In this episode of On Boards, hosts Joe Ayoub and Raza Shaikh welcome Jim Brown, co-founder of OrgHealth and author of the global bestseller “The Imperfect Board Member.”
With 30 years of experience advising boards and CEOs, Jim shares how embracing imperfection leads to stronger leadership, healthier organizations, and better board performance. He dives into the evolution of governance over the last two decades and the cultural challenges boards face today.
Jim also previews his forthcoming book arriving in 2026, “The Imperfect CEO,” set 20 years after his first book. The sequel explores the current reality that company leaders face through changes in leadership expectations and workplace culture.
Key takeaways
1. OrgHealth’s mission
- Jim explains that organization health is a focus on culture, the relationship between board members, how they communicate with each other and how they talk about their CEO and management team
- Companies that seek OrgHealth’s consultations need to have a leader who recognizes that they will be making most of the changes and acknowledges that improvements need to be made.
2. “The Imperfect Board Member” philosophy
- The book tells a fictional story of a frustrated CEO who discovers that in order to make effective change on his board, it begins with self-awareness. Along his journey he discovers “The Seven Disciplines of Governance Excellence”: direct, protect, connect, expect, respect, reflect, and select.
- The key insight from the story is that lasting board transformation requires both individual and collective growth.
3. Challenges adjusting to changes in culture
- Jim’s upcoming book, “The Imperfect CEO,” revisits the same protagonist 20 years later as he confronts a new reality of generational and cultural shifts within companies.
- The issue that company leaders face is being stuck in the mindset that because something worked before, it should still work. But with younger generations entering the company, outdated expectations receive pushback.
4. The ideal board chair
- A great board chair leads with an attitude toward service, not authority. Their role is to draw out the best from every member, ensure effective discussion, and maintain focus without dominating the conversation.
5. Term limits, a solution to offboarding challenges
- Jim suggests that rather than making offboarding personal through performance feedback, make it a mechanical process. Term limits also encourage boards to develop the skill and culture to bring in new members and help them learn about the company.
Quotes
- “ Culture has become the undercurrent of every organization’s reality. And if you don’t recognize it, you’re going to be blindsided by it.”
- “ My observation and my personal experience that the way we led as leaders 20 years ago that worked for us, doesn’t work today.”
- “ I think it would just be much more healthy if we let boards be boards of directors where more of their energy is on the direction piece rather than the protection piece.”
- “ Have enough time for people to learn the job, the organization, and really add value, but not so much time that they become stale.”
Links
Guest Bio
Jim Brown is an author, speaker, and board governance advisor with over 30 years of experience helping boards and CEOs build healthier organizations.
He co-founded OrgHealth in 1995, a consulting firm dedicated to improving board and leadership performance through culture, clarity, and accountability. His book, “The Imperfect Board Member” (2006), became an international bestseller.
He currently serves on several boards, including Vanquish Hockey, Amgine Technologies, and previously served on boards for The Global Leadership Network and SigmaDek. His upcoming book, “The Imperfect CEO” (2026), explores how leadership and workplace culture continue to evolve in today’s rapidly changing environment.
Transcript:
Joe: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to On Boards, a deep dive at what drives business success. I’m Joe Ayoub, and I’m here with my co-host, Raza Shaikh. Twice a month, On Boards is the place to learn about one of the most critically important aspects of any company or organization; its board of directors or advisors, with a focus on the important issues that are facing boards, company leadership, and stakeholders.
Raza: Joe and I speak with a wide range of guests and talk about what makes a board successful or unsuccessful, what it means to be an effective board member, and how to make your board one of the most valuable assets of your organization.
Joe: Before we introduce our guest, we want to thank the law firm of Nutter McClennen & Fish, who are again sponsoring our On Boards Summit this year taking place on October 20 in their beautiful conference center in the Boston Seaport. Nutter has been an incredible partner [00:01:00] with us in every way. We appreciate all they’ve done to support this podcast.
Our guest today is Jim Brown. Jim has been advising boards and CEOs for over 30 years. He co-founded his consulting company, OrgHealth, in 1995. His book entitled, “The Imperfect Board Member,” published in 2006, is a global bestseller. Jim is working on an updated version of his book for release next September.
