3 Golden Rules When Appointing Your Board
It doesn’t matter whether you run a multinational corporation in New York City or a small startup company in San Francisco; thinking and acting like a big company is the only way you’ll ever achieve that goal.
That’s why it is so important to think carefully about who you bring onto your Board of Directors.
These are the people who are going to be solely responsible for the direction your business takes, the long and short term goals, and the decisions that get you there. So, yeah, who you bring on has a huge sway over your effectiveness as a company and your ability to grow, to thrive and not just survive.
As such, here a few things you should consider when pulling together your Board of Directors:
#1 Diversity Is The Secret Ingredient
It is way too easy to create a board that mimics and shares your own vision, belief, and ideas, but this would be incredibly harmful to your success because every decision would be very biased.
Instead, surround yourself with people who have mixed views, mixed opinions, mixed experiences and have got to where they are on different merits and through different strategies. Diversity matters.
You need to have as many perspectives as possible because that is what will help you come to a more informed decision.
#2 Balance The Backgrounds
We all have different qualities in life, different skills and talents and even qualifications.
We all have strengths and weaknesses. Your weaknesses are something you need to counter with board members.
You may be great at networking and great at inspiring confidence, but you may be terrible at understanding the law which, as the lawyers at shreveportattorney.com told us, could lead to very costly and time-consuming errors, avoidable errors too, so have a legal expert on board.
The same goes for numbers. Yeah, you may be able to add up, but you will want to have a finance director who focuses on the bottom-line and nothing else.
Every decision you make will affect this in some way, so have someone who can guide you.
#3 An Odd Number Is A Magic Number
On a board, there is a very high-probability of a tie occurring, and that can be as aggravating as it is unhelpful.
That is why we and forbes.com recommend you always have an odd number of board members, this way you will always have the deciding vote – the final decision – and one that can be based on the educated arguments presented by those you have surrounded yourself with.
An odd number means you will always have a decision made, a point of view that wins and forward movement. If you don’t have an odd number, well, you are setting yourself up for conflict, confusion and a loss of the most important commodity known to man; time.
Who Do You Have on Your Board?
The people that you chose to come onto your board, or the ones that you manage to persuade, will be the ones that have the most direct influence over your direction, pace, and destination. But, the wiser you chose the more confident you can be that you’ll make it over any obstacle that comes your way.
But, the wiser you chose the more confident you can be that you’ll make it over any obstacle that comes your way.
Cheers!
