A STATE-OWNED ENTERPRISE IN THE MIDDLE EAST REQUIRED A DISCREET BOARD ASSESSMENT TO IDENTIFY AND IMPLEMENT SUBSTANTIAL IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR ITSELF, WITHOUT PUBLIC EXPOSURE.

THE CHALLENGE
The Board of a state-owned enterprise wanted to substantially improve its governance oversight so as to better contribute towards the creation of long term sustainable shareholder value. The approach needed to ensure the contribution and buy-in of all Board Members to the majority of recommendations and all recommendations needed to be practical and implementable.entrepreneurship in their investment subsidiaries.

THE SOLUTION
Governance Creed used its BoardRoom Advance Diagnostic Tool to carry out a collective quantitative diagnostic of the Board and followed this with confidential individual one-to-one Board Member discussions. The method ensures the anonymity of individual Board Member contributions whilst the Board benefited from the collective input of all.

The diagnostic and Board interviews led to the clear identification of numerous challenges including:

• Board packs were to large, contained unnecessary details and distracted from the real issues.

• Whilst the Board had Board Committees, all Committee discussions were entirely repeated at the Board level, creating time inefficiencies and frustrations.

• The Board considered it spent a lot of time on firefighting and not enough time on Strategy.

• The Board felt that there was a lack of alignment between its skills and the skills needed to develop and supervise the implementation of the organisation’s strategy for the next 3 years.

• The Board lacked a strong relationship with the Executive and felt that they may be perceived as “an ivory tower”

THE BENEFITS
Over the next 6 months the Board implemented a series of practical recommendations, each targeting one of the numerous challenges identified, and witnessed a direct improvement in its performance. Clarified delegations of authority, Board strategy retreats and numerous other recommendations were implemented.