Food for Thought !
How being a Millennial has shaped how Mark Zuckerberg runs Facebook.
Voici 2 articles vraiment intéressants, le premier de Forbes et le deuxième de Fox Business.
Can The Millennial Zuckerberg Be A Great Leader?
Voir aussi :
At Facebook, Zuckerberg Poised for Corporate Governance Crash Course
Voici un document du Conference Board publié dans LinkedIn par Richard Leblanc récemment. Super intéressant; à lire.
19 avril 2012 -Le Cercle des ASC a organisé, conjointement avec le Collège des administrateurs de sociétés, le Forum sociétés d’État 2012 de Québec, en collaboration avec l’Institut des administrateurs de sociétés (IAS) section Québec.
Le Forum sociétés d’État de Québec accueille 137 administrateurs et administratrices
L’événement a eu lieu le 17 avril 2012, à l’Hôtel Château Laurier, à Québec, et était constitué d’un panel formé de quatre conférenciers et d’un animateur, puis d’une conférence de M. Raymond Bachand, ministre des Finances et ministre du Revenu du Québec.
137 administrateurs et administratrice ont participé à l’événement qui fut un réel succès.
Excellent article, publié par Robin A. Ferracone et paru dans Forbes, qui répond à deux questions clés sur l’ampleur des connaissances en rémunération des membres du comité de RH.
L’auteure donne son opinion sur :
(1) l’importance d’avoir un expert en rémunération comme membre du comité des RH et
(2) la façon de procéder à la rotation des membres du comité.
La rémunération des hauts dirigeants : un sujet complexe pour la plupart des Boards !
« As a business person who currently serves on boards and chairs a compensation committee, and as an executive compensation consultant who has served a myriad of compensation committees over the years, I have not surprisingly formed some opinions on these two topics.
I am always amazed when boards treat compensation, like human resources (HR) in general, as an area that should be intuitively obvious. However, just like audit committee members are most effective when they are financially literate, compensation committee members are most effective when they have a certain amount of compensation literacy and expertise. It helps when people on the compensation committee have a generally familiarity with both the strategic and technical aspects of compensation. It helps when compensation committee members have a feel for the issues based on real experience with the subject matter, not just as a line executive or onlooker.
… To sum up, my experience is that compensation committees function best when the people sitting on these committees, and certainly the chair of these committees, have some expertise that is directly relevant, either through background or experience, and that rotating people on and off the committee in measured doses can bring new thinking to the table without the downside effect of wholesale disruption… »
Voici un article publié par Kathy Noël dans Affaires sans frontières qui s’appuie sur les réflexions de l’éthicien René Villemure.
« Les entreprises peuvent-elles réussir et se déployer partout sur la planète en étant parfaitement éthique? On se le demande parfois, car plus rien dans ce monde n’est vraiment neutre. Il y aura toujours des opposants à un projet, quel qu’il soit, où qu’il soit. Cependant, pour l’éthicien René Villemure, président de l’Institut québécois d’éthique appliquée, les entreprises n’ont d’autres choix que de s’en préoccuper. Il en va de leur durabilité ».
«Les entreprises ne doivent plus seulement se demander si ce qu’elles font est légal, elles doivent se demander si c’est juste».
Voici un excellent résumé de 10 recommandations du Groupe des 30 qui visent à améliorer la gouvernance des sociétés à l’échelle mondiale. L’article a été publié dans le Financial News du 15 avril 2012 et partagé par Richard Leblanc dans son groupe Boards & Advisors. À lire absolument.
A report by the Group of 30 economic think tank has again turned the spotlight on corporate governance at financial institutions since the financial crisis. Financial News looks at 10 ways in which the industry needs to improve oversight at board level.
Emphasising the link between strong corporate governance and the economic stability both of individual firms and the wider global economy, the Group of 30, a non-profit body which researches international economic issues, laid out key measures that financial institutions should consider when crafting corporate governance policies.
The G30’s members include a mix of international economic leaders, including former President of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet and economist Paul Volker, former chairman of the US federal reserve. The report, published on Thursday, was put together by a working group that included Jacob Frenkel, chairman of JP Morgan Chase International, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, and William McDonough, former vice-chairman of Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Financial News has distilled the 96-page report into 10 factors most important to strong governance at financial institutions.
Être nommé à un conseil d’administration : une question de compétences ou de contacts ?
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Être nommé à un conseil d’administration : compétences ou contacts ?
Article très intéressant qui a fait pas mal de vagues dans les médias sociaux.
The one definition of a good board
Rather predictably, after the death of Steve Jobs, Apple Inc.’s board of directors has come under fire for being pliant toadies: yes-men and women.
The board is rather unconventional by current standards. Just seven members, many hand-picked by Jobs, and by most accounts, subservient to him and his personal quirks and needs (particularly regarding his health in recent years). The other notable feature has been the optical and functional irrelevance of the chairperson. This was Steve Jobs’s board — full stop.
