Two

Focusing on Strategy to Govern Effectively

KRISHNA PALEPU

As reported in the previous chapter, one of the most common and persistent frustrations for independent board members is that they feel insufficiently engaged with the critical strategic issues and business risks facing their companies. In a survey of public companies by McKinsey Quarterly conducted in February 2008, a vast majority of the directors answering said they spend only about 20 percent of their board time on strategic issues, and that they would like to increase significantly the amount of time they spend on strategy in the next two to three years.

Unfortunately, not much seems to have changed since then. In its latest survey of over 1,500 public company directors, McKinsey ...

Get The Future of Boards now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.