Raza: Meanwhile, his new book arriving in mid-2026 is “The Imperfect CEO,” which deals with the current reality that company leaders face, including how the act of leading has dramatically changed over the last 20 years.
Joe: Jim also has significant board experience, including as a board member of Vanquish Hockey [00:02:00] which develops groundbreaking sporting equipment to inspire athletes and spectators; Imagine Technologies which uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate business travel bookings for leading travel management companies, and leading Leaders Collective Board, a movement to help create transformational leadership development experiences for the top leaders of churches and ministries across the US. Jim, it’s great to have you here with us on On Boards.
Jim: Well, thank you so much, Joe and Raza. It’s fun to be with you because these kinds of conversations are energizing. I’ve experienced that as a listener, and the privilege of being a guest is wonderful. So, I’m eager for the conversation.
Joe: Well, thanks so much for that. We feel the same way. The talk we had last month was terrific and we’re looking forward to another great conversation. To start off, tell us about OrgHealth, the company you [00:03:00] founded and have been really running for quite some time.
Jim: So, I describe it as a boutique consulting firm. We’re a small group that really focuses on very particular aspect of working with boards that want to change, and maybe you’ve had some experience yourself, gentlemen, that some boards sign up for a workshop or a session, but mostly it’s just to tick a box to say that they did something and that’s a waste of time for everybody. Nobody’s really changing so it’s not actually counting. I’ve developed some screenings steps that I work with clients and prospects to make sure that they’re serious about doing some work and making them change.
Joe: Like what? That would be helpful.
Jim: Sure. Well, right out of the gate, I will tell you that the most important step is that the CEO has to [00:04:00] recognize that they will do most of the changing. Because if they don’t recognize that, it’s all a trick in their mind. They think they’re going to fix some other person and they’re going to hire some outsider to come in and turn that around, and it just doesn’t work that way.
Unless the leader owns the need to change and is at the front of the line declaring to their colleagues “Hey, boy, I can see that I’ve been doing this poorly. I’m going to work on this. Can you help me with this? I apologize. I thought that this is the way I should do it, but now I’m seeing that’s not working for any of you.” Oh, it’s powerful.
Joe: Well, it could also be, not that he is doing it or she’s doing it poorly, but we can do it better, right?
Jim: Absolutely. And again, another piece that I’ve observed in these 30 years is, well, almost everybody likes to think that they’re a good board, they just want to be great. And when you [00:05:00] have the real conversation, you find out, “Yeah, you’re good, but only on a few things, and there’s a lot of things that you really need to get better at.”
And that’s normal, that’s okay. As long as they’re getting better, we’re going in the right direction.
Joe: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, talk about some of the work you do in OrgHealth.
Jim: Okay, so let me go way back to the very beginning. Thirty years ago, there just wasn’t a recognition that this is important, like even the word governance was kind of a mystery to a lot of people, and we found that unless it was a desperate situation, nobody wanted to hire us to do board consulting.
The clients that we worked with, the clients that I worked with were in desperate messes, and I can’t remember if I mentioned this to you guys when we talked last. I’ve literally stood between people throwing fists at [00:06:00] each other in these early days.
Joe: Do you get extra fee for that?
Jim: No, no. I just learned that you have to price danger into the invoice.
Joe: Right. Exactly. I was going to say, yeah.
Jim: Everyone on the board was suing everyone else on the board. These were the kinds of messes that I found myself in the early days, and then Enron and WorldCom happened, and the whole game changed. It was kind of like people started to recognize, “Oh, maybe we should be embarrassed if we didn’t get any help. Maybe taking a step to get some outside expertise is actually responsibility as opposed to proof of ineffectiveness.” And that was a beautiful shift that really changed the game for our work.
Joe: Yeah. Makes sense, for sure.
Jim: To be fair, mostly I do help boards that are doing pretty well [00:07:00] get much better these days. And I don’t going to mislead, like the truth is, every board that I work with, we find something that they need to get seriously intentional about, so there’s opportunity all the time.
Joe: So, one of the things that your company does is organizational health consulting. It’d be helpful to just talk a little bit about what you focus on in that bucket of consulting.
