Why Diversity Matters on Your Board of Directors

Boards of directors have slowly begun to recognize the value of diversity in deliberation. While they still make up only a fraction of total directorships, the number of women and people of color in America’s boardrooms has grown significantly over the past five years. But representation of gender, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, and disability in corporate governance has a long way to go. Let’s take a closer look at the value of representation, in the boardroom to learn what your organization stands to gain when it makes diversity a priority.

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Writing a Strong Charter for Your Committee

A key objective of any board of directors is making the most effective decisions as efficiently as possible. But the subjects and problems boards are asked to weigh in on are complex and often require a broad range of expertise to properly address. Committees help ensure each item receives a fair amount of discussion and consideration. Most boards require a formal charter be written before a new committee can be created. Let’s take a closer look at how to write a great committee charter and the role they play in governance.

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Do Board Characteristics Matter to the Ethical Reputation of Financial Institutions?

Financial institutions have faced increased scrutiny surrounding their ethical practices following the Great Recession of 2008. This has placed additional pressure on boards of directors to manage the ethical reputation of the banks they serve. In an article published in the Journal of Business Ethics, researchers Emilia and Sami Vähämaa, Laura Baselga-Pascual, and Antonio Trujillo-Ponce hypothesize that a positive relationship exists between director characteristics favoring effective oversight and the ethical reputation of their financial institutions.

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Uber, Huffington, and Tactical Servant Leadership

Here’s an understatement: Uber is flawed. It has posted more losses than any tech company. Ever. On top of that, Uber’s public image has been dragged brutally, but not undeservingly, through the mud for the last several years. That said, they have more than a little wiggle room. Uber has raised more money from investors than almost any other tech company and, in December of 2018, they filed for an IPO which, some have predicted, may see the company valued at $120 billion. They have some room to mess up.

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The Life-Changing Magic of Better Decision-Making

The KonMari Method and Your Board

If you have Netflix, you’ve probably heard the name “Marie Kondo”. If not, there’s a good chance you’ll soon encounter Marie Kondo and her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The KonMari Method has taken the cultural zeitgeist by storm. But do the lessons of Ms. Kondo carry weight in the boardroom? Let’s talk about it.

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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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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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