It’s not easy to be recognized for your experience and invited to join your first company Board. However, by understanding your value to a board, what Boards are seeking, building a great network, and using all the resources available to you, you can be successful.
by Stephen C Ford, Chairman, OI Partners
and Managing Partner, Massachusetts (sford@oipartners.net)
Being invited to join a private company, family business, public company or even a major non-profit board is the result of research, planning, networking, and, of course, interviewing. At OI Partners, Managing Partners and Senior Consultants work with senior executives in our leadership/executive coaching, leadership consulting and executive transition programs to support executives in seeking Directorships. Here is a review the key steps in being identified as a viable candidate and invited to interview for a directorship:
1. Review and evaluate your experience against the challenges facing boards today. Have you held full profit and loss responsibility with a company of equivalent size or larger? If your expertise is in a functional area like finance, marketing, or sales, have you led substantial growth into new market segments or global expansion? Have you identified new products or markets which provided significant growth? What phase of maturity were the companies: start-up; rapid growth; industry leader; turnaround? Have you managed, and are you knowledgeable about, the many types of risk companies face today? Have you worked in a regulated industry?
2. Most Boards today, formally or informally, have developed a matrix of skills they need on the Board and that they will be recruiting against. The matrix may be based upon the company’s challenges and opportunities, phase of maturity, functional expertise, and the needs of Board committees. With some research, you can identify the key skills that the type ...