by Eli Mina
a Proactive Guide to Preventing Conflict
in Even the Toughest Boardroom Situations
Every Board has one main purpose—to make and execute quality decisions. However, even the best board can be derailed by personality clashes or inherent flaws in its system. All too often, many boards, which are entrusted to govern substantial organizations and oversee significant mandates and large budgets, do the following: act impulsively, amateurishly, and childishly; display no strength in the face of vocal minorities; place narrow interests ahead of community interests; and invent solutions without first defining the problems. What makes Boardroom problems especially puzzling is the fact that, as individuals, many Board members are educated, accomplished, and highly dedicated to their organizations; some are prominent and respected community leaders. But put them together in a setting where they must share decision-making powers with others, and you often get trouble.
As a Board effectiveness consultant and meeting-management expert, Eli Mina has firsthand experience in dealing with the wide variety of problems that Boards face. As he states in his latest book, 101 BOARDROOM PROBLEMS AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM (AMACOM 2008), “I had fun advising Boards on demystifying the rules of order and using them sensibly and intelligently to facilitate progress while protecting basic rights. While doing this work, I discovered another Boardroom problem: excessive reliance on rules of order. Boards become entangled in motions, amendments, and other formal procedures and are thereby distracted from core issues. They lose precious time, and their capacity to make quality decisions is eroded.”
101 BOARDROOM PROBLEMS AND HOW TO SOLVE THEM offers readers practical tools to prevent and deal with every difficult situation, from collective impatience and indecision to rivalries and conflicts of interest. Mina shows readers how to identify board dysfunctions and the damage they inflict, deal with boardroom problems with confidence, increase the likelihood of their board achieving the right decisions, minimize or eliminate flawed decisions, and make a board more credible and trustworthy with its community and stakeholders. Readers will learn to:
• Improve the quality of their Board decisions and reduce risk to the organization.
• Develop a greater appreciation of their roles and how Boardroom problems impede them from accomplishing their duties to the organizations they serve.
• Identify problems with their decision-making teams, the damage they inflict, and how to solve or prevent them.
• End or reduce their frustrations while working on the Board.
• Learn to pool their knowledge and work as an effective and cohesive decision-making team.
• Provide better decisions and quality leadership to the organizations and communities that they serve.
Complete with a board effectiveness audit and easy to use forms to evaluate individual members, the Board Chair, and the CEO, and tips on giving and taking feedback, this is the one book that will help eliminate the disputes, disruptions, and problems that can prevent even the most effective board from achieving its mission. About the Author: Eli Mina is a board effectiveness consultant and meeting management expert who runs his own consulting and training practice. He is the author of several books on meetings and effective decision-making, including The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings. He lives in Vancouver, BC.
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