Archive for the ‘Diversity’ Category

Can A Harvey Weinstein Situation Happen to Your Board?

Here is a hypothetical situation that I have encountered many times.

I am invited to observe and assess a board. When I do, I immediately see the red flags. I make hard-hitting recommendations, which have included the CEO and certain directors being fired.

Why does it take me to do what the board should have been doing much earlier?

Boards can be very defensive, and even in denial to what is blindingly obvious. “We missed it” or “it was a rogue employee” is their common defense.

Boards are now asking, “Could a Harvey Weinstein situation happen to us?”

The board’s role in overseeing corporate culture, potential harassment, and other conduct risk is increasingly being turned to by boards and regulators.

Here are twelve suggestions for boards to oversee conduct risk properly within their organizations. The best boards I work with do all of this. The worst do not.

1. Act on your hunch.

If you have a question or concern, most of the board shares the same concern. Ask the question, and ask the second question. And if you don’t like what the answer is, press further. Where there is smoke, there is often fire. I have interviewed over a thousand directors over my career. The most common regret directors have is twofold: (i) I didn’t speak up when I should have; and (ii) I didn’t fire the CEO soon enough. One corporate secretary after a recent public scandal told me, “when the board does not ask questions, we have succeeded.”

2. Insist on proper whistle-blowing.

Many whistle-blowing programs are flawed. They are not anonymous, protected, independent, rewarded or remedied. That is the board’s fault. Not surprisingly, people (especially women) do not come forward for fear of retaliation and career harm. If you think conduct risk is not occurring within your organization, you are wrong. It is just a question of degree. Bad news needs to rise, and go around management and directly to boardrooms. If bad news does not rise to the board, it does not go away. It gets worse. Good boards insist on proper channels directly to them.

3. Renew your board regularly.

New directors see things that long-serving directors may not see or may be accustomed to. A fresh set of eyes can be invaluable. Have term limits for directors or regulators will impose them for you as is being done in several countries. Have a diverse board. Homogenous boards engage in group-think and do not ask tough questions.

4. Do rigorous interviews and background checks.

Ensure that employees, agents, management and directors go through thorough and ongoing background, reference, social media, personality, criminal and financial checks and testing. People’s personality will not change. If you do not know someone’s faults, you have not done your homework, and they are a risk to your reputation.

5. Remove management regularly from boardrooms.

Remove management from a portion of each board and committee meeting. Have a safe space so directors can speak confidentially. These “in camera” sessions are the main way that directors voice their concerns not within earshot of management. In camera sessions are the greatest contributor to board effectiveness, directors tell me.

6. Act immediately at the first sign of an ethical lapse.

The standard you walk by is that standard you accept. When you see discrimination, disparagement, or unfair treatment, call it out. Speak up. And when necessary, fire the CEO or senior manager at the first sign of a lack of ethics. Otherwise, you signal to the entire organization what is acceptable to you. Boards have suffered by not acting when they should have. And if your board does not act when it should, resign.

7. Receive dis-confirming information on company culture and executives.

If you get all your information from management, you are only hearing one side. Receive your own social media analytics, look at chat rooms, hear from employees, use google alerts, commission independent reviews, hear from reporters and analysts, walk around, and listen to what you hear and observe.

This does not mean that you are micro-managing, only that you are getting full information. If management tries to block you or dominate your information flow, that is a red flag.

8. Receive employee feedback.

Retain survey providers to conduct employee morale surveys that are directly provided to the board and untampered with by senior management. Ask for qualitative exit interview results, staff turnover rates and litigation compared to your peers. Consider putting an employee on your board, or having an advisory committee or a designated director to represent the employee viewpoint.

9. Look at how employees are paid.

People behave and take risks based on how they are paid, including customer-facing employees all the way to senior management and your CEO. Look at how pay incents conduct. Make sure that employee engagement forms a healthy portion of CEO incentive pay.

10. Protect yourself and the company.

Benchmark management contracts for conduct and ethics clauses. Define just cause for dismissal to include ethics. Have fair treatment form part of all employment contracts. Ensure your Code of Ethics and Diversity Policy are conditions for incentive pay to vest, and claw it back if you discover misconduct after the fact.

11. Benchmark your diversity and inclusion policy and practices.

Many human resource policies are legalistic and do not provide adequate examples and training. Train on unconscious biases. Provide examples of heterosexism, islamophobia and transphobia. Have voluntary, confidential self-identification of gender identity and LGBTTIQQ2A. Have a diversity and inclusion best practice presentation directly to the board of directors, as tone flows down from this.

