Some dos and don’ts of governance
By Denzil Doyle
In my last article I wrote about the role that a board of directors can play in the success or failure of a company and how to go about recruiting one. In this article, I will give an example of a board model that shareholders could feel good about and one that had danger signals written all over it right from the beginning.
A rough ride for RIM
I will start with the one with the danger signals. About four years ago, when Research in Motion was flying high, I attended a talk by a seasoned CEO who was very critical of many aspects of corporate governance at RIM, but particularly about the existence of two CEOs. It was the strong consensus of the meeting (which took the form of a panel discussion) that a dual-CEO system does not work and that the RIM board was negligent in allowing it to happen there.
