Directors need to understand their role in process oversight, emergency planning, transition dynamics and more.

The CEO runs the company, but the board must take responsibility for the lead executive’s performance.

Lisa Greer Quateman
Director, Western Asset Mortgage Capital Corporation, ITR Concession Company LLC, Scherzer International; advisory board, Lyles Diversified

Directors & Boards: What was the first board you joined?
LGQ: My board journey began many decades ago when, as a law student, I was placed on the board of Central Wholesale Market Company, my family’s real estate business.

A blueprint for boards, diverse candidates and potential allies.

Every year I deliver a Thanksgiving address. This year, my theme was self-reliance, a principle advanced by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who instructed us to rely on our own capabilities, resources and efforts and to follow our own instincts, intuitions and ideas. Self-reliance enables our success both as individuals and as a nation.
 

In many businesses, regardless of the importance of the company’s brand or intellectual property, or even the magnitude of its fixed assets, it is often said that “the real assets go home every night.” Board oversight of a company’s human capital has steadily grown in importance, first with workplace safety issues and the #MeToo movement, and more recently with the heightening of social justice issues. The COVID pandemic and the ensuing “Great Resignation” have left many companies struggling to retain employees, and finding it even harder to attract new ones.
 

During a recent conversation I had with a fellow public company director, the subject of board detection of corporate wrongdoing came up. She told me that her approach was always to meet privately with the internal and external auditors to explain that they could always speak with her in confidence if they had an issue not appropriately addressed by management. Her words made me smile; they reminded me of a conversation I had over 25 years ago with similar parties at Sunbeam, where I was serving on my first public corporate board.

A recent study confirms that employees really want to work from home.

Employees today yearn for the opportunity to work from home, and boards should be collaborating with management to ensure their policies reflect these needs. In other words, wherever possible, the flexibility to work remotely should be seen not as a perk, but as a must-have.

Boards must clarify whether they expect to be consulted on the company’s response to social and political issues.