12. Be vigorous in your fiduciary duty.

Management may play the trust, confidence or micromanaging card. Press on. Insist on behavioural and integrity controls, and independent auditing of these by the internal auditor, who should report directly to you, not management. Many conduct failures have happened because senior management blocked access to the auditors from the board. Have internal audit test the controls for culture and integrity (including complaints, reaction time, investigation protocols, record keeping and non-retaliation) and report directly to you on their findings.

Conclusion

Governance is changing. Board are becoming far more active and are investing significant time in their duties and responsibilities.

There are occasions where the best efforts will fail, but for the most part conduct failure happens when a board is complacent and fails to act when it should.

Dr. Richard Leblanc, Editor of The Handbook of Board Governance (Wiley, 2016), can be reached at rleblanc@boardexpert.com.

Boards Should Not Misjudge Regulators

When a regulator advises corporate directors that progress on gender diversity is “simply not good enough,” that is code that the status quo will not continue, and that more regulation may result. And the second wave of regulation is often worse than the first.

Regulators have limited levers at their discretion. They are not going to come into boardrooms and assess performance. Thus, they are tending to land on numbers: ranging from 9-10 years for director tenure and 25% – 50% quotas for women.

Once or if this happens, directors will complain that the regulator is imposing a ‘one sized fits all’ or ‘check the box’ solution, when directors had the chance to act but chose not to. We have seen this pattern before. Paradoxically, directors may choose not to act, waiting for stronger regulation, to which they can then point and say, “now we have no choice.” Even the CEO of a major bank told regulators, “you should push us on gender targets.”

Canadian regulators have adopted a flexible and progressive ‘comply or explain’ approach to director term limits and gender diversity.

The progress recently reported is, in a word, inadequate: Only 19% of boards surveyed have term limits; only 14% disclose written diversity policies; and only 7% have targets for women on their board.

Our comply or explain regime has the disadvantage of permitting explanations that are irrelevant or spurious, such as targets for women not being adopted because candidates are selected based on merit, as if both goals are mutually exclusive. There is not an excuse for inadequate governance progress that I have not encountered.

But the real reason for the above low figures, which is not in the public domain, is self-interest. Why would any director, particularly an over-tenured male director, agree to a policy that moved him out of the boardroom? Directors speak in code publicly, but in private interviews, many open up. I had a 28-year director tear up when I recommended a 12-year term limit for his board, without grandfathering.

The academic evidence in favor of director term limits and diversity is becoming more clear: Diverse groups make better decisions. And over-tenured directors are worse for innovation and shareholder value. Regulators – in several countries – are acting. Regulators want independent directors who are the most qualified sitting in boardroom seats. As they should.

In Canada, regulators have not imposed quotas or term limits, but these should not be ruled out if inadequate progress continues. Regulators have asked boards to articulate their own numbers, and why that number works for them.

This brings us to what directors and boards should be doing to forestall further regulation. Here are my recommendations:

  • Do not misjudge the regulator, or the importance of gender diversity for the new federal and the current provincial Liberal governments. Tone-deaf boards should listen.
  • Act on conflicts of interest. If a tenure or diversity policy affects one or more of your directors, excuse these directors from the room. They should not influence the decision.
  • Do not assume director consensus. There are directors who believe that other directors have outlived their usefulness and should be replaced.
  • Land on a target. If your board has zero women, start with one woman as your target. Targets should be aspirational and dynamic.
  • If you think 9 years is too low for director tenure, choose 12 years. 15 years is on the high end, and companies are landing on 12, particularly large, complex companies. But pick a target.
  • If you do not pick a target for director tenure, then you best have a rigorous and consequential peer director assessment regime, whose output is actual director resignations. The evidence is that many boards do not have or do this.
  • Do not assume that your board can draft an inadequate tenure or diversity policy, and that this will go unnoticed. The regulator is offering guidance and examples of robust policies.
  • Own the policy. Draft the policy yourself, or have an independent advisor assist you. Management or company advisors are not independent. They work for you and have a vested interest in keeping you satisfied.
  • Watch for past practices that might bias women, including assertions that your talent pool is shallow. If your talent pool are directors whom you know, rather than the best directors available, then you best enlarge your talent pool.
  • Regulators are giving you an opportunity to craft policies that work for you. Do so. No director is irreplaceable, and directorships are not lifetime appointments. But if you believe a particular director’s tenure is advantageous, use average director tenure or have exceptions built into a policy to give you degrees of freedom.

The regulatory evidence, above, is that boards may be incapable of changing from within. As such, regulators will act when boards do not.

