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Many directors tell us that that there is room to improve board materials. They want more management insights, better-highlighted risks, and shorter and more summarized materials. For audit committees, effective pre-meeting materials are critical given the volume of materials...

(W)hile financial literacy is part of every M.B.A. curriculum, the same isn’t true of cybersecurity. One executive we spoke with described the problem this way: “You typically don’t have to explain to members of the audit committee how a financial statement...

Boards need to resist the tendency for information to become siloed, which can occur as a result of different members of management reporting on multiple sources of data into different committees. For example, whistleblower reports can land in the audit committee, while feedback from employee surveys...

Leading practices for boards that are highly effective in overseeing cyber risk begin with driving cyber awareness with a strong tone at the top. Proactive boards often participate in organizational ...

New board members should strive to forge strong interpersonal relationships from the outset, and understand the values and motivations of the people around the table so that they quickly become...

First-time CEOs produced higher market-adjusted total shareholder returns over their tenure, led three years longer on average and with less volatility in performance than CEOs with prior CEO experience. Freed from the conventional wisdom that experience is always better, boards and other hiring leaders can...

There is a correlation between gender-diverse boards, risk taking and business failure. In other words, putting women in the boardroom can help companies do better. The presence of women helps to temper the overconfidence of male chief executives, which improves overall decision making; one study found the insolvency rate of companies with all-male boards is 49% higher than...

Some experts believe that the virtual setup can make boards more productive, long an issue for many boards. In a traditional meeting, all the committee work must be jammed into a single day when all the directors are physically present. Now, governance, compensation...

If you want to take a good guess at a company’s gender diversity record, you might want to first look at who its CEO or board chair is, according to the findings of a new study. Having a female CEO at the helm of a company or chairing its board tends to make a huge ...

Some challenge equity efforts by implying that “merit” and “quality” are ignored if we pursue these regulations or guidelines. This is frustrating because it is simply not the case. Women are half the human population. It is disingenuous to continue to pretend that no one can simultaneously be female and “have merit.”...