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Today's boards need to create value—not just protect it.
Boards have long carried the essential work of overseeing performance, managing risk, fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities, and ensuring that organizations remain on track. In a world of growing complexity and uncertainty, that foundation matters more than ever—but it is no longer enough.
In Value-Creating Boards, Jill Ader and Pamela Warren, senior leaders at Egon Zehnder, argue that the most important governance work is understanding who directors must become, individually and collectively, to create value that endures. Rather than viewing the board simply as a governance mechanism, they show how it can become a powerful source of perspective, imagination, judgment, and collective intelligence to meet an organization's most consequential challenges.
Achieving this requires boards to develop the human capabilities of the people around the table—and to recognize the board is a constellation of relationships, dynamics, and interdependencies. Drawing on decades of experience and work with thousands of board chairs, directors, and CEOs, Ader and Warren show how leaders can unlock energy and create healthy patterns in this system.
Value-Creating Boards presents a practical four-part framework that enables boards to operate at a greater strategic altitude, create space for deeper thinking, challenge their own assumptions, and bring more of themselves and their collective wisdom to the work.
The four practices—Catalyze, Align, Integrate, and Exchange—equip boards and their members with the tools to strengthen their roles; to connect purpose, vision, strategy, and values; and to improve the quality of dialogue between directors, chairs, CEOs, and management.
Filled with candid stories from some of the world's most experienced board leaders, practical exercises, and ideas tested in real boardrooms, Value-Creating Boards will help boards move from asking Are we managing risk well? to something much more powerful: What becomes possible because this board is here?
Jill Ader is a partner and former global chair at Egon Zehnder. She has held numerous leadership roles at the firm, including leading the London office, overseeing the global consumer practice, and founding the firm's CEO practice. She also cofounded the firm's Chair Program, and the Executive Breakthrough Program for CEO Development in partnership with Mobius. Jill's focus today is on coaching and development journeys for boards, CEOs, and executives.
Pamela Warren is a partner the cohead of Egon Zehnder's North American board and CEO practice. Over several decades, she has advised on board and CEO succession, chair and CEO development, board recruitment, and board effectiveness, helping leaders navigate some of the most consequential moments in the life of an organization. She is also a board trustee and vice chair of Canada’s largest health system.