Gender diversity on boards: My discussion notes

I have been asked to serve on a panel in Toronto next week, 20 October, and in NYC on November 12, 2013, to discuss gender diversity on boards.

Here are my discussion notes for both panels if readers are interested: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/79214614/Richard%20LeblancTorNYCGenderDiversityNotesOctNov13.docx

The links to both panels are here:

https://111213newyork.eventbrite.com/

https://www.wxnetwork.com/board-diversity-a-time-for-women-to-lead/

Richard Leblanc

My submission on gender diversity to the Ontario Securities Commission

There was a consultation paper put out by the Ontario Securities Commission, Canada’s largest securities regulator. See the paper here, which calls for responses on page 20, and deadline was extended to Oct 4, 2013.

Here is my letter in Word, here.

Additional notes for Corporate Secretary Think Tank Canada Panel, 2 October 2013, on Gender Diversity on Boards

Additional notes for Corporate Secretary Think Tank Canada Panel, 2 October 2013

Panel: Gender Diversity on Boards, 1:45-3:00pm

Methodology

The following reflects, in no particular order, (i) my work in advising regulators (e.g., OSFI, OSC, AGCO, FiCom, others) in respect of governance (including diversity and director competencies); (ii) interviews with male and female directors concerning diversity; (iii) my advice and assessment of award winning boards known for leading diversity practices; (iv) my work with governance reforms in recommending women to all male boards, and improving director recruitment, assessment and retirement practices. The data collection has included individual director interviews and observing the board in action.

Diversity red flags include, in no particular order:

  1. Self interest by over-boarded and/or over-tenured male (and on occasion, female) Directors who wiggle or refuse to go, buttressed by unsubstantiated anecdotal belief or myth, such as CEOs make better Directors, women are not “qualified,” or there are not enough qualified women Directors to be found, typically within their own networks, etc.;
  2.  Applying industry “experience” to prospective directors and not to incumbent Directors: Blocks women, and regulator has never used word “experience” to my knowledge;
  3.  “CEO” preference, where CEO has never been used by a regulator, nor is this title determinative of director performance, nor is it a competency or a skill: Use “enterprise leadership” or “leadership” instead;
  4. A preference for CEO directors is not evidence-based, including the views of directors themselves: CEOs are seen as dominant, poor listeners, and stretched, and 80% of directors do not believe active CEOs are better directors than non-CEOs: “Are Current CEOs the Best Board Members? CGRP-18,” Stanford University, 2011). Directors who are retired CEOs are not seen as better than average board members by a majority of other directors (ibid.);
  5. Perversion of the competency matrix requirement (NP 58-201 3.12-14), focusing on “experience,” when the regulators (including whom I have advised) use “expertise” (OSFI) and “competency” and “skills” (OSC/CSA); Expertise (my view, not in regulation) = SKEET (skills, knowledge, education, experience and training), meaning experience is but one way to acquire expertise. Competency can be defined as: a cluster of related knowledge, attitudes and skills that affect a major part of one’s job; that correlates to performance; that can be measured against standards; and can be improved via training and development (S. Parry, “Just What is a Competency,” June 1998). Expertise and competency are broad concepts, in other words;
  6. Larger issue permitting self dealing and preference: There is opaqueness and regulatory temperance as to what it means to be “qualified” to be a Director, even on a public company board in Canada. The requirements are minimalist: You do not even need to be financially literate, at least initially, even to serve on an audit committee: You need to be over 18, not bankrupt, and not insane (and found to be such by a court). There are no requirements for continuing education or a code of conduct, unlike other fiduciaries;
  7. Academic evidence is that busy boards (a majority of busy directors on three or more boards) contribute to worse long-term performance and oversight, and that over-tenured directors (beyond nine years) diminish firm value [see my Activist panel notes and references];
  8. Evidence is women augment male director attendance; gender diverse boards allocate more time to monitoring; and “CEO turnover is more sensitive to stock return performance with a greater proportion of women on boards” – in other words, gender diverse boards are more likely to fire a non-performing CEO (Adams and Ferreira, 2008). Note also busy boards (see above) are less likely to fire non-performing CEOs (Fich and Shivdasani, 2006). Keep in mind: The choice of CEO is the most important decision a board makes and has the greatest affect on company performance;
  9. Not recruiting first time directors: Focus on board “experience” (rather than governance expertise) blocks women, whereas 80% of directors serve on only one board and no empirical evidence confirms multiple directorships contribute to performance and oversight (indeed the evidence is the opposite);
  10. Recruiting Directors previously known to the board may be at variance with the Board’s ability to push back (constructively challenge) against each other and Management
  11. “Boards with more directors that didn’t have prior relationships with other directors tend to address affective conflict more quickly than boards where directors had prior relationships.  I believe this is because of the deleterious impact on extra-boardroom relationships – directors with prior relationships don’t address affective conflict because they don’t want their behavior “corrections” to impact the prior business dealings (or relationship) they have outside the boardroom.” (SCharas, PhD candidate, email to the author, whom the author is supervising (disclosure));
  12. In other words, men may be “conflict-averse” (which perpetuates boardroom groupthink and management capture) because there is a greater cost due to relationships (social, economic, political, religious, other etc.) outside of the boardroom, because these Directors, in turn, were recruited because of this relationship and personal knowledge;
  13. “A prior study published in the HBR has found that teams that have women on them out-perform those that don’t for overall team effectiveness.” (ibid., Solange Charas, email to the author, 28 September, 2013) (http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women/).
  14. Lack of robust independent director assessment, with consequences and direct link to re-nomination: perpetuates non/under performing Directors and frustrates renewal:
  15. Blockage of third party reviews of board and director effectiveness, by Manager or a Director: Regulators now are requiring regular third party (objective) reviews;
  16. Boilerplate one sentence disclosure of board effectiveness review;
  17. Lack of Canadian political leadership (until very recently in Ontario): Canada (other than Quebec) is late to boardroom diversification;
  18. Lack of agreement among provinces and stalling of corporate governance guideline development, including director recruitment, expertise and tenure (Canada is one of the few industrial countries that has not updated listed company requirements until before the financial crisis – NP 58-201);
  19. Use of largely binary regulatory guidelines [NP 58-201] governing director recruitment, rather than principles and practices that achieve the objectives of the principles [OSC proposal in 2008]: Leading practices are omitted, and undue deference / influence to those with vested interest in the status quo [read: conflicted], including stakeholders, who may be a vocal minority in the public debate or on a Board;
  20. Gamed or otherwise defective director bios (puffery, positions, roles occupied over a career), rather than disclosure of specific competencies and skills, at board and committee level, underscored by how and when the competency and skill was acquired, and how each competency contributes directly to the value creation plan and oversight of the company and its Management;
  21. Defining diversity expansively / downward to include almost anything (e.g., perspective, thought, viewpoint): Blocks women;
  22. Trade associations, funded by memberships, beholden to status quo members: undue deference to those with vested interests: Blocks women;
  23. Gaming of retirement age (69, 70, 72, now 75) and resistance to term and directorship limits by self-interested Directors;
  24. Resistance to competency matrix disclosure and transparent director nomination and selection practices: inadequate regulatory guidance;
  25. Undue influence of Management on the competency matrix (design and administration), whereas Nomination Committee must be independent (including its work);
  26. Pro forma management friendly governance documents proffered by management counsel or developed by Management (conflict in either case) vs. the Board or Committee or independent counsel, accountable to the Board, not Management;
  27. Gamed or defective director competency matrix (matrix not disclosed; competencies ill-defined, or unbalanced; scale ill-defined; no third party check): permitting fuzziness and back-dooring of preselected candidates, often known to one Director [see above study and “Friends Don’t Let Friends Join Their Board” by Amanda Gerut, Sept 30, 2013 (proprietary – see AgendaWeek.com);
  28. Pre-ranking and not interviewing prospective Directors; Not disclosing origination of a Director (how he or she came to be known to the Board);
  29. Not consulting with major long-term Shareholders on prospective Directors, and institutional shareholders, further, and perhaps more importantly, not having a roster of qualified directors and advancing proxy access;
  30. Search firm who also assists Management (executive search – conflict), or reporting to a particular Director (as opposed to a Committee), or not behaviorally validating Directors through rigorous processes: No code of conduct or industry practices for director search firms; and
  31. Matrix analysis by corporate secretary or general counsel who do not possess independence or expertise to do so.

Richard W. Leblanc, PhD

 

Ontario at last moving towards board diversity

It took Canada’s first female and openly gay Premier, Kathleen Wynne, less than three months to express strong support for gender diversity on corporate boards (see page 291 of the Ontario budget, and a radio interview earlier this week with the Minister Responsible for Women’s Issues, Laurel Broten.

Diversity is not a priority for the Harper government. A committee has been formed to study the issue. Concrete action is needed, not committees or more talk. Numerous countries have pressed forward with diversity legislation since the financial crisis. Canada, with the exception of Quebec, is a noticeable exception. Our numbers are terrible.

