How to Discover Your Board’s Hidden Strengths & Weaknesses

Building a high performance board begins with understanding what skills your board is strong in today and what skills gaps you need to fill tomorrow. Like Goldilocks searched for juuuuust the right porridge, every board must search for just the right director makeup. Right size, right composition, and right structure support boardroom harmony. Wrong size, composition, or structure can mean boardroom breakdown.

While finding that perfect boardroom magic will always involve some intangibles, we believe there is a way to quantify the foundation for success. There is a code that can be cracked based on information you can put on paper.

The key is to utilize a board skills matrix.

Utilizing the Board Skills Matrix

We look at functional skills, core competencies, and other critical criteria, assessing each board member to get a sense of the board’s overall skillset. Once quantified, we can understand where the board as a whole is strong versus where there are skillset gaps and start to create a long-term plan.

With this information, we can be more precise in risk management and crisis planning, better allocate resources between meetings, and understand what we are looking for in new board directors down the line.

Here is a sample of what a board matrix might look like:

We invite you to take the board matrix challenge and see what you learn about the strengths and weaknesses of your board.

This is an example of the kind of best-practices-thinking we build into the DNA of Cloud Concinnity®, and we hope it jumpstarts a fresh way to understand the potential of your board.

You are welcome to download our matrix spreadsheet to use for your own board, or to use as a model for creating your own matrix. if you would like access to the linked sheet, simply request access from our administrator when you are on the linked spreadsheet. If you cannot access this sheet or want a different version, email us here.

Click here for an introduction into what Cloud Concinnity can do for your board.