Jim: Well, I’m choosing just to call governance a slice of organizational health. I prefer that we think, “Oh, for an organization to really be functioning well, healthy, all the pieces have to be working well, and they all have to be working with each other well. So, boy, if the board understands its role and the experience of a board meeting where we’ve got the [00:08:00] CEO, probably some of the senior team in at least some of those meetings and all of the board members working together, if the end of that is increased clarity, increased confidence that we’re going to move forward on a best path, that’s wonderful.”
But too often. It is a necessary nuisance, especially in the minds of the management team. It’s like, “Oh crap, we have to get ready for another board meeting, and there’s all these reports we have to generate and there’s all this time we have to spend, and it’s just a distraction from our real work.”
So, the way you said it when we began, Raza, was that boards would contribute to an organization really doing well, that there would be a gain from that. I a hundred percent believe that that’s possible. In fact, it has to happen. If we don’t have that [00:09:00] happening, we’re at least missing a great opportunity. Or worse, we’re going close to the ditch, like we’re on the verge of making a big mistake.
Raza: Well said.
Joe: Absolutely. Yeah, I’m shocked to hear that there are some management teams that don’t look forward to the board meetings.
Jim: Oh, I didn’t know you had the gift of sarcasm, Joe.
Joe: No, I’m kidding. No, I know. It’s very telling that that’s the case because it probably reflects issues on both sides, and I think to the extent that you can help with that, that in itself would be a huge step forward.
Jim: So, this ties into another part of the whole concept of organizational health. It really is a focus on culture, on the human factor, on how board members get along with board members on how they communicate with each other, especially in the meetings, but not only like between meetings [00:10:00] too, how they talk to each other about their CEO and management team. The job of the board is to bring guidance and oversight, but too many boards start nitpicking and throwing darts at people on the management team, so to speak, metaphorically.
Joe: Yeah. Or on the board, or to other board members.
Jim: True. That kind of belittling and nibbling actually undermines everything in an organization. So. If we going to be healthy, we just have to believe the best about each other and then learn about each other.
One of my favorite stories of Unhealth missed opportunity was that I was working with a board and management team on a strategic plan and we were just in the segment of the conversation about risk management, risk oversight, [00:11:00] and I had done some research and learned about the corporate experience, the background of the people on the board, so, I just asked the question to the room, “Hey, if you really are wondering about what would be the best practices on risk management, who in the group already likely has the horsepower to bring the most strength to that?”
And there was silence. This was very uncomfortable for me because one of the board members, a woman, had been the global risk manager for the largest bank in our country, Canada, and people didn’t even recognize that, and she was humble enough or maybe too humble in the sense that she didn’t wave her hand and say, “Well, actually, I have done this for 25 years.”
But nobody even knew that. So, how do [00:12:00] you draw on the strength? How do you listen to the input from a colleague if you don’t understand what that person brings to the table? I think you can’t really get the value, and it wasn’t that difficult. I just read the bios that were on their website. Any of them could have done it, but they didn’t know this. That’s a tragedy.
Joe: Yeah, that’s pretty basic actually, to not know the top skills and expertise of your fellow board members. That’s surprising. So, speaking about imperfect, let’s talk about your first book published about 20 years ago, “The Imperfect Board Member.” Talk about the story it tells.
Jim: Sure. So, there’s a stressed out CEO of an early stage tech company and he is pulling his hair out because he is not getting help from his board, not the help that he’s expecting. Before the IPO, he got pressured to make some [00:13:00] changes on the board, “You need to get some global and international credibility, some experience with people farther afield.”
So, great, they added a couple of people. But those people were so busy, they weren’t even coming to board meetings, and he was mad about that and the guy that brought the most horsepower on the finance side, he was calling and spending half an hour or an hour or more multiple times a week to either the CEO or the CFO, and it felt like it was a distraction.
Anyways, he ultimately gets involved in a nonprofit board in his community, and he’s thinking he should shoot himself for adding more to his to-do list. But it’s in that context that he actually meets a man who gives him some input, some coaching, and helps him really understand what boards should be like.[00:14:00]
Uncomfortably, he discovers that as much as there are things that need to happen to make his board better, there are a whole lot of things that he needs to do differently so his board can be better, and that’s the journey. Along the way, they discovered the seven disciplines of governance excellence, and that gets all expanded in the story.
