Captain's Log
Stardate: 9th January 2020

The Chairman is preparing himself for the general board meeting with some sense of trepidation. The site chosen for the gathering is boardroom.net, a virtual meeting room where the electronic image of his colleagues will be transmitted from various parts of the world where they are based. It's not just business as usual. ⁽¹⁾

Noted as well that those in the personnel department who have in addition business acumen will be in demand for outsourcing as HR professionals, and they are being hired on a consultancy basis for small and medium sized firms which can't justify having a HR department on-site. The demand for HR expertise in assisting business to be aware of employment regulations, implementing good performance management and training analysis will increase over the time.⁽²⁾

This requires HR specialists to have all-round skills and top contacts being placed on the board of companies as non-executives because they would be able to judge, meet and see the very top performers in various business sectors.  The skills of head-hunting is necessary for the HR person to acquire in order to stay in touch with those top executives who can make a business expand, and to hire those key people into the right positions.  This broad-based skill is rare and should be highly valued by those who are in the Boardroom.⁽³⁾

In an article by Weatley, she says "...crucially, the chairman must learn to stimulate debate on corporate strategy even though many directors are reluctant to tackle the issues involved.  Some board members dislike grasping conceptual issues, while others fear offending senior staff by suggesting that corporate policy is narrow or out of date..."⁽⁴⁾ As commented before in various articles, there is no point having serial non-directors if they aren't actively involved in  progressing the business. 

Even non-executives who say they are underpaid for the responsibilities they carry out, maybe, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't give a valuable service ~ that's why they were hired just as any consultant and employee of a company would be expected to perform because you'd be required to have a track record of sharing your experiences and knowledge.  As Michael Carr comments "I'm happy to share my disasters with people. There are no bad experiences in business. There are just experiences." 

It was also pointed out in the article written by Sheila Jones who quotes Phil Goodwin saying "You can find plenty of non-executive directors, but most of them are grey-suited retired bureaucrats and they are worse than useless."⁽⁵⁾   This can affect how the business operates and the decisions needed to reach in terms of growth and that which is currently occuring with top-management leaving with compensation within 18-months after being hired.

I also agree with Sir John Harvey-Jones' comment that "business failure tends to start at the top and a programme to rectify this failure can only be led by the board. Yet how many boards set themselves a defined programme of work and annual objectives? How many regularly review their procedural effectiveness and work patterns?"⁽⁶⁾  Therefore directors or executives even the non's of boards are not only the custodians of the company's prosperity but a key part in the corporate governance and it is their function which is the determining factor of investors readiness to invest in the company.

The level of any table remains the same no matter what's placed on it although the chairs tend to move up, down, to and fro but the top or bottom can be at either end.

....Hereagin, Goneagin, Finnegan.