Why did Wynne do this?

We have hints in her remarks after she became Premier and in her leadership speech at the Ontario Liberal Convention.

“We are a people rooted in diversity,” she said. “That’s how we came here. That’s who we are.”

“We are all capable of so much… I’ve offered myself to you as leader because of that optimism. Because of that love, that potential, and that possibility. That is what drives me.” [emphasis added].

See at 11:21 here:

“Can a gay woman win?” Wynne went on to say that the Province has changed and that “I do not believe the people of Ontario judge their leaders on the basis of race, sexual orientation, colour or religion. I don’t believe they hold that prejudice in their hearts.” [applause].

“They judge us on our merits, on our abilities, on our expertise, on our ideas. Because that is the way everyone deserves to be judged.”

You could just as easily insert directors and shareholders above:

[I do not believe shareholders judge their directors on the basis of race, sexual orientation, colour or religion…

Shareholders judge us on our merits, on our merits, abilities, and expertise. Because that is the way everyone deserved to be judged.]

For Ontario, where our largest stock exchange is located, this is a welcome breath of fresh air. I have taught and advised 100s of women who are enormously frustrated at the blockage on boards by over-tenured, over-boarded, entrenched pedigree directors. It is high time this changed and “comply or explain” using the Australian model is the best Canadian way to address diversity in my view.

See the Australian definition of diversity and broader diversity website:

“Diversity at ASX refers to all the characteristics that make individuals different from each other. It includes characteristics or factors such as religion, race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age or any other area of potential difference. Diversity at ASX is about the commitment to equality and the treating of all individuals with respect.”

Ontario should define diversity explicitly and then have companies disclose their objectives and progress against that definition, both for boards and for senior management. It is important that diversity be interpreted as more than gender and Wynne’s background may have had a part to play in favoring the Australian model.

Business icon Warren Buffett has said women are the key to America’s prosperity. Richard Branson has weighed in on why we need more women in the boardroom.

After observing dozens of board meetings over the last fifteen years and interviewing hundreds of directors, the dialogue and behavior changes with women in boardrooms. More and different questions get asked, groupthink is avoided, and people come prepared. I have yet to see a single woman unprepared for a board meeting. I have seen dozens of men.

Directors should be selected on the basis of merit, not personal relationships.

What is needed is political leadership. We have this in the new Ontario Premier.

Diversifying Corporate Boards ~ How to Do It

There is a movement to diversify boards of directors in almost all industrial democracies as a result of the financial crisis. It has been termed “the number one issue in corporate governance.”

Diversity extends beyond women to include ethnicity, age and other areas. Depending on the survey and country, women on corporate boards have hovered anywhere from 10-15 % for several years. The statistics for non-Caucasians are worst, at about 3%.

Boards surprisingly are a self-selected and homogenous group. There is little ability for shareholders who own companies to propose or remove directors. The qualifications to be a director are minimal. There are no requirements for ongoing education and no license to practice, unlike other professionals such as lawyers, accountants or doctors. Past CEOs are preferred on boards, but the evidence does not support CEOs making better directors. And this practice discriminates against women and perpetuates reciprocity and favoritism.

Boards are a fixed size averaging about 7-10 directors depending on the company. Directors nominate people they know and feel comfortable with. To bring someone “different” on is, well, different, and someone else would need to go off the board. The pressure for the status quo is fraught with inertia and self-interest.

Governments have stepped in. On the one hand is the US approach, which is to require companies to disclose a “diversity plan.” On the other hand are full-fledged quotas, like the one proposed in Europe to have 40% of boards composed of women. In between both approaches is to have companies define diversity and objectives for diversifying their board, and report annually on progress. This seems to be the best approach.

The argument for diversity on boards is a “business case,” although there is no clear evidence that diverse boards create greater shareholder value. There is however evidence that diverse groups make better decisions and mitigate group-think, which is the tendency for similar groups to decide on the basis of agreement and social cohesiveness rather than the best decision, which could create dissent at least initially. There is also evidence that women make better monitors of management, and that performance of men increases when women join boards.

The other business case for diversity is a simple talent issue. By restricting boards to one type or class of director, boards are not making full use of available talent to match their stakeholder base. Women in many industries make the majority of purchase decisions. North American boards sorely need international directors from China, India and other huge markets. The last argument is perhaps the strongest – morality. Discriminating on the basis of prohibited grounds such as gender, race, military status, and sexual orientation or otherwise is not only unfair but also illegal.