Joe: Do you want to go through what those seven disciplines are, just to let folks know?
Jim: Sure. So, the core two are direct and protect. The board must direct and protect the company, the organization in the interests of the owners of the organization, and then everything else rhymes with that. So, they need to connect with the other board members for healthy board relations. They need to expect great performance from their CEO. They need to respect the interests of the owners. They need to reflect on [00:15:00] corporate progress, rather than react, which is the typical response. They need to be very intentional to select the officers of the organization, which is the board members, but the senior roles like CFO and CEO.
So, too many boards are into just a routine of they sit and they meet and they talk about the same things. And if they even meet in person, they sit in the same chairs and the same two people do 80% of the talking. And it is mostly like a reprise of the same board meeting happening over and over.
Joe: Do you think that it’s the same today approximately 20 years later as it was when you first wrote the book?
Jim: I think that a lot of important things have changed for the better in the 20 years, but not everything has changed. And sadly I would say some things have [00:16:00] not changed for the better. They might be even worse.
Joe: So, that leads me to the question about the themes and issues that will be featured in the updated version that’ll be out next year.
Jim: Sure. So, definitely, we’re going to be talking about things like the whole point of culture, and I talked about that. Culture has become the undercurrent of every organization’s reality. And if you don’t recognize it, you’re going to be blindsided by it. I think that more and more boards are recognizing it, not convinced they’re doing it well yet, but at least recognizing it.
There’s certainly some improvement of boardroom culture, like the old imagery of a bunch of old men smoking cigars it’s not like that in almost any situation.
Joe: No cigars anymore?
Jim: You’re laughing because maybe thinking of a [00:17:00] few examples where it is like that, and I can think of a couple, but for the most part, no. It’s younger people sitting around the table, people who likely bring broader horsepower. And by that, I mean experience and expertise that will help. It’s less a relational selection and more a credibility and competence selection, which is a really good thing.
Joe: How has the act of being a leader in the governance context changed since 2006?
Jim: Well, if you are a board member but not a CEO, you got way more weight on you than you did 20 years ago. Twenty years ago, there was a whole lot of wishing by management teams that the board would just nod and approve what they’d already figured out [00:18:00] before the meeting and what they’d spend a bunch of time trying to convince them of in a PowerPoint that they showed at the board meeting.
I’m pleased that more and more boards that I work with don’t let that happen. They don’t let the PowerPoint happen. They say, “Sure, you can send a PowerPoint or whatever you want before the meeting. But it is not a dog and pony show that we’re going to walk through at the meeting. We’re going to have a conversation about what’s really happening in the company and what needs to be done to keep moving in the right direction.”
Joe: Yeah, I think that is such a critically important change that that presentation is not taking up in most boards the majority of time. I agree with you. To me, that’s a waste of time, “Why are you there? Just send it to me.” That should be 80% about discussion and maybe 20% presentation. There has to be some presentation.
Jim: Which could be just [00:19:00] about explaining some things in the midst of the discussion.
Joe: Exactly. Yeah.
Raza: Jim, let’s talk about your upcoming book, “The Imperfect CEO.” What motivated you to write that book, and is that also in the theme of that fictionalized narrative and a story?
Jim: Yeah, actually, I would say the motivation came from two different directions. One, as a board member myself, I’d had a couple of experiences of the board being, I wouldn’t say blindsided, but underestimating the impact of some cultural problem in the company because the CEO was telling a nicer tale, and I’m not even saying that the CEO was deceiving the board. Maybe it’s deceiving themselves, [00:20:00] like wanting to believe things are probably fine.
Anyways, two situations where it caught up and it was like a death knell ultimately for the organization, and then noticing that that’s happening on several boards that I work with and consult.
CEOs have long believed that they get to just say what the culture is supposed to be and people will do it because they’re the boss. So, that brings us to the other angle, Raza, that my observation and my personal experience that the way we led as leaders 20 years ago that worked for us doesn’t work today. And some of us are still thinking, because it worked before, it should still work, and we keep pounding at the old way [00:21:00] and get angry that people aren’t getting in line, so to speak.
