High Performance Boards

CHAPTER 5The Second Pillar: Information Architecture

October 2016: Joanne Marker was up late in her home office, preparing for a board meeting the following week at Cynched, a telecommunications company.

After going over her notes from the previous quarter, made on the basis of news clippings and her daily Google alerts, Joanne opened the information package from the board portal on her iPad. She highlighted key figures and elements of the firm's strategy, typing her questions as notes into the document. The past quarter's financial results were there, including all the breakdowns, along with notes on broader market trends.

Joanne then clicked open a podcast from the CEO and made a few notes: closure of a plant in Malaysia, possible acquisition of a small social media firm in Berlin, possible restructuring. She read the risk report in detail, questioning whether the provision set aside for a cyber-security breach was sufficient.

A digest of relevant tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn comments also caught her eye – she saw on Glassdoor that a few bitter former employees were badmouthing a product release as being poor quality. Joanne concluded by going through her Hootsuite and checking on RelSci whether she had a direct connection to some of the complainers. She made a note to call her contact in marketing – as approved by the board – to see what the internal chatter was. Saving her notes directly into the document, she logged off the portal.

Joanne remembered receiving ...