Back to the Drawing Board [antikvár]

Preface Our collaboration began in 1999 when we first sat down to share our separate experiences working with boards. From this initial conversation grew the idea to create this book, and it's truly the result of an equal effort between a consultant and a professor. During the intervening years we have continued to work separately as board members and as consultants to boards and have had numerous conversations together about our experiences and about the ideas that are articulated in the following pages. As we were in the midst of committing our ideas to our computers in 2001 with chapters being e-mailed halfway around the world, the corporate governance scandals and excesses were revealed in North America and elsewhere. For us the fact that boards were culpable for some of these problems was an unexpected opportunity. Our position from the start was that while boards had been improving in many countries over the previous decade, too many were still unable to carry out their mandate effectively. As we began to write, we believed our initial task would be to convince readers of these facts. After Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, et al., we suddenly faced a new challenge. We had to balance two conflicting facts—that while some boards could be blamed for aspects