Selecting and Developing Board Leadership for the Future

Disruption continues to challenge our industry. Now more than ever boards are in a unique position to advise leadership on how to best respond to the rapidly changing work environment resulting from the pandemic. Like many of our clients, you may be wondering if you have the right board in place to guide your organization into the future of work. The key to creating a meaningful board starts with assessing and selecting key success factors.

Our experience suggests effective boards are comprised of members who are:

Creative Thinkers

Creative thinkers consider projects in new ways, bringing a fresh and sometimes unorthodox perspective to the work at hand. Creative thinking may take the form of devising new ways to carry out processes, solve problems, and anticipate future challenges. Board members who demonstrate this way of thinking can help organizations be more agile, productive, and responsive in the face of change and uncertainty.

Strategic Problem Solvers

It is crucial to have a board that understands your organization’s overall strategy and can provide strategic counsel during both ups and downs. This is especially important today as management teams are so deeply involved in the day-to-day operations. As such, it is hard to see things from an outside perspective and propose innovative ways to solve problems arising from today’s challenges.

Diverse

Great board members bring a unique set of complementary experiences, perspectives and skills to the boardroom. Diversity includes women, people of color, academics, various technical experts, business functional experts, and market ecosystem experts. Board members with dissimilar backgrounds tend to have different viewpoints which can offer the ability to more effective address problems versus people who have the same background or life experiences.

Business Savvy

Board members need to have an intimate understanding of your target customers, supply chain, ecosystem, how business gets done, key relationships, industry-specific economics, and industry-specific decision-making processes. Your board members should have understand all facets of your business, including finance, marketing, sales, and business operations. Ideally your board members should have "been there and done that".

Team Players

Boards are teams. By sharing in challenges together, boards can leverage the team’s collective leadership capabilities in pursuit of supporting the organization’s strategy. The best teams operate in a collaborative and collegial way, and are committed to and aligned around the success of the company.

TLD Group works with organizations to assess and select board members that exhibit the competencies and expertise required in today’s dynamic work environment using the following process:

1. Creation of a board success model
A well-designed board success model that is aligned to organizational strategy is an effective tool for establishing the characteristics and skills needed from board members to drive results.

2. Design and delivery of interview protocol for specified board roles
A consistent interview protocol based in the established success model helps ensure an impartial selection process based on organizational needs rather than individual preferences or perceptions. Our consultants are highly skilled in developing custom-designed interview protocols aligned to organizational objectives.

3. Briefing of the internal team on the interview protocols, technique and process
Aligning our solutions with key stakeholders within the organization is a critical component of all of TLD Group’s work. By taking the time to vet the protocols, techniques, and processes our consultants help to create consensus around the challenge at hand and the solution to drive results.

4. Consultant Presentation and Facilitation of Candidate Selection
To truly benefit from the assessment, the right follow up is required. Our consultants deliver innovative candidate assessment dashboards and summary reports, and use the information collected to make targeted selection and development recommendations. Consultants then partner with board members to develop an action plan to move efforts forward.

5. Candidate Onboarding
To help ensure a smooth transition, our integration coaches provide assimilation support to new board members. This process helps the board to align on style, strategic direction and background; clarify objectives and direction; promote integration and communication; clarify expectations and requirements; openly exchange views; and, accelerate productivity of the board as a team.