Excellent article de Sean Silcoff dans le Globe and Mail du 30 mars 2012. L’ex-auditeure générale du Canada, Sheila Fraser, est pressentie pour joindre le Board de Bombardier. Mme Fraser, qui possède une réputation irréprochable, viendra certainement ajouter une note d’intégrité à une entreprise qui en avait bien besoin.
Bombardier Inc. used to have one of the worst governance reputations in Corporate Canada. Now, it’s about to hold a very different distinction, as the only Canadian company with not one, but two former federal auditors-general on its board of directors.
In six weeks, Sheila Fraser, who retired as Auditor-General of Canada after 10 years last May, is expected to join the board of the transportation giant at its annual meeting, taking a seat near her friend and predecessor as Canada’s top federal watchdog, Denis Desautels. It will be her second corporate board, after she became a director last November of Manulife Financial Corp.
Dans une entrevue, Mme Fraser dit qu’elle entend jouer son rôle d’administratrice indépendante sans complaisance : “I’d like to think I can ask questions and be direct. If I have something I want to know, I’ll ask about it, and will work hard to understand the issues.”
Cet article scientifique, publié dans Social Science Research Network, pose une question cruciale sur les fondements de la gouvernance. On explique pourquoi les Boards n’ont pas « l’autorité » requise pour exercer une influence significative sur les orientations stratégiques des organisations. L’article expose aussi les processus dont les Boards doivent se doter afin de mieux jouer leur rôle de supervision et de contrôle de la direction.
Les auteurs n’y vont pas « avec le dos de la cuillère », comme vous le constaterez. Je vous réfère au groupe de discussion LinkedIn – Boards & Advisors pour analyser la teneur des contributions des membres sur ce sujet ! Vous trouverez, ci-dessous, un « abstract » de l’article.
Questioning Authority: Why Boards Do Not Control Managers and How a Better Board Process Can Help
Fewer than half of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) believe their boards of directors understand the strategic factors that determine their corporation’s success; in fact, some long term directors “confess that they don’t really understand how their companies make money.” Yet corporate law expects that boards of directors will stop managers from behaving badly. It assumes that the ultimate governing authority within corporations rests with their boards, and not with the managers who run them. Broadly accepted theories of corporate governance are based on the faulty assumption that boards have actual authority over managers. This Article directly challenges that assumption and argues that managers, not boards, control corporate decision-making processes. The problem is that scholars and policymakers have ignored the connection between decision-making processes and authority. This Article is the first to examine this largely unexplored relationship, which is essential to helping boards live up to their normative mandates.
Without an effective decision-making process, regulators will continue to expect boards to perform tasks that exceed their capabilities. Even more concerning, conventional structural reforms, such as increased director independence, actually have dangerous consequences. These reforms lessen boards’ actual authority by reducing their ability to utilize effective decision-making processes. Boards must take active steps to improve the quality of their decision making. Unless they do so, they will continue to fail because they lack to the power to perform as law and theory expect. This Article argues that effective decision-making processes, which can be found in organizational behavior theory, are the key means by which the board can exercise actual authority. Analyzing the components of such a process, and identifying which components are truly controlled by boards as opposed to managers, provides a roadmap for what boards need in order to have both de facto and de jure authority in their corporations. This Article provides that original analysis and applies insights into group decision making from organizational behavior theory to identify the attributes of an effective decision-making process that are essential to securing a board’s de facto authority.
Le National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) a récemment rendu publique son étude annuelle sur la gouvernance des entreprises privées aux É-U. Les résultats de cette étude (survey) indique les principales tendances relatives aux pratiques des C.A. et montre l’évolution des processus de gouvernance dans les plus grandes entreprises américaines. Bien que l’étude s’adresse essentiellement aux spécialistes en gouvernance aux États-Unis, celle-ci peut néanmoins se révéler être d’une grande importance pour les sociétés canadiennes; les résultats sont, selon moi, tout aussi applicables à ces dernières. Vous serez étonnés de constater le peu d’attention apportée à la planification de la relève des hauts dirigeants ainsi qu’à la diversité. Le NACD insiste donc sur la nécessité d’un redressement de la situation dans ces deux domaines. À lire.
Importantes lacunes en matière de planification de la relève et de diversité : une étude du NACD
NACD’s Public Company Governance Survey highlights the need for more effective succession planning, as only 23 percent of private company boards report that they have formal succession plans in place, 25 percent of private companies have no succession plans at all, and 52 percent have only an informal succession plan. Notable statistics included in this year’s report underscore the need for ongoing director education; 90 percent of respondents believe such programs enhance the board’s effectiveness.
