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by forapurpose 3086 days ago
The story depicts a lovely bohemenie and spirit of agreeableness; it sounds like it's almost enforced:

> You need to have a cohesive thought process to move the company forward.

> if a board member isn’t performing well, we get rid of them

> [I’ve] sat on boards with some amazing people who have done some amazing things in the world.

What a wonderful club. It doesn't sound like one conducive to dissenting opinions and disagreement. With so much at stake - so many jobs, so much money, and such an impact on communities - it seems that harmony would take a back seat to asking difficult, challenging, critical questions. The interviewee doesn't mention any of that happening. Also:

> Each year, all of our names are put up for voting by the shareholders. Shareholders say yes or no and vote [to keep the director]. If the shareholders vote yes, we have automatically put our name in for resignation and the board determines if they are going to accept [the resignation].

Shareholders almost never vote no. Effectively, the system above means that the board determines its own members. Again, the board member who challenges consensus or engages in threatening oversight might not last long (or be invited to join another board).

It confirms other things I've read about boards, but certainly someone knows more than I do ...

1 comments

C'mon man. This is like a kid asking their parents how the marriage is going.

You're not going to hear about the affair or addiction or whatever dirt you're looking for. But it'll still be educational just to know the time they spend on things and what perspectives people try to maintain.

Honestly, this area is such a crazy mystery to the working class (including most white collar workers like myself) that I'm grateful to the mystery guy for giving the interview.

I found the interview to be valuable, too, for the reasons you say. I should have mentioned that; good point.

> This is like a kid asking their parents how the marriage is going.

Only to a limited degree. A good journalist asks challenging questions and gets their interviewee to talk. The board member was anonymous, after all, so they could have spoken more openly and even generally about these kinds of problems. The interviewer asked easy questions and the board member painted a nice picture. (In fairness, I don't have a right to expect more (or anything at all) from some guy's blog; it's not the NY Times; so a genuine thank you is owed to Jay Shah!)