Creating Effective Boards for Private Enterprises: Meeting the Challenges of Continuity and Competition

I run a small ($20M sales) manufacturing company, and have had an outside Board for about 13 years. I was recently asked to prepare a 3-hour presentation about Boards for a group of small-business CEOs, so I purchased three books to help me with the presentation. In spite of having years of experience with Boards, I learned a lot from these books. They are: 5 Steps to Board Success, Mark Daly. A very methodical, step-by-step approach to creating a Board. Excellent if you are entirely new to the process, particularly for small companies, but a bit weak on some topics (e.g., committees) for larger companies. Includes a variety of forms and example documents that would really help get started. 5 stars for small, closely-held companies, 4 stars overall. Creating Effective Boards for Private Enterprises, John Ward. An excellent book covering in much more detail than "5 Steps" the nature of Boards, their duties and obligations, etc. Not as strong on the mechanics of forming a Board, but very strong on how to maximize the value of your board. 5 Stars if you already have a Board, 4 stars overall. Improving Corporate Boards, Ralph Ward. Appropriate for larger corporations with functioning boards. Many good topics and bits of information, plus a lot of references to web resources, with whole chapters on audit and compensation committees. Is the only one of the three to give minutes and document retention adequate coverage. Includes a chapter on how to become a Board member, and how to improve your performance if you are one. 4 Stars - good info but aimed at larger, already-functioning boards. A bit haphazard in organization. I heavily flagged pages in all three books, and learned a lot from them all. Each has a different focus, so the amount of overlap was surprisingly small.

As a professional planning consultant, I've recommended this book many times to my clients. It is the best, most thorough and step-by-step map of the process of putting a board together that is available to my knowledge. Anyone with a closely held company who is considering putting an outside board together (and most should), this is the place to start.

This is an extremely practical, thorough, study about how private companies can use boards to enhance their governance systems. The fact that a family owned compay does not have the legal obligation to have a board obscures the fact that boards are extremely useful management instruments. Prof. Ward shows the way to using this instrument efectively.