The Fish Rots From The Head: The Crisis in our Boardrooms: Developing the Crucial Skills of the Competent Director

by Bob Garratt

It is easy to start listing such values as customer satisfaction, quality excellence, honesty and so on, but do these reflect what your people actually do? How do you know? Are the values and behaviours tested regularly and independently? As a board member do you occasionally telephone your organization’s switchboard posing as a customer and try to buy your product or service? Have you tried to make a complaint and follow through what happens? Have you ever used your own helpline or tried to find simple information on your website? Have you looked up your corporation on Wikipedia, or searched websites that are against your corporation? Have you sat outside the factory on a Friday afternoon and inspected what is actually sent out to meet delivery targets? Have you worked on the night shift in the accident and emergency department of your hospital? Doing any of these can be an eye-opener for directors and may show that things are well out of line with the carefully crafted value statement which often hangs on the office walls.