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Stanley Foster Reed (1917-2007)
Founder
Directors & Boards

Out with the Look-Alike, Think-Alike Board

A final summing up by the fondly remembered founder of Directors & Boards.

By Stanley Foster Reed

Ed. Note: Stanley Foster Reed, founder of Directors & Boards, died on Oct. 25, 2007, at the age of 90. The first quarter 2008 edition of Directors & Boards, to be mailed to subscribers later this month, features a tribute to this remarkable individual. He was a multidimensional entrepreneur adept in creating ventures that straddled the business, science, government, and publishing sectors. The following is an excerpt from an article he composed for the journal’s 20th anniversary special edition published in 1996 about why he launched Directors & Boards two decades previously.

While I didn’t know then as much about management as I know now, I knew that those boards that I had been serving on since the 1960s were ineffective. They lacked diversity. Board membership was the result of shared experience either on the golf course, in college, or in social congress. We directors all looked alike, dressed alike, talked alike, and enjoyed each other’s company.

They were think-alike boards. There were never arguments.

So I founded Directors & Boards to help stakeholders create effective boards. One of my targets was the think-alike board.

Management guru Warren Bennis had a word for management teams that looked alike, talked alike, and, of course, thought alike. He called them groups of doppelgangers — “ghostly doubles” — because they all looked and acted like the leader who had selected them. And Bennis believed that such groups make bad management decisions.

I believed then and I believe now that such happy-groups focus on happy-play, never get really involved, and never make a reality-check on their effectiveness individually or collectively.

Many CEOs believe that building effective management teams means assembling a group of people who enjoy each other’s company. So they build not teams but “affinity groups” — assemblages of people of the same social background.

Such groups are easy to assemble. Why? Because people who look, act, and talk alike are more comfortable in each other’s company than they are with people from different ethnic, educational, and economic backgrounds. What’s wrong with that?

A lot. Effective boards, like effective management groups, should be composed of people with useful but different and complementary talents — not think-alikes. What are those talents?

First is innovation: At least one person on the board must be an original thinker and be able to recognize that ability on others.
Second is analysis: At least one person on the board must think in analytical terms and be able to recognize that ability in others.
Third is organization: At least one person must be insistent that organized effort is always necessary to long-term success.
Fourth is execution: At least one person must have talent in running organizations, in forcing performance, in meeting objectives, and in recognizing that talent in others.
Fifth is human relations: At least one person must have and maintain a background in this increasingly important area.
Finally, there must be a generalist: Someone who knows a little or a lot about everything. Why? Because longtime directors evolve as specialists in the company’s core area of effort, and specialists always get into trouble — they lose their sensitivity to change.

Sometimes people can be found who can double in brass. But innovator/analysts are rare. So are organizer/executives. And innovator/executives simply don’t exist — except in their own minds.

Any one of the above can start an operating entity. But it takes all of these skills to keep one going. All of the ills that beset operating entities, from the local hospital to the corner grocery store to the giant manufactury to the Oval Office, can be traced back to failure to bring all of these skills into play.

The successful director-team is one that is continually engaged in self-examination to ensure that the necessary complementarities are there.