What the Harvard and Boeing Boards Teach Us About Groupthink
AnonTechie writes:
One overlooked aspect of the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay in January is why Harvard's 400-year-old governing corporation, comprised of titans of industry, academia, and government, appeared so caught off guard by the public's reaction to Gay's quickly mounting problems over her congressional testimony and plagiarism charges. Damning reports described flat-footed board members marooned at holiday destinations engaged in reactive decision-making.
Similar questions arose regarding Boeing's paralysis over a years-long crisis in quality control of its 737 MAX fleet. Did no one in charge think the public would react poorly to news that the plane was deemed sufficiently dodgy that Alaska Airlines had restricted it from flying over open water to Hawaii?
Like all organizations, non-profit and corporate boards can fall prey to groupthink, silo effects, or short-term or trendy thinking that ultimately work against the interests of the entity they are entrusted to oversee. A large scientific literature has explored factors affecting board function, from disciplinary and sociodemographic diversity to size and deliberation processes. A less explored factor is how the internal network structure of the board can affect its performance.
[...] Boards face challenges, and their problems are not just a function of mis-directed objectives (such as an overly narrow focus on quarterly earnings or fealty to some ideological commitment) nor a function of the self-perpetuating insularity that makes them ignore external pressures or information. Rather, the way many boards themselves are structured may make them less capable of confronting the enduring reality of such stresses. Efforts to make it difficult or impossible for outsiders to join boards (such as happened at Yale a couple of years ago) will only exacerbate such problems.
Network insights can provide the right kind of disruption here-the kind that fosters creativity and fiscal stewardship, whether that is by bringing leaders down or keeping planes up.
An interesting article about the possible reasons why boards fail to take the right decisions ...
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