

Directors walk the walk if they're on the board of Atlanta-based handyman giant Home Depot. The HD board sets itself a formal requirement that ea...  Read more

Tips for Board Benchmarking

By Ralph Ward |  Jan 1, 1999

Benchmarking is making its way out of corporate TQM programs and into the boardroom where it can help you develop your own best practices in corporate gov...  Read more

Shopping for Board Members

By Stephanie L Gruner |  Aug 1, 1997

When Steve Joyce, one of four founders at two-year-old Ganymede Software, in Morrisville, N.C., wentshopping for advisory- and formal-board members, he di...  Read more

In Practice: Boardroom Confessions

By Stephanie L. Gruner |  Aug 1, 1997

Ever wondered what goes on behind boardroom doors? Below, CEOS share the secrets of the care--and feeding--of boards: What if my board memb...  Read more