Comments on: RBS’s board lessons

By: RealOscar

RealOscar — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:07:24 +0000

Commitees and Boards record minutes of their meetings and votes. Search back on RBS’ and you will find the discussion concerning the aquisition of the company that derailed them. Find out who was opposed. Save them and fire the rest.

By: Dr_JAH

Dr_JAH — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:01:53 +0000

Thanks. Another great, concise piece for my file on leadership behaviour.
It seems to me that the actual physical board meeting event is becoming more redundant: perhaps at best a team-building exercise and at worst a token gesture. Most of real work of the board-team and it’s individual members could be done in the background e.g. innovation, throwing ideas around, sense-checking (using competence & diversity), future-proofing, stargazing & tick-boxing, even asking the “awkward questions” that perhaps wouldn’t have come to mind during a meeting – all using a virtual-boardroom space. To facilitate this, the board-organism (or it’s mind) should be “constantly active”, in order to effectively utilise it’s combined diverse resource.
By the time the board actualy get together, many of the key items and really critical decisions have been thrashed around, allowing space for “team-cohesion” and a bit of “creative-sparking”.

By: JohnSalter

JohnSalter — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:39:57 +0000

Nice piece. Thank you. Am I being anal (or naive) by suggesting we might also address (to a degree) the need for due diligence in making judgements by having reports structured in a way that requires contrasting views – and their evidence base- to be presented for consideration?

By: DrRajT

DrRajT — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:51:39 +0000

Great comment Lucy. Especially the point about extra vigilance about trophy transactions for which the incentives are stacked in favour of the short-term (not least because of the metrics the board have approved!)

In my work on Preventable Surprises I have found ambassadorial or otherwise ineffective boards combined with over-dominant/saviour CEOs to be one of the 6 key drivers of crisis.

I’d love to know what you and your readers make of this thinking.

Pls see http://www.preventablesurprises.com

By: PeterMelzer

PeterMelzer — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:33:20 +0000

Reading this enlightened assessment, I was very much reminded of Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) operating the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. The fuel of three reactors at the power station melted down in the wake of the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami, contaminating land and sea with catastrophic consequences. TEPCO seems to have entirely misjudged the risks involved in operating nuclear reactors on the seashore of an earthquake and tsunami-prone country and therefore was unpreprared to shutdown the reactors safely under extreme emergency conditions.

Without sufficient room for discourse and deliberation, appropriate risk evaluation seems impossible. Human organizations must reflect the degrees of freedom that our minds and brains afford.

By: FrancisBoateng

FrancisBoateng — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:59:05 +0000

This is a short but very insightful. I appreciate that

By: normanmarks

normanmarks — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 20:41:29 +0000

Lucy, you raise and discuss some excellent points. Thank you also for positively commenting on my own blog on the topic, where I go into some other areas, particularly related to risk management and internal audit, as well as touching on some of the same points. My blog is at http://www.theiia.org/blogs/marks/index. cfm/post/Governance%20and%20Risk%20Manag ement%20Failures%20Contributed%20to%20Fa ilure%20of%20Major%20UK%20Bank