Jacket Copy

If you’re on a board of directors, you’ve prob­ably already encountered myriad disturbing problems that are threatening the productivity of your meetings: one of your colleagues falls asleep during meetings; another is routinely late and ill-prepared; the board is split into warring factions; and crucial decisions are rushed with little consideration or discussion. As a result, you’re becoming more and more frustrated while less constructive work is actually getting done. Your board has festering problems, and it needs help fast—before the annoying conflicts and potentially destructive behaviors that can dam­age even the best organizations take their toll. Fortunately, there’s one author who can help you get your board in line.

With more than twenty years of experience as a board effectiveness consultant, Eli Mina has helped hundreds of clients negotiate the often complicated and contentious world of board­­room decision-making. In 101 Boardroom Problems

and How to Solve Them, he offers smart solu­tions for dozens of problem situations that can prevent a board from making good decisions for their organizations, communities, shareholders, and con­­stituents. Mina addresses scores of real board problems, reveals their root causes, and provides the best options for solving them. He shows you how to reduce the damage these prob­lems can cause, and also offers preventive mea­sures to reduce the frequency of these situations and conflicts.

Conveniently organized by problem areas, the book offers practical tips on how to deal with and fairly resolve situations such as:

• -Factions and infighting among members
• -Disorganized and chaotic meetings
• -Nitpicking and obsessive attention to minutiae
• -Ineffective and incompetent chairs and CEOs
• -Power-hungry CEOs, board members, and chairs
• -Conflicts of interest and other ethics issues
• -Bullying – by members, chairs, and constituent groups
• -Problems with management (e.g., microman­agement, violating the chain of command, and overbearing CEOs)
• -Groupthink, partisan politics, and indecision
•  

The book also includes a handy board effectiveness audit, board evaluation tools, surprising myths about the rules of order, and helpful tools for both meeting chairs and participants.

This easy-to-use guide will help you bring order and sense to any boardroom and enable the best possible decisions to be made. Running a meeting should be painless, productive, and har­monious. This is the one book that will show you how to accomplish all of that.

Eli Mina is a board effec­tiveness consultant and an expert on conflict resolution, rules of order, and meeting management. He runs his own consulting and training practice, and is the author of several books on meetings and effective decision-making, including The Complete Handbook of Business Meetings. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.