A Look Ahead

The 20th Century company meets the 21st Century board
By Norman R. Augustine
In our keynote article, the CEO of Lockheed Martin sees an increasingly Darwinian era ahead. To meet the challenges, he identifies lingering governance issues that boards have yet to resolve, and suggests some characteristics of a board model for the 21st Century.

Prognostications: How boards will change
With a subject as conjectural as the right board for the 21st Century, we have given several commentators the opportunity to predict changes they see ahead for boards. Predicting the future is risky business, but these five governance mavens offer a stimulating set of scenarios. Our seers are William Allen, Joseph Grundfest, Frank Cahouet, Robert Dilenschneider, and Ira Millstein.

Big issues facing boards
Board independence, shareholder relations, top-line growth, intellectual diversity on boards, and performance evaluation are among the major concerns that are examined in this section. Our highly credentialed group of authors that give these issues individual attention and prescriptive treatment include Barbara Franklin, William Crist, James Champy, Geoffrey Bible, Sigurd Ueland, Carl Ferenbach, B. Charles Ames, Joseph Hardiman, and Bennett Stewart.

The next generation of directors
Who are the executives who will be elected to 21st Century boards? How might they be different from today's directors? What kind of unique stamp will they be putting on corporate governance? And what will they need to be particularly expert at to be successful directors in the coming era? To give special scrutiny to these queries, we have turned to leaders in the recruiting field. Our authors are Gerard Roche, Richard Ferry, Hobson Brown Jr., Paul Ray Jr., Dayton Ogden and Dennis Carey.

A look back

The board as a team
By Stanley Foster Reed
The founder of Directors & Boards keynotes our reflections on directorship "then and now." As he well recalls, a bane on the business scene in 1976, making it a target for the new journal, was the think-alike board.

The changing board
Have boards really changed all that much? Yes, indisputably — if one looks purely at the composition of boards. Here you will see five fascinating "before and after" snapshots: what the boards of AT&T, Citicorp, Coca-Cola, Exxon, and Sears Roebuck looked like in 1976 and what they look like 20 years later. Where did all the insiders go?

A great director I served with
Good directorship is made possible by good directors, so what could be more appropriate in a 20th anniversary celebration of good governance than to put a spotlight on good — nay, great — directors. Nominating candidates for such worthy designation is a cadre of board veterans, including Henry Goodrich, Vernon Alden, S. Lee Kling, Thomas Horton, William Adams, Donald Frey, and A.A. Sommer Jr. Their designees, and the lessons in excellence that they learned from them, illuminate governance at its best.

My first directorship
By Paul Sweeney
That first board appointment is a milestone. The governance experience that follows, however, can be everything from "really fulfilling" to "gut-wrenching" as we were told in interviews with five executives. Recalling their earliest days as a director are Lodwrick Cook, Donald Perkins, Lois Dickson Rice, Henry Wendt, and Boris Yavitz.

The first 20 years

20 classics
From the rich Directors & Boards archives, we have selected 20 articles for showcasing in this anniversary edition, offering a one-page excerpt from each. Smart thinking on leadership and governance comes from many different sectors of business: the authors who have written these "hall of fame" pieces are corporate chieftains, retired CEOs, consultants, financiers, executive recruiters, investors, governance gurus, and even a major sporting figure. Pearls aplenty of wisdom and inspiration.

In memoriam
Sadly, some of our past authors are no longer with us. Here is a tribute to eight outstanding business leaders who made substantial contributions to the business world and, in the pages of Directors & Boards, to the governance literature — James Beré, William Fishman, Royal Little, Keith Louden, Franklin Murphy, Richard Ringoen, Steven Ross, and Charles Wohlstetter.

Good governance advice 1976-1996
Concluding our examination of boards past, present, and future, here are some timely tips and timeless counsel to guide you as you put in place the right board to lead your enterprise into the 21st Century.

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