Boards can often have in their charter the need for an independent evaluation of their Board Composition and Skills to ensure it has the best mix of members.
This Skills Matrix Review needs to be validated against the organisation’s Vision for the Future, it’s Strategic plan and objectives for relevance. At Ignitability we meet with the Chair and CEO initially to explore answers to the following types of questions –
- With the Vision for the Future, what kind of Board with what kind of directors will be needed?
- Future scenarios and the next big “strategic” leap that is beyond the scope of the current strategic plan – what skills or experience will be needed here?
- Current issues and challenges – what skills or experience are required to deal with these
- Prioritise the requirements and rate these according to risk, opportunity and strategic importance
- Decide on the skills needed and where they are best to come from, i.e., board, management, consultants etc.
The information gathered determines what skills are required, what weighting should be applied to the various skills and the level of experience the Board needs to deliver on its responsibilities. Then we undertake an assessment of the current Board members’ skills and experience against the matrix and determine whether any gaps exist.
An additional available option is an online benchmarked Board Effectiveness Survey and a corresponding benchmarked Board Effectiveness Report that shows how a board has benchmarked overall against a database of similar organisations, in each of 20 factors that are important for a board’s effectiveness and for each survey item. All ratings by directors of the Board Effectiveness Survey items are included together to provide one average rating in relation to each survey item. Ignitability partners with Insync BoardSurveys for this tool.
