Once, it was the CEO’s uncontested prerogative to establish the agenda for board meetings, and directors were often expected to sit still for a series of fancy presentations about the great work management was doing. “They brought out the dancing bears,” says Beverly Behan, a partner for corporate governance practice at Mercer Delta Consulting. Sometimes when the bears finished dancing, an aide to the CEO would whisper that the limos were downstairs to take the visitors back to the airport— before any of them could ask a touchy question.
Behan, co-author of a forthcoming book, Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance, recently served as an adviser for a report by the National Association of Corporate Directors’ commission on board leadership. It included a study of directors, in which one said, “Nothing shuts down board discussion like formal presentations, multiple slides, and people at lecterns.”
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