So how do boards diversify themselves? What are leading practices the best boards are doing? Three steps:

Step 1: Recruit directors solely on the basis of competency, not whom you know

A board is a team. Team members have different abilities. “Competency” can include experience, skills, knowledge and behaviors. A good board draws up a matrix of competencies it needs on one axis and individual directors along the other. It defines the competencies and the scale, and then individual directors assess themselves relative to each other. If done right, it is apparent which directors may not be needed, and what competencies are needed in future directors.

Step 2: Recruit directors whom you do not know personally and who are first-time directors

Once you have the desired director competencies, the next step is to recruit directors who fill this gap. Cast your net wide and go beyond personal and professional networks. Have a diligent way of short-listing resumes and ask candidates to address the specific competencies you need. Conduct background checks, reference checks and individual interviews for open spots, as you would any other management position. Don’t be afraid to short-list diverse candidates whom you likely will not know, including first-time directors who have stellar qualifications your board needs. Most directors now serve on one and at most two boards; so admitting first-time directors is very common.

Step 3: Link director time on the board to performance

Have onboarding, coaching and development for new directors. Then, assess each director on his or her contribution at regular intervals. This is difficult to do if done in a superficial way or through a self-analysis given unconscious biases. Have a rigorous director performance assessment with assistance from an expert third party, and link the results to re-nomination. Each director competes for his or her own position every year. No guaranteed tenure or indefinite service.

Then, you should disclose the basis upon which directors are recruited, developed and assessed so shareholders can vote meaningfully on each director at the time of renewal or removal. This sets the tone that the board holds itself responsible and accountable to shareholders in the same way it expects management to be accountable to itself. Your board and organization will be the better for it.

Lastly, expect that a current director who objects to any of the above best practices is doing so out of self-interest. When he objects (and it most often will be a “he”), it could include phrases such as “No one knows this person” or “This person is not qualified like we are,” which is code for entrenchment, ask this director to phrase all objections with the following language: “I believe it is in the best interests of the organization that…” This should address the objection.

Thirty-Five Canadian Boards with No Female Directors

In the remaining days of summer before the Labour Day weekend, given that July and August are somewhat slow months, I had an idea – a fun idea.

I thought about how many Canadian boards still have zero women on them. I did a search, assisted by some publicly available Catalyst data. As it turns out, there are many. I did not do an exhaustive search but here is what I came up with (there are more). I tried to cover industry and geographical spread, as well as high-lighting some recognizable Canadian companies such as Air Canada and others. Here is a list of 35 of the top 500 Canadian companies that are, shall we say, lacking given the movement to diversifications of corporate boards in several countries.

Look at all the men, and in most cases white men! Where are the women and minority directors? Do we not have qualified diverse directors to sit on corporate boards in Canada? (And note a number of the boards below contain men who are governance experts and who promote boardroom diversity!)

407 International Board

Air Canada

Algoma Central Corporation

Baytex Energy Corp.

Bruce Power

Canaccord Financial Inc.

Canfor Corporation

Catalyst Paper

CCL Industries Inc.

Central Fund of Canada Ltd.

Dollarama

Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited

FirstService Corp.

Genworth MI Canada

GMP Capital Inc.

Great Canadian Gaming Corporation

Hatch Ltd.

IAMGOLD Corp.

Inmet Mining Corporation

McCain Foods

Mitel Networks Corporation

North American Construction Group

Pacific Rubiales Energy Corp.

Patheon Inc.

Petrobank

Precision Drilling Corporation

Reitmans (Canada) Limited

Rocky Mountain Dealerships Inc.

Savanna Energy Services Corp.

SEMAFO

Tembec Inc.

The Jim Pattison Group

Toromont Industries Ltd.

Woodbine Entertainment Group

Yamana Gold Inc.

Yellow Media Inc.

Caveat: The above search was internet-based and may not be current. I also attempted to glean male-vs-female through first names and Google image searches when necessary. If I have made a mistake, I am happy to correct it and apologize!

Here is my offer to the chair of the board or chair of the nominating committee of any company below. If you are serious about addressing boardroom diversity, I will put you in contact – either myself or via another expert third party – with women who have business and C-suite experience in your industry. I may revisit this list in the future and hopefully you will not be on it!

 

Richard Leblanc

 

 

 

Diversification of Corporate Boards – Suggestions for Action

Last week, I presented “eight traps” limiting the diversification of corporate boards. Here I present some proposed solutions.

Leadership by Shareholders

Major institutional shareholders should commit resources to develop an electronic registry of prospective directors based on skills, experience and attributes. The technology exists and doing so will begin the dialogue of shareholders proposing prospective directors. In Canada, the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance (“CCGG”) and Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board should develop registries. See how CalSTRS and CalPERS have done it.

