Advisory Board Architects, the preeminent leader in advisory board process and engagement, is pleased to announce the launch of our proprietary software platform called the ABA Board Management Tool. This unique instrument is designed to help boards work more efficiently and with a much higher degree of accountability.

I attended the second annual Women on Boards event earlier this week put on by Sharp Up Swing. It was an amazing event and a well-attended event with over 80 people there (I was one of only two men at the event by the way). It was extremely informative for those women looking for board opportunities or information on boards.

This post is a follow-up to Examining Recent U.S. Corporate Board Failures at Banks and Wall Street Firms.

With the news of the latest financial institution to fall - Washington Mutual, I was curious to know why at this point no one has thought to ask what are the Corporate Boards of Directors of these companies have been doing?

These guidelines have been developed from the ABA methodology and are based on our process of building effective advisory boards. This is part one of a two part discussion, the first part will speak primarily to advisory boards and the second part will deal more with Boards of Governance. Although this first part of this topic is centered mostly around advisory boards these guidelines can be followed for either Corporate, or Advisory Boards whether non-profit or for profit organizations. This evaluation process can and should take some time. 

I have read a lot of “how to” stories out there on how to build and use advisory boards but this is the first one that I have seen that actually gives some practical advice. This Inc Magazine article gives some very good and unique ideas that I have not seen from other articles that I have read and reflects some of our own best practices.

We were recently introduced to a prominent financial institution that needed our help with their advisory boards and the process that they were dealing with illustrates some of the pitfalls associated with building an advisory board incorrectly. We were asked to do an assessment of their processes and the effectiveness of their boards. We interviewed many of the board members and one of their Presidents tasked with running the board at length and got an inside look at their processes in adding board members and managing the board process.

Cameron is a fellow EO member and was one of the leading forces behind ventures like 1-800-GOT-JUNK? which he helped grow from $2mm to $105mm, Ubarter.com and Barter Business Exchange. His companies are even studied by MBA programs including Harvard and Queens University in Canada. His expertise in building strong fast growing companies is unmatched.

This is an interview that was conducted by Rob McNealy of Startup Story Radio. Brad Feld was also a featured guest on this program with me.

I started my computing career at Boeing Computer Services where I had the delightful experience of building some of the world’s first and some of the largest expert systems. Boeing had a problem at the time, similar to many businesses today, the old dogs were retiring. The engineers who designed B-17’s, B-52’s, 707’s and 747’s were cashing their pension checks.