As mentioned in the previous chapters, our mission at ABA and Boardology is crystal clear: to help companies build and run High-Impact Boards that consistently deliver value, meeting after meeting. Our experiences spanning over a dozen countries, four continents, and thousands of meetings have shaped our work and stoked our passion for what we do. We don’t simply transform boards; we help elevate them into high-impact drivers that accelerate growth and create lasting value for the company.

As the pioneering global organization dedicated to this transformation, we deliver value to shareholders through our expertise supported by a proprietary, data-driven technological platform.

The Foundations of an Effective Board

By focusing boards on key strategic drivers that propel organizations toward their future goals, we foster efficiency, effectiveness, engagement, and collaboration during board meetings. We help shift boards from mere reporting sessions to meaningful interactions.

A core belief is the need to establish and foster trust between management and the board and among board members, creating a team aligned to drive stakeholder value.

The Role of Board Architects

We call ourselves “board architects” because we start at the beginning. Whether a board is in place or we are creating one, we question the foundations and begin by considering what is the best design possible for the board to accomplish its mission. We seek to understand:

• What the board is meant to help management achieve: the company’s mid and long-term objectives.

• Which of these objectives are especially challenging for the company.

• How the board will best meet the expectations of its key stakeholders.

• How the board will achieve alignment between its members and with management and shareholders.

• What soft and hard skills board members need in order to contribute effectively to the overall mission and specific challenges.

• What processes need to be established to make the board effective and efficient and to keep it in alignment with company objectives and the needs of its stakeholders.

• How the board will measure its performance.

This enables us to document the board’s mission, objectives, composition, and processes—creating a blueprint for an effective and efficient board tailored to this company’s current needs. It also ensures alignment among all stakeholders and helps maintain that alignment over time.

Evaluating for Impact: The Right Fit

Then, and only then, can we begin building (or re-building) the board.

To do this, we’ve designed tools to help us objectively evaluate whether a board candidate is the right fit for the organization’s needs. Every case is different, so every case requires a detailed identification of knowledge, skills, experience, culture, and personal attributes that will allow current members or new candidates to be impactful board members. Weighting different aspects in each case allows us to make a strong prediction of a candidate’s impact potential.

The Chairman’s Role and Common Challenges

Many companies seem to believe that answering the “who” question is enough to ensure board impact. In truth, the work is just beginning. Once the team is assembled, the processes that we defined to help them win together need to be implemented with discipline. Leading this process is the job of the chairman.

We’ve found that in many privately owned companies, the chairman is also a deeply involved stakeholder. This creates a couple of significant tensions:

• Balancing the time needed to manage the board with another occupation (not infrequently, being the CEO of the organization).

• Balancing active participation and effective board management and dynamics.

From experience, I can say that the board almost always loses in these two conflicts. That’s why, from early in our existence, we’ve helped companies as board facilitators, unburdening the nominal chairman from the management of the board, ensuring that effective and impactful board processes are followed. This includes regularly evaluating meetings and periodically reconsidering board objectives to ensure high impact and board alignment with company objectives.

The Importance of Continuous Evaluation

The need to evaluate the board to improve it continuously seems obvious to us, but we’ve encountered many existing boards that resist going through this process—all the while insisting that everything else in the company be evaluated, from the CEO down—sowing the seeds of their own dysfunction and lackluster performance. We’ve also seen how advanced board members generate great impact simply by pushing board evaluations. They ask themselves and their teammates questions like:

• What do you think we can celebrate about the board’s performance?

• Are there areas where you believe the board could improve?

• Are we effectively fulfilling our mission and objectives?

• How can we ensure the board is operating at its maximum potential?

• Do you think we could benefit from external expertise or an independent review?

• How should we measure and demonstrate our contributions as a board?

The Power of the 3 E’s: Efficiency, Effectiveness, Engagement

Finally, we see the immense majority of the unfortunate minority of companies that conduct evaluations doing so on an annual or biannual basis. This is better than nothing, and periodic evaluations are necessary to reevaluate objectives and ensure alignment of board structure, composition, and processes with those objectives. However, we’ve found that evaluating boards objectively meeting by meeting with a strong focus on the 3 E’s (Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Engagement):

• Is less time-consuming.

• Allows “real-time” course corrections when improvements are needed—creating positive impact sooner, saving time and money, and reducing frustration.

• Makes longer-term evaluations easier, more effective, and focused on the bigger picture.

Introducing Boardology: Empowering High-Impact Boards

At ABA, we’ve been evaluating meetings since we started, precisely with the above ideas in mind. The link between the 3 E’s and high board (and board member) impact potential quickly became clear, and we set about studying and refining our data on the 3 E’s and creating technology to help us measure them and quickly identify improvements needed to maximize impact.

We created Boardology precisely because we know the huge impact that keeping a board running at high 3 E’s scores has, and we want as many companies as possible to “do it themselves” and get the benefit of a High-Impact Board. Boardology draws on all of ABA’s experience and allows any board to reach new heights by evaluating and optimizing the effectiveness of board meetings for companies of all sizes and shapes, anywhere in the world. Seeing the scores of a board on the Boardology platform allows us to provide personalized recommendations to make every meeting better than the last—or clearly understand what went wrong.

A Future of High-Impact Leadership

In a world where the need for high-impact boards has never been greater, our mission at ABA and Boardology is to provide the tools, expertise, and methodologies that ensure boards consistently deliver value. By focusing on effectiveness, efficiency, and engagement, we help organizations transform their boards from passive observers to dynamic drivers of success. Through structured evaluations, tailored processes, and advanced technology, we enable boards to achieve their full potential, aligning them with company goals and fostering trust and collaboration among stakeholders.

At ABA, we believe that every board has the potential to be exceptional. Boardology represents the culmination of our years of experience and innovation, empowering boards worldwide to evaluate, refine, and elevate their performance. Together, we can ensure that boards are not just functional but transformative—setting the stage for sustained growth, strategic clarity, and enduring impact.