To carry out their responsibilities, directors need to know a great deal. They must be knowledgeable about the company’s financial results, its competitive position, its customers, its products, its technologies, and the capabilities of its workforce; they must be aware of the performance and challenges of its top executives, as well as the depth and readiness of its broader talent pool. Boards also need to review information about the culture of the organization and about how customers and employees feel about the company. Finally, boards must closely monitor the company’s compliance with legal, regulatory, and ethical standards. Because of a board’s time constraints, the only effective approach is for the board to focus on lead indicators. The challenge is to know what the right lead indicators are—that is, which ones are unique to the company and its business model.
Available time is a major issue. Outside, independent board members usually hold significant leadership positions in their own organizations making it difficult for them to spend a large amount of time on board matters. Another is the inadequacy of the information provided to directors. Directors typically receive (a) operating statements, balance sheets, and statements of cash flow that compare current period and year-to-date results to plan and last year, (b) management comments about the foregoing that explain the reasons for variations from plan and provide a revised forecast of results for the remainder of the year, (c) share of market information, (d) minutes of prior board and some management committee meetings, (e) selected documents on the company, its products and services and competition, (f) financial analyst’s reports for the company and sometimes for major competitors, and (g) on an ad hoc basis, special information, such as consultants reports, customer preference data, or employee attitude surveys. A strong argument can be made that this is no longer enough, particularly in fast-changing industries and in companies with an increasingly global reach. Questions, such as, Are we going in the right direction? Are management’s assumptions about major trends and changes correct? Is the company doing the critical things to get the job done? Should our strategy be changed? cannot be answered meaningfully on the basis of mostly historical information or with summaries of proposed actions.
Originally created for CEOs, CFOs, and heads of business units to monitor hundreds of key financial, sales, and operational details, dashboards and scorecards are increasingly being introduced to the boardroom. Major companies whose boards use some form of dashboards include General Electric, Home Depot, and Microsoft.Directorship, July 11, 2008.
Web-based dashboardsTypically, web-based displays used to note critical information on a timely basis and in understandable charts and graphs. Dashboards are increasingly being used in the boardroom. and their less sophisticated predecessors, scorecardsLess sophisticated predecessors of dashboards., can display critical information in easy-to-understand charts and graphics on a timely basis. The most sophisticated dashboards allow users to drill down for additional details. For example, to diagnose a negative cash-flow trend, a director can quickly probe whether the shortfall is due to a receivables problem or the result of excessive spending.
A major advantage of dashboards is that they can be tailored to specific needs. Of course, any director dashboard should have a basic menu of common information, such as financial, sales, and compliance-related data. Beyond this common format, however, the configuration of the dashboard can be tailored to responsibilities of a particular director; an audit committee member might want special information on the subject of fraud prevention and detection, for example. Other examples include the ability of a director who serves on the compensation committee to immediately see whose options have been exercised, or an audit committee director’s up-to-the-minute update on Sarbanes-Oxley compliance progress.
Direct communication channels are also important. Directors should have access to top management other than the CEO. Effective boards have protocols in place that allow a director, with permission of the board chair and CEO, to speak directly with employees. Conversely, directors need to be accessible to management and employees of the organization.Brancato and Plath (2004). Many CEOs have historically followed a practice that all communication of information to the board from senior managers would flow first through the CEO, who would then relay that information to the board. This has the potential to obstruct information flow to the board. See also Ide (2003, March), p. 838.
The board and board committees should, as needed, retain external experts, such as counsel, consultants, and other expert professionals, and investigate any issues they believe should be examined to fulfill the board’s duty of care. These external experts and consultants should have a direct line of communication and reporting responsibility to the board and not management.