So, this book picks up the story of the same CEO in the first book and 20 years later he’s three companies further on in his journey, but this tech company isn’t going the way the others did. He had great success, but now people are complaining about quote, “the stupidest things,” things that he thinks should be really taken for granted, but people don’t take it for granted.
Gen Z and the millennials, they just think differently and it’s not wrong. It’s not wrong for people to think that they should be able to have a life outside of work, not just give 80 hours a week to their job. But I’m from that old camp of if you want to succeed, you work hard and you pay before you [00:22:00] play. You do the long hours so you can have time off later. And we think we can impose that on other young people and they’re telling us, take a hike.
Raza: Yeah. As they say, the culture is what you do, not really what you say; mission, vision, all those values-type statements. It’s what you do on the ground. I think it will be fascinating to read the book to understand how the CEO recognizes cultural deficiencies and how his journey goes. Part of there, you talk about a phrase that the boards have now become boards of protectors. What do you mean by that?
Jim: Well, if we go back even almost 20 years, there’s been some legislation and some regulations. Sarbanes–Oxley was kind of at the front of that wave. That has just increased the obligations that boards have to look at this, to [00:23:00] check this, to confirm that, and it’s compliance, compliance, compliance.
Some of that makes sense, although if you had the right systems, I’m suspicious that a lion’s share of it could be done by competent, trustworthy staff people who are being paid to keep this, and then they just bring those reports, and you’re just going to receive these reports. You don’t have to go deep.
If there’s a problem, sure, you talk about it, but a lot of compliance is confirming that these things are working, or these things have been done, great. Rather than spend a whole lot of board time generating and reviewing and discussing those reports, I think it would just be much more healthy if we let boards be boards of directors where more of their energy is on the [00:24:00] direction piece rather than the protection piece. It’s never going to be zero, and it shouldn’t be. Like I don’t even think it should be, it’s both, direct and protect. I said that at the very beginning, that’s the role of the board. But it isn’t protect and protect. It’s direct and protect.
Raza: Well said. Maybe switch to this notion that Joe and I often talk that a high functioning board is kind of like a team and it’s kind of team of generalists, specialists and many roles, and every team has to have a leader in the sense of running that team. And for boards, that’s usually called the board chair, and the board chair, he or she, plays a very, very important role in the functioning of the board and consequently the impact of the board’s direction and protection and all of those things for the organization. In your mind, what would be an ideal board chair and what are the [00:25:00] characteristics of that person to play that important role well?
Jim: Well, a lot of it is about, I guess, attitude, like that the person would see themselves in a role of serving, not a role of power. That, sure, they have power because of the function, but that isn’t to be exercised very often, like usually you get far more done with permission than with power.
By the way, I completely believe and I have observed men and women fulfilling this role very well. It’s not a gender specific thing, it’s more of an attitude thing where people recognize, “I’m going to help make sure that this conversation brings out all of the important things that need to be discussed and [00:26:00] considered so that the group can make a decision that will be best for this company.”
That means that person is more invested than anyone in understanding each of the people around the table and what they can especially bring, and that they see themselves a little lower, like that they can bite their own tongue and not say what is on their mind because they can imagine that could be helpful, but rather ask a good question that draws it out of someone else around the table. Because the more that the chair speaks that is contributing to decisions, the more people around the table feel like the chair was controlling the decision. That’s not a good arrangement. So, it’s a serving of the group to fulfill that function.
Raza: But Jim wouldn’t sometimes it is the case that the chair has to be the boss and be [00:27:00] able to get things done and not always be the, “Hey, what does everybody think?” When that happens, how should they deal to be effectively helping the board the best?
Jim: I had this conversation with a board just last week. I was doing an offsite with a board for a couple of days in Toronto, and which, by the way, is so nice to actually have a chance to drive to a client engagement rather than fly, and the chair expressed to the room some frustration because he said it feels like when I try to help the board do what needs to be done, somebody gets their nose out of joint because they think I am powering up. And so I said, “Timeout, let’s just step back from this. Let’s have a conversation about what all of you believe your chair, whoever the chair is, [00:28:00] should do to serve the board.”