Investor groups should propose model diversity policies, with best practice language, for investee boards to adopt, similar to what was done for majority voting and say on pay. Women and minority groups should be explicitly mentioned in the policy.

Leadership by Companies

Companies should disclose how prospective directors are assessed for board membership. This disclosure should include the use of a competency matrix, assessment of skills and experiences, candidate origination, advertising of board vacancies, short-listing, interviews, recommendation to shareholders, and mentoring and on-boarding practices. This disclosure should be public and on the company’s website.

Companies should adopt self-objectives for diversifying their board and senior management team, and disclose to shareholders progress in this regard annually.

Leadership by Regulators

Regulators should consider imposing a tenure limit of 9 years on company boards, as is done in other countries, including the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong. Regulators should provide guidance to companies on defining diversity and its benefits, including on debate and decision-making within the boardroom.

Regulators should provide guidance to companies on the transparency and disclosure of director nomination practices (see above), and give greater consideration to the role of investors can and should play in selecting and removing directors.

Leadership by Search Firms

Search firms should develop and adopt a rigorous and readily disclosed firm- or industry-wide code of principles and practice. The code should address methods firms use for validating candidate competencies; initial selection, short-listing and recommendation practices; conflicts of interest; confidentiality; remuneration policy; client loyalty; quality of service; assurance controls; and enforcement.

Leadership by Industry Associations

The National Association of Corporate Directors (“NACD”), Institute of Corporate Directors (“ICD”) Institute of Directors, and large shareholder associations (including pension plans and unions) should disclose CEO/President succession plans (referencing the skills and experience of the next CEO); the total compensation of the incumbent CEO; and the internal pay equity ratios of other officers within the organization. This disclosure is regarded as best practice for listed companies, and director and shareholder groups should follow suit. Such disclosure would provide member information and interest prospective CEOs (internal or external). The CCGG, NACD and ICD nominating committees should give consideration to appointing a next female or minority CEO with a value creation background (e.g., investor or entrepreneurial) as opposed to a compliance one (e.g., accounting or legal).

Industry associations should develop robust competency matrixes for company boards to use in selecting directors.

Some of the above suggestions may be controversial, but different models and techniques are needed if progress is to be made.

Eight Traps of Boardroom Diversity

There are myths and vested interests in the movement towards boardroom diversity now underway in several countries.

In this first of two blog posts, I consider the “traps” and embedded myths. In the second blog post to follow, in about a week’s time, I will propose solutions.

Here are the eight “traps” as I call them.

 

1.         The “Defining diversity downward” trap

“Diversity” itself as a word is used to shape the debate. Australia has a succinct definition: “‘Diversity’ includes gender, age, ethnicity and cultural background.” If diversity is undefined by a regulator (such as in the US), or there is inadequate guidance provided to companies, then companies can define diversity to suit their own agendas, such as diversity of “perspective” or “training” or “educational background.” This leads to the unintended consequence of a board of almost all white males claiming itself to be diverse when it is not. To drive this point home, I usually post a cartoon of white males sitting around a board table stating that they believe they are diverse because they attended different private schools.

“Moving the Needle,” which is the subtitle for the diversity debate favored by a few groups, is another example suggesting minimalist change.

“Competencies” and “attributes” (or qualifications for directors) also need to be defined and disclosed more fully, on a director-by-director basis, because these criteria for director selection have implications for the diversity movement. “CEO,” for example, is not a competency. (See the “We want a CEO” Trap below.)

2.         The “Business case” trap

“Show me the business case,” opponents to diversity argue, and proponents attempt to advance. The fact is that peer-reviewed empirical evidence is mixed in the effect that adding women to boards has upon corporate financial performance, as is the effect of boards themselves upon financial performance. Engaging in this debate is a distracting non-winning proposition. Perhaps the business case for men sitting on boards should also be established. The case for diversifying boards should be based on the effect on debate and decision-making within the boardroom, and on the full use of available talent and equity arguments (read: it is the right thing to do), not on downstream financial outputs.

3.         The “Be careful” trap

When women directors are advanced, a response received is “Be careful, as we need qualified directors” (or words carefully spoken or written to this effect). This assertion lacks any empirical support whatsoever. It was offered in Quebec when the Premiere mandated that women must receive parity on Quebec boards and the cultural make up must match that of communities in which the company operates. Proponents of this myth should bear the burden of establishing how women or minority directors are not “qualified” to sit on boards, and indeed what it means to be “qualified” to sit on a board.

