Board of Directors/Advisors is absolutely critical for an organization and startup to have. It’s very tricky and complex to set up, and it can be risky too. You also need very experienced, seasoned and highly-skilled professionals who can provide expert guidance, clearly identify blind spots, help you navigate through tough times, and brainstorm with. Finding these types of individuals isn’t easy!
There are some obvious challenges. First, since they aren’t involved in day-to-day operations, they’ll have a lack of information and insights into the business and personalities.
This also makes it hard on board members. The ambiguity, uncertainty, and unknowns can cause a lot of fear and anxiousness. Combinations of these elements can lead successful people to want to exert more control and micro-manage details.
Therefore, there is also a balance on how much influence to give to them and how much guidance you seek out.
There is no pyramid or hierarchical structure between a board and a management team.
Board/Management Team relationship a delicate, nuanced balance that must be nurtured and carefully crafted. Each side must “stand in each other’s shoes” and listen first and more than they speak. Otherwise poor collaboration, misunderstandings, and miscommunication will arise.
Having a great board isn’t that common and it’s difficult to pull off. Often times, the board can often derail the management team. They also can be anger, major frustrations and huge conflicts that suck up a tremendous amount of time. These things will lead to failure and/or underperformance.
How you structure it, manage meetings and maintain ongoing communication and collaboration is something you should carefully plan out.
Here are some questions to ask to build a board or to add professionals to help to take the organization to the next level of success and reach your ultimate goal(s):
When a crisis hits and you are in a “hell storm”, which board member would you call first? Why? Who would be second? Why?
Let’s play a game. If your board was actually your executive team, what capabilities and qualities are missing?
What specific skills does your board need overall? What do you have currently? What do you need?
How would public investors view your board? What would they applaud? What would they believe is lacking?
What’s the policy and procedures for holding the board accountable? Who enforces that?
Have you clearly defined all the roles and responsibilities for the board and interactions with the management team?
What’s the current relationships between the board and management team (and their staff)?
Learning and development is something I’ve always been passionate about. I’m a naturally curious, research oriented and understand the value of strategic training.
I work with clients (either HR and/or management team) to help them with their training and development needs. Here are a few areas:
Create and implement a strategic program for the entire organization.
Create and implement a culture development program, employee experience, and employee engagement program.
Work with HR on their onboarding process
Develop a learning and development program, manager training and/or leadership development program.
It’s exciting to take an idea and see it through execution to making a huge impact for an organization. It’s never easy, but always worth it!
Reach out to me if you are interested in these services and/or have any questions.
If you are in the Atlanta area or want to attend, please let me know. I have a few passes that I can give you for 50% off (FYI: There are no other discounts given and I don’t get anything if you use the discount).
HR SHRM-ATLANTA Symposium Overview:
HR professionals wear many hats and oversee the most important component of a successful business – a productive, thriving workforce.
REAL HR is about strategic and comprehensive approaches to managing people, as well as workplace culture and environment. Today’s HR professionals need to consult and advise on many issues related to identifying, developing, engaging, and retaining a talented workforce which can be used strategically to add value to an organization.
My Session Overview:
Think about the best team you’ve ever been on. The team that was the most collaborative, connected, and productive. How did it feel to be connected to something bigger and feel like you could accomplish anything? What if you could recreate that feeling and success on every team you were on? What if you could create that feeling across your entire organization?
That feeling you just thought of is the most powerful business asset. It’s the foundation for a highly successful “people strategy.”
In this interactive session, attendees will learn how to ‘dial in’ to the right behaviors to maximize employee engagement. They’ll also play the Cards Against Mundanity game (in small groups) so they’ll experience how these strategies will work for them. They will also build deep relationships with other attendees.
More than 12,000 employees have played it in companies such as Amazon, Southwest Airlines, Ernst & Young, Google, Gillette, Microsoft, Oracle, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Worldwide Express, CareHere, Oklahoma City Thunder (NBA team), Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Novartis, Merck, Intel, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and many others.
In this session you will:
Learn the “secret” strategies to quickly maximize performance, engagement, collaboration, and teamwork
Discover how to build high levels of trust both internally and externally with third-parties to instantly create great working relationships and maximize productivity
Walk away with 11 best practices on how to manage, interact and engage (up, down and across) much more effectively to maximize teamwork and reduce conflicts
On the HR Works Podcast we discuss how leaders can successfully step into vulnerability, how to build high performing teams and how to skyrocket employee engagement quickly.
“With organizations losing unbelievable amounts of money to poor employee engagement, I always wonder what stops leaders from properly addressing this problem. In this episode of HR Works, we find a critical ingredient to successful leadership and employee engagement: vulnerability.”
We also discuss how to use my free team building game, CardsAgainstMundanity.com, that more than 20,000+ employees are using to skyrocket trust, engagement, teamwork and performance.
This episode’s guest is Jason Treu, an executive coach who helps executives, managers, and employees to maximize their leadership and management abilities and perform at the highest levels. He provides coaching, workshops, keynote speaking, and other training services.
Jason also has “in the trenches experience” helping build a billion-dollar company and working with many Fortune 100 companies. He spent 15+ years working in marketing leadership positions in Silicon Valley working with influential leaders such as Steve Jobs (Apple & Pixar), Reed Hastings (CEO at Netflix), Mark Cuban, Mark Hurd (CEO at HP), Paul Wahl (President of SAP), and many others.
