We believe that best practices are the backbone of truly great board work, and essential for agile leadership. They distill the most effective thinking and methodology into actionable insights, making anyone who applies their wisdom better at what they do. Indeed, what business can afford anything but best practices driven action amidst the chaos and confusion that characterizes the modern business era? 

When we looked around at the current generation of board portals, we couldn’t believe how little attention was paid to industry best practices. Maybe it’s because our founding team has well over 100 years of collective C-level and boardroom experience, so we are used to thinking in terms of best practices. Maybe it’s because our CEO literally wrote the book on the high performing boardroom so they are part of every conversation we have. Or maybe it’s just a natural outcome of focusing on our mission of providing new tools and playbooks to enable boards and c-suites to be agile in the face of the disruption and chaos that defines today’s business environment. 

Focusing on best practices makes our software better. Where board books & the current generation of board portals are basic tools that can help, we go the extra mile to craft intelligent software that never stops making the people using our software effortlessly better at what they do.

Here’s how.

1. We Begin with The End In Mind

Cloud Concinnity® is built around the interactions that leaders need to do great work, combining role-based document access with our next-level interaction functionality. All too often we see boards stumble over the challenges of communication and information access, when empowering stakeholders to do their part smoothly & efficiently as part of the larger whole should be table stakes. Because we prioritize fully informed decisions, we treat access to information and the smooth integration of that information into communication as a foundational best practice. 

We know that deep, broad, and integrated communication can be difficult to curate in the boardroom, so we build the best practices it takes into how our software function. Because different people need different levels of access to different types of information, we crafted a role-based information system that allows granular permissions. Because we know how important it is for everyone to stay on the same page every step of the way, we created a robust system of automated workflows & communication tools so everyone can work securely & up-to-date anytime, anywhere, on any device. Indeed, everything leaders need to make fully informed decisions is built in.

2. We Feature As-You-Go Guidance

We know that boardroom stakeholders — whether directors, company leadership, or private investors — are busy people. That’s why we build industry best practices into the DNA of our tool. Instead of having to hunt for the newest, best ways of doing things across a range of disciplines like finance, HR and compliance, we do the hunting and build the answers into the code of our software. When there is cutting-edge thinking on a process or challenge, we’ll tell you about it. When there is a better way to do a task or a series of tasks, we’ll show you how.

In practice, this means that when you log into Cloud Concinnity®, you’ll see suggestions from our founding team pop up alongside tasks, offering guidance on how to approach the type of tasks on your plate. You’ll find a smart library full of white papers and research that curate the best thinking out there so you will always be sharpening the spear. And you’ll find pre-built workflows for things like making new board director hires and preparing for compliance audits that lay out all the necessary steps for you so that nothing falls through the cracks. 

It’s because we think of best practices and better processes as integral to powerful, agile board work. They are not nice to have things that get tacked on when you have the time — they are integral parts of doing great work for your company.

3. We Architect Meaningful Feedback

The era of decisions without measurement is over. Without understanding outcomes and peer feedback, how can we know what’s working and how to improve? Decisions must be based on data. This kind of best practice is a challenge to build into the work of remote teams where a diverse set of stakeholders is typically on asynchronous schedules, and at the same time it is the only way to find that next level of high performance. 

We build meaningful feedback into Cloud Concinnity® in two main ways: a robust dashboard to reflect company performance and a 360° feedback tool. The dashboard means that key company metrics are available at a glance for every leadership stakeholder who logs in. Keeping tabs over time rather than simply checking in a few times a year allows for better communication and risk management, not to mention a valuable foundation for strategic vision. Our proprietary board scorecard is the first of its kind to eliminate the need for outside evaluation, opting instead to give the power to the board itself, encouraging honest and ongoing feedback based on agreed-upon metrics and objectives. Whatever initial discomfort may come along with the shift will soon give way to streamlined communication and team effectiveness. 

With evolving best practices at the core of what we do, we are committed to giving you software that empowers better decisions and agile leadership, and growing along with your team as those best practices change over time.