When visible minorities as directors are advanced, such as African, Hispanic/Latinos and Asian Americans (whose proportion on boards are in the 1-3% range depending on the survey), the other “be careful” argument I receive is, to use the words of an Assistant Secretary of a large US company “corporate boards should not be designed to be all things to all people. It’s not necessarily in the best interest of a company to try to make the board look like the General Assembly of the United Nations, the U.S. Congress, or U.S. Supreme Court.”

My response to arguments like the above has been: “Listen, the numbers have flat-lined for women and minorities at 15-16% and 1-3% respectively for some time, so if and when boards look like the UN or we have too many women (which will likely never occur in my lifetime), then we can talk about hypothetical arguments. Until then, let’s confine ourselves to the evidence and the here-and-now. And, having multi-culturally diverse boards looking more like communities and emerging markets is especially important if a multinational company does business around the world.

4.         The “Entrenchment” trap

Stanford researchers content that only 2% of directors who step down are dismissed or not re-elected, out of a total universe of 50,000 directors. In other words, 98% of directors retire voluntarily. This needs to change so there is greater board renewal and turnover. Term limits of nine years are now instituted in the UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. North American regulators should consider the effect that prolonged tenure has on director independence. Director tenure should be based on performance and it should be easier for shareholders to nominate and remove directors. Any board policy restricting entrenchment should not contain “grandfathering” (exempting existing directors) and should be decided by disinterested directors (and preferably shareholders) unaffected by the policy and free from undue influence of other directors or management.

5.         The “We want a CEO” trap

The expressed preference for CEO-directors (current or former) is based on a myth unsupported by research that CEOs make better directors. (It may be that CEOs prefer like-minded and sympathetic supporters.) Giving primacy to CEOs also has the effect of excluding diverse directors.

According to a study, 80% of directors believe active CEOs are no better than non-CEO directors. CEOs tend to be stretched, bossy, poor collaborators, and do not listen. Research also supports tenuous advantage of CEO-directors. Also, only 46% of directors believe former CEOs are above average.

“We want a CEO” may be “code” for women or minorities need not apply.

6.         The “It’s whom you know” trap

According to course materials I am using in my Harvard corporate governance course this summer, unlike executive recruitment, where interviews occur of a short list of candidates occur prior to making a choice, in director recruitment, candidates are instead ranked (1, 2, 3 and so on), and NOT interviewed. But rather, the first candidate is approached for a board position. The second and third candidates are approached only if the preceding candidate said “no.” There is no clear rationale for this anomalous recruitment practice and it has the unfortunate effect of excluding unknown but highly qualified candidate directors. It forces women into hyper-network mode because no interactive validation of competencies exist or opportunities to meet the nominating committee. This unfortunate practice perpetuates the “it’s whom you know,” mentality towards board directorship, rather than one’s competency and skills. Everyone loses when directorship is based on patronage, favors or nepotism. The board is weaker as a result.

7.         The “Prior experience” trap

There is no evidence of which I am aware confirming that first-time directors are less effective than long-serving directors, or the that the latter are more effective. The focus should be on underlying competencies and attributes and track record of accomplishment. See “Traditional benchmarks keep many women off boards…” Governance is a learned sport, just like anything else. And it is not rocket-science. The fact of the matter is that search firms and nominating committees should focus their efforts on validating and assuring competencies and intrinsics necessary to be a good director, such as integrity, leadership, mindset, industry track record, value creation process, shareholder representation and culture of equity ownership, communication, commitment and specific functional skills needed by the board – and not on an arbitrary metric of prior experience that may or may not relate to the above. The sooner this occurs, the better.

8.         The “Pipeline” or “Shallow pool” trap

Women have not made it to senior enough levels and the director talent pool is too shallow, is the final myth. Show me the evidence that this is the case. Perhaps boards are not looking hard enough. In my experience, which includes resume and profile assessment of some of the most senior C-suite women in North America, many of these candidates are markedly superior to the lesser-qualified incumbent directors. Perhaps the “pipeline” is full with qualified director candidates, and it is a mindset recruiting issue more than anything. As Deepak Shukla writes, “From my experience, every time I have attempted to start a discussion thread on the Institute of Corporate Directors’ group (mainly comprised of sitting board directors) on the subject of diversity, I have been greeted with a cold shoulder and an utter lack of responses!”

Join my blog next week where I will propose solutions to address the eight traps above, and action that should be taken by shareholders, search firms, nominating committees, industry associations and regulators to propel boardroom diversity into action.

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