I went after some particular things like, “Well, do you think that it’s okay that the chair would cut someone off if they’ve said the same thing already?” “Yeah, absolutely.”
Okay, so I wrote that down. ” And is it all right if the chair cut people off because there’s been more time spent on this topic than you agreed in your agenda approval at the beginning.” “Well, absolutely.”
So, there were a number of those kinds of things that once you had that list, Raza, can you appreciate that these now are the board’s instructions to the chair rather than the chair’s imposition of behaviors on the board, and it changes the equation. It gives them permission to do it for the board as opposed to doing it to the board.
Raza: So, the ground rules came bottom ups from the board members agreeing that [00:29:00] that’s what they actually expect the board chairs to do, and hence when they do it, it’s not viewed as a power move, it’s viewed as the chair actually doing their job.
Jim: Right. But then as you say, Raza, they have to get firm and they have to say, “Hang on, we agreed we were not going to talk in circles, and so I’m just going to cut you off. Joe, let’s say you’re the one, “Joe, full respect to you, but you’ve said that already.”
Joe: I love the way you just asked that question, Raza, because you’re right. Building it from the bottom up is a recognition by everyone in the room what the responsibility of the chair is, and once there’s agreement with that, that’s got to make the job a lot easier to do because then everyone is on board with, “Yeah, if you’re going a little long, look, this isn’t personal. We got to move. You don’t want to be here till seven o’clock tonight. I don’t want to be here till seven o’clock tonight. We’ve got to move this [00:30:00] along,” without having to have that conversation during the meeting itself.
Jim: Right. So, another topic that, just a little twist that I think is interesting is, they expressed some frustration because one of their committees, we won’t say which one, has repeatedly brought information the day of the meeting and wanted to discuss it at the board meeting. And everyone else is a little put off because they’re thinking, “Wait, I haven’t even had a chance to look at this to digest it. There’s three people in the room that have spent who knows how many hours on it. It feels like I’m being manipulated.”
But nobody had said that, that it was just a feeling inside.
And again, we were able to help them agree that the default is anything less than a week before the meeting cannot be added to the agenda unless everyone on the board agrees. [00:31:00] Maybe there’s some crazy emergency that is that urgent, but 99% of the time they could have been told three days earlier.
Joe: Yeah. It is rare that something is so last minute and so important that it can be brought into the boardroom last minute and that’s okay. I mean, it happens, but really rare.
So, Jim, we talked a lot about term limits and board culture and I think when we talked, you offered that offboarding is one of the least exercised responsibilities that a board does well.
We agree. We have been talking for years about the fact that no matter who the CEO is, no matter who the chair is, private, public, the one thing that seems to be the hardest to do or not done well is offboarding. And I think your suggestion as to how to address that is term limits. Is that fair?
Jim: Yes, [00:32:00] absolutely. I used to be idealistic and think, “Hey. Let’s just use performance feedback and if people are doing a great job, they keep doing it. If they aren’t, we help them move out and put someone in place.
That seems so rational. The trouble is it just doesn’t work that way. People just don’t feel comfortable insisting that someone leave the board. So, rather than make it a personal thing, make it a mechanical thing. Have enough time for people to learn the job, the organization, and really add value, but not so much time that they become stale.
And not that everyone would, I can completely acknowledge that some people could be great board members for 30 years, but it’s very rare actually. I also deeply believe that [00:33:00] developing the skill to bring on someone and help them learn about the company and about the board and be brought into the culture is a skill that boards need to have, or they’re going to end up in a very vulnerable situation.
You’ve probably seen it yourselves where nobody gets off the board until four of them are in their seventies and they all have to leave at the same time. Well, that now has compromised the board because they just wouldn’t be responsible on a schedule that would work better for the company.
Joe: I agree with everything you said, but I would raise two issues. One is board members that need to be offboarded before whatever the term is, so let’s say you gave them three terms of three years, nine years. Okay, well, that gets ’em off in nine years. But not all board members deserve the nine years, so you’re going to have to [00:34:00] face that.
