We live in a fast-paced world, where the only constant seems to be change itself. Messages of the latest and greatest scheme or product or idea bombard our senses daily, imploring us forward, towards "progress". Yet in some quarters change actually occurs very slowly—at glacial speeds even—despite the best intentions of enthusiastic advocates. The corporate boardroom is one such quarter.

I've been reading Making it Happen, Sir John Harvey-Jones' reflections on leadership. Harvey-Jones, a successful British businessman and industrialist, was perhaps best known for leadership of British firm ICI, culminating in his chairmanship from 1982 to 1987. His insights are timeless, because they continue to be relevant today, 26 years after they were first written. To illustrate the point, here is a selection of salient comments that Harvey-Jones made about boards in 1988:
  • Every member of a board shares a co-equal responsibility for the future of the company. Board members are chosen from amongst the most successful executives ... understandable tendency when you first join a board ... for everyone to assume that you will 'pick it up as you go along'.
  • Boards do not easily set themselves the sort of criteria of success that they would unhesitatingly apply to every other part of the business. Yet unless a board continuously criticises the way it is working ... it is extraordinarily difficult for it to improve its performance.
  • Many boards are quite unclear as to whether they are merely a coordinating committee, or whether their primary responsibility is to the group as a whole.
  • It is important not to go in to a meeting without some clarity in your own mind as to what you are expecting to achieve. If you go because the meeting has been called, with little personal aim, one should ask oneself why one is going at all.
  • Sadly, it is perfectly possible for boards of directors to meet regularly and never discuss any creative business at all. (Harvey-Jones describes this as a "severe abnegation" of both personal and collective responsibility.)

Do any of these points sound familiar? They should do, because they still characterise the behaviours and attributes of many boards in 2014. Why have boards not embraced the same enthusiasm for change and improvement as has been demonstrated elsewhere in the business community? It's high-time boards took stock.