Perhaps most startling findings were new statistics on boardroom diversity, which highlight a significant deficiency of minority and female directors. Only one-third of private boards currently have at least one female director, with only 17 percent having three or more. With regard to minority directors, only 20 percent have at least one minority director serving in the boardroom, and 63 percent report having none at all.
Article très intéressant publié dans Harvard Business Review Blog Network. Les résultats de cette étude me semblent très concluants eu égard à l’exercice du leadership des hommes et des femmes. Les résultats vous surprendront certainement !
« We’ve all heard the claims, the theories, and the speculation about the ways leadership styles vary between women and men. Our latest survey data puts some hard numbers into the mix.
….Similarly, most stereotypes would have us believe that female leaders excel at « nurturing » competencies such as developing others and building relationships, and many might put exhibiting integrity and engaging in self-development in that category as well. And in all four cases our data concurred — women did score higher than men.
But the women’s advantages were not at all confined to traditionally women’s strengths. In fact at every level, more women were rated by their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level, the wider that gap grows (see chart) »:
The European Business Schools/Women on Board initiative has published a first list of more than 3500 board-ready women to bring Europe into the 21st Century and support European Commission Vice President Reding’s initiative to shatter the glass ceiling for women in Europe’s publicly listed corporation’s board rooms.
The European Business Schools Women on Board Initiative
The list includes individual profiles of 150 senior executive women who are publicly supporting Commissioner Reding’s initiative as well as European Business Schools who have culled their alumnae, faculty, and Board members to identify more than 3500 “board ready” women.
The group has also published five sets of criteria for board membership. These criteria were used as guidelines for the selection of the individual women and by the business schools for their selection of board ready women (see below).
The group includes Business Schools such as IESE (ES), EDHEC (F), INSEAD (F), Cambridge Judge Business School (UK), IMD (CH) , RSM (NL), Boston University Leadership Institute(BE), ESMT (D) and the business school association EFMD (European Foundation of Management Development) as well as professional organizations such as the GTWN (Global Telecom Women’s Network), WiTT (Women in Telecoms and Technology), WoB (Women on Boards), the FT Non-Executive Director’s Club, EPWN (European Professsional Women’s Network), IFA (Institut Francais des Administrateurs), TIAW (The International Alliance for Women).
By publishing this first list, the group believes it will do away with oft-cited remarks such as “there are not any qualified women” and “where can board ready women be found”. It also believes that such a list will help increase not only the gender diversity but also the international diversity of companies since many corporations may wish to avail themselves of the talent of senior executive women from other countries than where they are based.
Excellent article sur l’avenir des quotas en Europe. Voici un long extrait de ce document:
Norway’s businesswomen and the boardroom bias debate
As the EU begins a three-month consultation on whether there should be quotas for women in the boardroom, Harriet Alexander asks whether Norway’s quotas could work in Britain.
Mrs Berdal said she was broadly supportive of the quota system, as a necessary step – even though she disliked the principle of interference in boards. She also denied that it had adversely affected the profitability of Norwegian companies.
« If women are just there as ‘tokens’, then the nomination committee is doing a really bad job. I don’t know any woman who is there just to make up the numbers; they are all highly qualified and professional, » she said.
« There was obviously resistance at the beginning, but now that it has been there for a few years it has weakened.
« My general experience is that it is working fine, and that boards are not weakened by the system: on the contrary, in fact.
But other business experts have expressed scepticism that the EU could impose uniform restrictions on such diverse national working cultures.
Kenneth Ahern, a professor of finance from the University of Michigan, doubted whether Britain was ready to make the necessary financial sacrifice to push women onto boards. His own research on Norway, published last year, showed that « the quota led to younger and less experienced boards, and deterioration in operating performance, consistent with less capable boards. »
He told The Sunday Telegraph: « In Norway, they knew that the value of their companies would drop, but society there cared more about equality than finance. It was a conscious decision.
« For the EU to make such an important moral choice, across such a variety of countries, is a very big ask indeed. I could see there being real resistance to obligatory quotas from countries such as Germany and the UK, which prize the financial output extremely highly. »
Mrs Berdal, who was a widely-travelled international lawyer before dedicating herself full time to board work, agreed that it could be hard to impose quotas in Britain.
« I think the British culture – both in society in general, and in business – is a bit more conservative, and still a bit more male dominated than in Scandinavia.
« In the boardroom, if you have only men, they tend to know each other from school, university or the golf club, and decisions are often made outside of the boardroom so you don’t have full control and transparency. Maybe in the UK you’ll have to twist some more arms. »
Voici un article publié dans le Globe and Mail par Leah Eichler qui décrit les résultats d’une recherche effectuée par Catalyst Inc., une organisation qui défend la position des femmes sur les conseils d’administration au Canada. L’étude fait le point sur la situation des femmes sur les C.A. de grandes corporations canadiennes et l’auteur suggère des cibles à atteindre à cet égard.
