Service · Boards
Board advisory
The chairs and directors who call me already know, almost always, that something in their board isn’t working.
Schedule a one-hour conversation →
Last year’s self-assessment came out fine and no one believes the results. The audit committee debates for hours with no conclusion. The CEO privately complains that the board interferes where it shouldn’t. The controlling owner doesn’t understand why the independents are so passive. The chair’s succession is postponed for the sixth time. The signals differ, but the underlying diagnosis is usually the same: the invisible architectures of that room have fallen out of sync and no one is reading them.
What I do is not write a report teaching best practices — those circulate in abundance and rarely change anything. What I do is enter the room with the combination of three decades as an academic, advisor and director, read the specific architectures of that board, give the chair and the committee an honest reading of what I saw, and accompany — when appropriate — the redesign that follows from that reading. It’s work that runs through confidential interviews, direct observation of meetings, document review, and difficult conversations. It’s slow and discreet. Façade self-assessments end in a PowerPoint presentation. This work ends in boards that see themselves more honestly and make different decisions.
What I do
Lines of work with boards.
A representative sample of what I do — not an exhaustive list. In each engagement I adapt the scope to the specific board, in the form of advisory, workshop or training.
Support on board alignment and effectiveness
Diagnosis and ongoing work with the board as a body: where the conversation fell out of sync, which topics aren’t discussed, where consensus actually forms and where dissent gets anesthetized. It results in an improvement plan with owners and deadlines.
Self-assessment processes
Substantive self-assessments — not the fourteen-question surveys signed before the cocktail hour. Six to eight weeks combining confidential interviews, meeting observation and document review. A report that reaches the chair first, then the full board.
Board design and redesign
Composition, profiles, cadence, separation of roles. When a board is created, when a company jumps to a new stage, or when an existing board no longer fits the complexity of its company.
Information architecture for the board
What enters the room, what gets filtered, what arrives late. Design of the board pack, the annual cadence, the focus of each meeting. Where the real use of AI has the most impact on the board’s work.
Committee design and redesign and their mandates
Composition, scope, dynamics between committees, recurring friction between Audit–Risk or Sustainability–Strategy. Which ones work, which exist only on paper, which should be created or closed.
CEO succession process
Designing the process from defining the profile (what’s really missing, not what the job description says), working with the search firm, steering the family or controlling owner when applicable, and accompanying the first hundred days.
CEO evaluation
Design and facilitation of the board’s substantive annual evaluation of the CEO. Not the competency survey copied from a manual — the board’s honest conversation with the CEO about results, decisions and direction.
Support, advisory and coaching for the chair
An ongoing relationship, usually one or two years, with the chair. Agenda design, difficult conversations with the CEO or controlling shareholders, calibrating the role between oversight and interference. The least visible work and, in many cases, the highest impact.
How I work
Four principles that apply to every engagement.
01
Absolute confidentiality
What is discussed with me never appears in any case study, column or keynote — not even anonymized, unless the client explicitly authorizes it years later.
02
Vendor independence
I don’t sell software, I don’t sell director search, I don’t sell courses I earn a commission on. I recommend what actually serves the client.
03
Reporting to the chair
My formal client is the board or the chair. I keep a relationship with the CEO because without it the work is impossible, but structural loyalty points in the right direction.
04
A small cohort per year
Between 6 and 8 board engagements a year, no more. This craft requires real presence, not delegation to a junior team working from a template.
Honest filters
Who this isn’t for
I don’t work with boards looking for a compliance stamp to present to the regulator or auditor — that’s not what I do, and there are good firms that do.
I don’t work with shareholders or executives who want to use me as ammunition in an internal fight. I advise the board as a body, not as the instrument of a faction.
I don’t work where the chair isn’t willing to receive feedback that will probably make them uncomfortable. Without that willingness the process is expensive theater, and I’d rather decline than take part.
Cases
Three anonymized engagements.
All authorized for general mention.
Chile · Industrial · 4th generation · US$ 500M
When the board became a rubber stamp
The controlling owner sensed the board had become a formality and the independents decorative figures. A six-week process, interviews with all nine directors, observation of two meetings.
The report identified three problems: the agenda spent 70% of its time on operational oversight and almost none on strategy; the two critical committees shared five of six members and duplicated discussions; the board pack arrived 36 hours beforehand with 400 pages. A full agenda redesign, separation of committees and a new pack format with an executive summary.
Board time reduced 40% in six months. The controlling owner began investing personal time in the meetings again.
Chile · IPSA-listed · Financial sector
The audit committee that approved without remarks
After a reputational event the audit committee had approved without remarks months earlier. A focused self-assessment of the committee (not the full board), conducted under reinforced confidentiality.
The report found the committee operated with a critical information asymmetry relative to management, and that the rotation of the committee chair had been postponed for eight years. A change of chair, new composition, new pack and a new relationship with internal and external audit.
A verifiable result in the next regulatory examination.
Peru · Family business · 2nd generation
The succession that had stalled twice
A founder-to-external-CEO transition underway. The process had stalled twice in two years. Six months of combined work with the board chair and the family council.
A redesigned search process, a renewed CEO profile based on what the company actually lacked (not on what the founder imagined it lacked), a first-hundred-days plan with an explicit boundary between board and CEO, and accompaniment through the first nine months after onboarding.
The new CEO is still in the chair three years later. The company doubled its value.