And then I’ll just throw the other thing out, which you already raised. There are board members that add a lot of value after nine years, whatever the term is. I’m just taking that, and as I think I said when we talked, it seemed like such rough justice to say, “Okay, we’re going to take Larry Bird and some guy that plays basketball once a week with his friends and we’re going to apply the same rules. Larry’s off the team and this guy that can’t shoot a basketball, both off the team.” That seems like such a waste to me. How do you respond to that?
Jim: Let me do the first one first, the first problem. If the board doesn’t have the courage to say, “No, you can’t return after their first three-year term,” then they are so gutless they don’t deserve to succeed. So, I don’t think you have to wait nine years. You have to wait three years, but you shouldn’t wait three years either. I agree with that, Joe. So, every [00:35:00] board should be doing annual board feedback, and I use the word feedback rather than evaluation because I don’t think it’s about value so much as it is a commitment to help each other be the best they can be. Give feedback.
If you know there’s someone that shouldn’t be continuing and you don’t have the system and the strength to deal with that internally, hire an outsider who can help you, because it’s doable, and you probably find yourselves in the same role. We get hired when people can’t do the really hard stuff because they don’t have to like us later, and that’s okay. Sure. I can help that. So, you got to get the dead wood off the ship, because otherwise the good people will leave because they just can’t put up with it any longer.
Joe: So, if that’s true, and I agree. I mean, what you said makes perfect [00:36:00] sense and a board has to exercise that authority when it’s appropriate, and they’re doing it throughout the term so it’s not even just three years, but every year you, you’re looking at things, if you’ve developed that muscle, so to speak, why not say, “Okay, we can also decide when it’s time for some to retire, because companies are changing, issues are changing, the world is changing, and the skills we need today are not the same things we needed 10 years ago.
Jim: Yeah. When you make an exception for one, then the next person who gets to their nine-year limit, who you wish would leave, cries foul and says, “Wait a minute, so now it’s all personal again. You just like Charlie so he gets to stay.”
What if Charlie was so [00:37:00] big, so expansive in his mindset that he could say, “You know what, I’m happy to play a role, but not on your board. Let me be an advisor. I can be a coach to new board members. I can be a mentor to the CEO. There’s probably a role that could be played that would still bring value if that’s important to them.”
What I find, and I’ve had the privilege of working with some amazing board members over the years, people that I’ve learned so much from, and they just don’t hold it like this. They’re open-handed, they’ve got other things that they can do. They don’t need this for themselves and yeah, I think it’s healthier if you say, “Charlie, can you help us find another great board member so that we just keep refreshing things?” And Charlie won’t be insulted, he might even be [00:38:00] relieved, and that’s actually healthier for the company. Even though Charlie is the easy answer, it’s not actually the best answer.
Raza: I think part of it is just really upfront, even. When board members are hired and recruited, setting the expectation saying, “This is not a forever job. It is not like a given that you will always be a board member.” For various reasons, people should know that they can be no longer on a board and do other things with their life.
Jim: Right. Absolutely. You’ve maybe been involved with some boards that say you have to sit off for a year, but you can come back.
Raza: Oh, that’s the worst.
Jim: Yeah. Even more, what I find is the ones that really are good enough to come back, they’ve gone on and they’ve found other things to do, they’re not available. The ones that will come back, you shouldn’t be wanting them [00:39:00] back.
Joe: I think that is just a classic case. Yeah, that is the wrong answer. I agree with you. Jim, it was a fascinating conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Jim: It’s been a privilege to join you, and I agree, fascinating conversation. And as your listeners probably can tell themselves, we could talk for hours more yet, maybe we should recharge and have another conversation in a few years.
Joe: I think when your next book comes out, you should come back and talk about it.
Jim: That’d be great. I’d love it.
Joe: And thank you all for listening to On Boards with our guest, Jim Brown.
Raza: Please visit our website at OnBoardsPodcast.com. That’s OnBoardsPodcast.com. We’d love to hear your comments, suggestions, and feedback. If you’re not already a subscriber, please be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And remember to leave us a five-star review.
Joe: Please tune in [00:40:00] for the next episode of On Boards. Thanks.
Raza: All”