Managing a Large Board of Directors

Directorpoint recently took a closer look at Deloitte’s Board Best Practices Report. While our deep dive focused in on the financial services industry, a few of our findings have may prove to be universally valuable. Deloitte’s 2017 survey found that the average board of directors is made up of between nine and eleven members. We compared those numbers to the responses from 2014 to learn that boards, at least within the financial services industry, are growing. As we know, a board’s decision-making decreases as the size of the board increases. This knowledge may help smaller boards but reducing the size of a larger board is often unrealistic. So what’s the best way to make sure a larger board of directors is maximizing its decision-making effectiveness? Let’s find out.

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A Cybersecurity Overview for University Board Members

“Cybersecurity” is the perfect buzzword. The amount of sensitive data vulnerable to hacking or phishing attempts grows by the day. The intricacy of methods used to compromise that data is increasing at a far faster rate than the development of effective countermeasures. High risk and high stakes have made the importance of the word abundantly clear. At the same time, addressing the issue of cybersecurity requires highly specialized knowledge. Thus, we get a buzzword; a word everyone knows they should be talking about, but no one knows what to say. Fully plumbing the depths of cybersecurity in a single blog article is a tall order. Instead, let’s keep it simple. We’re going to break down the need-to-knows of cybersecurity for university board members.

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Best Practices for Moderating College Board Meetings

The primary responsibility of a college board is to make the most effective, well-informed decisions possible. Making the most efficient use of a board’s meeting time goes a long way in maximizing their decision-making effectiveness. Designating a moderator can be one of the best ways to make sure every second counts. Let’s take a closer look at the best practices for moderating college board meetings.

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What Banks Can Learn from the Board Best Practices Report

Deloitte is one of the largest providers of professional financial services in the world; one of the “Big Four” accounting firms. In 2014, Deloitte’s Center for Corporate Governance published the ninth edition of their Board Best Practices Report. The report surveyed board members across multiple industries to provide a glimpse into the makeup and priorities of the modern board of directors.

The tenth edition of the Board Best Practices Report was published in 2016. The surveys conducted in both the ninth and tenth editions are nearly identical. While both editions offer valuable insights, governance aficionados have yet to explore all that can be learned from comparing the two. Today, we’re changing that.

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What Bank Boards Lose When They Use the Wrong Technology

Earlier this month, Directorpoint published an article in BankDirector.com. In it, we discussed the “magic” of a board meeting. Rarely does a bank have the opportunity to bring decades of experience together in one room to make the decisions that determine its future. It begs the question, then: when the stakes are high and the moment fleeting, why waste a single second?

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A bank board member using board software over enterprise communication apps.

Board Software vs. Communication Apps for Bank Boards

Board software gives bank boards the ability to fully operate, deliberate, and vote from anywhere in the world. Board members are busy. A well-designed board portal creates a fully digital deliberative experience. Common board portal features include instant messaging, file sharing, scheduling, and polling. At face value, these features might leave you thinking “why don’t we just use a messaging app?”. Let’s talk about it.

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Using Surveys for Better College Board Meetings

The ability to create and share surveys is one of the most useful tools software like Directorpoint can offer a college board. Maybe you use the survey feature, but want to make sure you’re making the most of what it has to offer. Or maybe you haven’t touched the survey tool and are looking for a reason to try it out. Either way, you’re in the right place. This is the first installment of a new series we’re calling Feature Focus where we take a closer look at our features, breaking down the benefits and best practices boards need to know.

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How College Boards Avoid Hidden Costs in Board Software Licenses

Navigating the selection of a board software provider can place undo stress on college boards. With many vendors offering nearly identical solutions, each claiming their own to be superior, prioritizing minute differentiators can make a major difference. In this article, we’re taking a closer look at one difference among board software providers that’s costing college boards a fortune.

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Potted plants are a metaphor for splitting a bank's board portal between multiple apps.

Bank Boards: Don’t Spread Your Portal Across Multiple Apps

From a management standpoint, bank boards walk a thin line when implementing a board portal; a line that exists, in part, due to the challenge that arises in overcoming a learning curve. How do you ask a group of people with decades of expertise to learn something new? There’s no way to get around it. Seamless design is great for mitigating the curve, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Introducing new technology to your board of directors is too complex and delicate a task to cover in this article (or any one article, for that matter).

Instead we’re going to focus on a major pitfall bank boards fall into when implementing a board portal. Avoiding this single hazard can mean the difference between success and failure in the implementation process.

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Seamless Design

One Quality Banks Must Demand of Board Software

At Directorpoint, we don’t like the phrase “less is more”. “Less is more” sounds like an excuse to deliver less. Good board management software delivers more while making it feel like less. Sometimes, making it feel like less means making it look like less. That’s minimalism; little more than an aesthetic choice. What we’re talking about here is seamlessness. When bank boards choose software for their directors, they need to find a portal that offers seamless design in support of seamless functionality. Here’s why that matters.

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