Enhancing Practices for Corporate Productivity

Corporations and stakeholders can overturn the global economic slowdown as a chance to enhance corporate productivity practices. Though organizations are not to be blamed for the current financial woes, afforded the relevance of their contributions, as well as the many visionaries that sit on boards, this should be treated as an order for change.

Purposely, many boards of directors need to become more aware and committed. This is possible by a restructure in board member lineup and skill sets, by leveraging the use of external advisors and documentation, by implementing new discussion practices, or preferably, by all three.

Initially, boards have the tendency to be structured comprising of executives and management professionals that are highly qualified, with admirable track records, and are known in industry circles, specifically in their area of specialization. They usually take on multiple board seats. These people, though well experienced, have hectic schedules and followed by many.

They may bring stature and high regard to an organization, but are hectic and usually booked and may be unable to contribute considerable time on the board task. In recent challenges in the business world, know--‐how does not prevent the need to work productively to be successful. Yet stakeholders with the distinctive management profile may find it problematic with their already hectic schedules to contribute substantial amounts of time to their management role.

Stakeholders may also be comprised of investment experts that provide capitalization – those that are engaged in private equity, venture capital, and at other investment companies. These professionals are some of the brightest people in the industry, but normally, are most highly qualified in investments, as opposed to production or other administrative functions.

Optimistically, they may contribute ample time as they often have a team of specialists that can delve into financial analytics. But they usually lack the organizational immersion exposure, and when they bring in outsiders to help with productivity or directional strategies, they also may fall into the qualified--‐but--‐too--‐busy type.

Stakeholders are often consistent in terms of profile, gender, and competencies. This consistency has been called out as a reason for the economic downturn, as there were many management teams with uniformed viewpoints and those with varying outlooks were either not around or not heard, as they were too small a group. Stakeholders are also recurrently part of a professional or specialized grouping, for example, co--‐ alumnus or colleagues. This can make strategizing several viewpoints problematic, as it could hurt relationships that bring other team benefits.

Additionally, management basically outsources documentation, whereas boards correspond to stakeholder interests. As referenced in finance studies, these are sometimes conflicting interests, making the origin of the documentation possibly partial.

Conclusively, discussion protocols are tricky. How can a board contest a CEO's remuneration or highly preferred M&A engagement when the CEO is in the discussion? Though notionally probable and necessary per a board's directive, this is collectively very challenging to practice. Also, discussion protocols and interactions themselves should be evaluated, to address issues on quarterly planning sessions and committee discussions to be completely adequate to implement the crucial functions of boards.

The good thing is facing these problems is fairly simple, particularly, boards can implement these strategies:

Outsource a team of reliable specialists or operations experts that is tasked with documenting and producing reports for the organization. This should be undertaken periodically and over a number of meetings so that the specialized team can get to know the organization well.

The team should tackle the strategic risks and opportunities, use internal and external sources, and keep an independent approach. These outsourced specialists and operations experts are important in that they provide both documentation as well as assistance for stakeholders in assessing managerial decisions and implementation practices.

Encourage the implementation of the insightful guidance by a number of organizational strategists to make board membership a profession that will make education and degree a prerequisite. Competent stakeholders will then make a career out of managing on boards, making it more possible that they contribute well, get the information they require, make tough queries, and so on as the job will be their top priority.

Employ and appoint more distinct board members. Boards should employ more varied members in terms of gender, competence, and work profile. This does not translate to excluding experienced members or financial experts. Rather, a robust board would have a varied group of members, each bringing exceptional resources to the table.

Improve board discussion protocols. Particularly, be amenable to the popular view that non--‐management stakeholders should meet separately more frequently in order to make sure that their viewpoints are not exceedingly affected by management’s and to make facing sensitive problems of interest to management more collectively resolvable.

There are organizations that are operates productively today as well as enterprises that have already implemented some of the changes suggested above or are exploring other governance enhancements. This is all welcome, but requires continuing development to beneficial. Stakeholders should take action now to optimize their productivity.

For more information, please contact the International Securities Trade Agency.