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May 15, 2012
Women on corporate boards - Leah Eichler's take on how to land a seat. Skills and networking are key.
Let’s talk about women and corporate boards. For starters, women who aspire to reach to upper echelons of corporate power need to start asking how they can achieve that goal. And women who are already sitting at the board table need to illuminate how they were able to get that far.
Lifting the veil on what it takes to rise to the board level will help women understand how to tailor their career choices to make the climb.
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May 7, 2012
Great article by Miro Cernetig on living in the Big Data Age and the important role British Columbia is playing in this emerging field. This topic is also the centre of The Data Effect, being held on June 5th at the Westin Bayshore. For more information and to register for the event, visit http://www.thedataeffect.org/
Human beings are creating and storing information in numbers now best grasped in astronomical terms. If all the bits and bytes of data created last year were put on CDs, the stack would stretch from the Earth to the moon and back — and then some.
So much data are being created — from our health records, those sensors in our smartphones and Nike sneakers, not to mention Facebook and YouTube accounts — it is now described with a new word. The zettabyte. (No, it’s not in your spellcheck yet).
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May 4, 2012
Interesting read on shifting the mindset of leadership from “governance, risk and compliance” to “governance, culture and leadership”, resulting in concrete behavioural changes that can be maintained by an organization.
How would a global company build a big enough bureaucracy to ensure that all 100,000 employees in its operating companies worldwide follow each and every law and regulation? Even further, how could the CEO of that company be assured that his or her people were acting according to the even higher standard of behavior demanded by its stakeholder community?
The answer? They can’t. Even if this company were 99.9 percent successful in its compliance efforts, that’s still 100 instances of non-compliance every day.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
May 3, 2012
Interesting news in support of the corporate governance trend to split up the Chairman and CEO roles.
Chesapeake Energy founder Aubrey McClendon was stripped of his chairmanship role Tuesday following shareholder complaints that his personal business interests could conflict with those of the company he runs.
McClendon will remain CEO. The company's board said it's searching for an independent chairman.
To read the rest of the article, click here.
Apr 30, 2012
A great story of leadership transition in one of Vancouver's most important settings for dialogue on the necessary topic of anti-racism teaching via innovative curatorial work. The founders of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre should beam with pride on the renewal here from the noble work of Frieda Miller to the new leadership of Nina Krieger.
Frieda Miller, who has been with the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre since its founding in 1994, is retiring after six years as Executive Director. The Centre’s exhibits and education programs, which reach more than 15,000 students each year, place it among the most respected Holocaust centres in North America.
Miller has been responsible for much of the dynamic programming at the VHEC in recent years. Many will remember the impressive productions of the operas Brundibar and The Emperor of Atlantis. The Centre’s exhibit on view during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, More Than Just Games: Canada & the 1936 Olympics, achieved national acclaim and drew Canadians’ attention to the choices faced by athletes invited to participate in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Read the full article here.
Apr 26, 2012
Interesting article about board leadership reflecting your customer base and diversity - two issues that are top of mind for boards.
The news that Wal-Mart has invited Google VP Marissa Mayer to join its board of directors signals a trend. Fortune 500 boards are looking hard to recruit social media experts. And their quest is bringing a lot of women to the directors' table.
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Apr 13, 2012
A friend of the firm, Karen Flavelle, was featured in last weekend's Westender. We admire how she is always looking for ways to both respect tradition and offer innovation!
Karen Flavelle takes a bite of a pineapple cream chocolate.
“It doesn’t quite droop and it should droop,” she says, looking at how the cream filling oozes — or doesn’t ooze — out of the chocolate as she determines the chocolate’s “mouth feel.”
Once her grandfather’s favourite, she’s surprised to find it in the sampling box that has been delivered to her office at Purdy’s Chocolates. Pineapple cream may be making a comeback, but if it’s to awaken older customers’ sense of taste memory, as well as new customers’ taste loyalty, it’s got to be perfect.
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Apr 11, 2012
Great article in last weekend's Vancouver Sun by Mary Prefontaine, Co-Producer of the Corporate State Vancouver Summit and President and CEO of the Institute for Career Advancement Needs, a non-profit leadership institute based in the United States. An interesting perspective on how corporate discourse can influence civility in our national and global discourse.
Given that most people spend upwards of 40 hours a week at work, imbuing the workplace and corporate culture with civility would unquestionably have a ripple effect on our larger society. Key to a civil corporate culture and a civil society are strong interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence - the ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself and others. An increasing number of corporate hiring authorities say that hiring for emotional intelligence is now of equal importance to hiring for intellect.
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Apr 5, 2012
Great blog post by John Bell, former CEO of Jacobs Suchard (Nabob, Kraft), on why boards need to care about corporate culture. An interesting challenge to anyone who sits on a board.
During my tenure as a CEO, my Board of Directors never challenged me with questions pertaining to the corporate culture. I wasn’t surprised in the least. Jacobs Suchard directors expected me to run the company as an entrepreneurial enterprise, and as long the numbers were coming in, they assumed I was doing just that. Like most Boards, they were more interested in hearing about profit, financial ratios, efficiencies, headcounts, labor climate and strategic initiatives. Maybe it was the times – 25 years ago, culture wasn’t in vogue like it is now. Other than ensuring an ethical environment in the organizations they govern, I suspect today’s Boards still don’t give culture the attention it deserves. And yet, culture is one of the most important determinants of business performance.
To read the rest of the blog post, click here.
Apr 4, 2012
Great blog post by John Crean at NATIONAL. Good boards are responsible for ensuring their organizations have the best leadership today and tomorrow.
I was working closely with the CEO of a large public company facing a crisis a few years ago. The company was in the news for days and it is fair to say the management team, the board and many employees felt under siege. The company was being hauled onto the carpet for issues related to the disclosure of confidential customer information. Many on the team knew that the issue, while serious, was contained to a small number of cases and could easily be corrected. Unfortunately, their message wasn’t getting through and as such, the CEO and his management team planned a major news conference to apologize and present a forward-looking plan to resolve the issue once and for all.
The day prior to the announcement, I was with the CEO preparing him for the news conference. Late in the afternoon came word that the Board Chair would not be available to participate. This came as a shock to the team. The CEO and Board Chair had a positive relationship. On major issues they always stood together. Given their history, the CEO turned to me and murmured, “Something really important must have come up for him to miss this”. I suspected that there was more to the decision than a scheduling conflict. As it turned out, his decision was an intentional move to distance the Board from the CEO.
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