Boards Made Simple

Someone just asked you to join a board. Or you’re building one. Or you’ve served for years and quietly wondered whether you’re doing it right. This book is for you.

Boards Made Simple explains, in plain language, how to set up a board, run it and serve on it well. It covers both kinds of boards most people meet: nonprofit boards and corporate boards. Throughout the book, side-by-side comparisons show what’s the same and what’s different, so you know which rules apply to you.

You’ll learn how to:

• Tell governance apart from management, and stay on the right side of the line
• Understand your legal duties, conflicts of interest and personal liability
• Build a board from scratch: legal structure, bylaws, size and first directors
• Recruit the right people with a skills matrix, and onboard them well
• Define the roles of the chair, treasurer, secretary and CEO
• Set up committees that work, from audit to governance
• Run meetings that focus on strategy, with consent agendas and in-camera sessions
• Read financial statements, oversee the audit and spot red flags
• Hire, evaluate, pay and, when necessary, replace the CEO
• Build a healthy board culture and evaluate the board itself

Two complete step-by-step guides
Strategic Planning, Step by Step: ten steps from a blank page to a risk-informed plan, including a pre-mortem, risk heat map, priority setting, goals and measures, and a one-page dashboard.

Succession Planning, Step by Step: built on one idea, that time alone does not make anyone ready for the next role. Ten steps show how to build readiness on purpose through training, job shadowing, rotations, cross-training and stretch assignments, and how to plan the board’s own succession.

Real board stories
Learn from boards that failed, including Enron and its auditor Arthur Andersen, Hewlett-Packard, Theranos and the UK charity Kids Company. Then see boards that got it right: Apple’s decisions about Steve Jobs and Tim Cook, IBM’s choice of an outsider, Microsoft’s search that led to Satya Nadella, the March of Dimes and the American Red Cross.

Also inside:

• Quick-reference lists: ten questions every director should ask, ten warning signs, ten habits of great boards
• Advanced chapters on crisis governance, cybersecurity and AI, global governance and sector-specific boards
• Templates, checklists and worksheets, including a committee charter, meeting agenda, skills matrix, emergency succession plan and board self-evaluation
• A plain-English glossary
• Notes on Canadian and US differences where they matter

Who it’s for

• New and experienced directors of nonprofits, charities, co-ops and companies
• Founders and CEOs building a board or working with one
• Board chairs, treasurers and committee chairs
• Staff who support a board

You don’t need a law degree or an MBA. If you can read a budget summary and ask a good question, you can be a great director. This book shows you how.

By Aiden Consulting. Published by Baobab Publishing