Why Chairs are Essential Pieces of Furniture
By Simon Acland
lag far behind is in their tendency to combine the roles of Chairman and CEO and their lack of understanding of the benefits that dividing the roles can bring.
A
So it was with interest that as I was waiting in a headhunter’s office last week (yes, of course I am open to interesting and lucrative offers…) I found myself reading an article about the trend in corporate America towards splitting the Chairman/CEO job, in large companies at least.
s a European it always hurts me to have to admit that the Americans are ahead of us in the venture capital game. But one way in which they
Inevitably though those dreadful words ‘good corporate governance’ recurred too many times in the article. To my mind good corporate governance is the last reason for dividing the roles. And I really mean ‘the last reason’, not that it is no reason at all. But if corporate governance is made the first reason for having an independent Chairman, it seems to imply that his most important function is to act as a brake on the CEO’s selfish, mercenary and possibly dishonest tendencies. It would not be surprising, then, if the CEO were to view the Chairman with some suspicion, as some sort of corporate policeman, or a glorified internal auditor. It is likely to get the relationship off on the wrong foot, or to make the CEO resist the appointment of a Chairman at all. The idea that appointing a Chairman is good corporate governance is probably the main reason why some companies do not have one.
For far more practical reasons, when I was an active VC investor, the model I always preferred was to have a genuinely independent Chairman, an experienced individual who would play an impartial role between the management team and the investor group. But more often than not, when a business came to us for money they would not have a Chairman already in place.
I would advise an entrepreneur to get a Chairman for himself or herself (you see, by using the proper word
29 entrepreneurcountry
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58