It found that in 2011, the portion of women on the boards of Canada’s 500 largest companies (public, private and Crown corporations) was a mere 14.5 per cent – an increase of only half a percentage point since 2009. In both years, about 40 per cent of companies had all-male boards. Catalyst, which issued its report on International Women’s Day, wants corporate Canada to fill 25 per cent of the board seats with women by 2017.
Voici un résumé des recommandations présentées par Kaye O’Leary dans innovationexcellence.com pour éviter de surcharger les membres de conseils d’administration.
Practical tips from board members on how to avoid wearing-out your directors!
« The challenge: It’s no secret that there are an increasing number of demands on boards. Directors are expected to keep abreast of the organization’s business model, performance, strategic challenges and risk environment, understand the industry, understand the legislative environment, be knowledgeable of and ensure compliance with regulatory and reporting requirements and changes, evaluate the CEO and board’s performance, has a compliant and effective compensation program, be current on applicable accounting rules and ensure that the organization has a solid succession plan and effective culture.
Tip 1: Don’t waste precious meeting time presenting information that was distributed in the board materials
Effective Board Suggestion: Skip the presentations of the information that was distributed and move directly to questions on the material distributed. (PS – make sure you get your materials out well in advance of the meeting! Do not distribute materials on a Friday afternoon for a Tuesday board meeting; board members do not enjoy spending their weekend reading board materials.)
Tip 2: Utilize Committees Effectively
Effective Board Suggestion: Rely on your committees and avoid repeating the committee work with the full board.
Tip 3: Annually Assess the Work of the Board
Effective Board Suggestion: As part of your annual board assessment process, take the time to review how the board spends its time vs. the organization’s strategic priorities. Is your board focused on your strategic priorities? Do you have special purpose committees that are no longer relevant? Are there things your board can stop doing? Review the materials you are sending out in your board book. If you send it, you are obliging your board members to read the material; don’t send 60 pages of financial information if 15 pages will suffice ».
Excellent article par Brendan Sheehan dans Boardmember.com qui présente les perspectives nouvelles qui s’offrent aux C.A. et aux hauts dirigeants des sociétés cotées en bourse en 2012. De nombreux défis attendent les administrateurs en réponse aux demandes pressantes de groupes d’actionnaires « activistes » , notamment l’Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Je vous encourage à lire l’article au complet mais voici un court extrait :
Gouvernance des sociétés : de nombreux défis pour les conseils d’administration en 2012
« The failure of prominent companies, ongoing scandals, and the stubbornly persistent financial crisis have dramatically changed the landscape for managements and directors at U.S. public companies and provided new vigor to activist shareholders and governance commentators. For boards of directors, keeping track of the latest reforms and ensuring the company is fully compliant has become an even more complicated puzzle.
Many of the post-Enron reforms have concentrated on enhancing transparency and boosting disclosure in proxy statements and other corporate filings. The end result is while shareholders have greater insight into the companies they own, they also now demand a louder voice in the way companies are being managed and directed, even down to who gets hired and how much they get paid. This, in turn, has led to what many observers have characterized as the pendulum swinging too far to one side, creating a need for balance.
In the meantime, with activists gaining broader access to corporate boards and with disclosure policies constantly expanding, directors and management are becoming increasingly more concerned about what shareholders think. This time of year, that interest manifests itself in trying to figure out what is going to happen during proxy season. How are people going to vote? What will be the hot-button issues? Where will the surprises come from?
As with most things, in order to predict the future it can be instructive to look at the past. An examination of recent voting results and proposal activity reveals that, despite all the talk about the shifting focus of activists, the same proposals that surface every year continue to dominate the voting agenda. Majority voting dominated the proposals, as it has in the last four or five years, followed by the repeal of classified board structure, rights to call special meetings, and rights to act by written consent. These four areas have been among the most prevalent proposal topics for many years, and companies generally understand how to address the surrounding issues. Compensation-related proposals were strongly featured as well, and are likely to be the main focus in 2012.
That being said, several new disclosure rules were enacted in late 2010 and during 2011 that, as investors have time to examine the disclosures and get comfortable with them, could spark an increase in activity. In short, most experts feel that investors will start to move away from simple issues like board structure and poison pills and engage with boards on more complicated—and possibly more important—risk- and performance-related issues ».
L’étude du ISS présente les perspectives qui s’offrent aux conseils d’administration en 2012. Très intéressant de connaître le point de vue d’une organisation « activiste ».
ISS Releases 2012 U.S. Board Practices Study
A decade ago, more than 60 percent of S&P 500 companies had staggered board terms, and plurality voting in director elections was widely accepted. Today, two-thirds of S&P 500 firms have declassified boards and nearly 80 percent of these companies have adopted majority voting provisions, as many boards have heeded shareholder votes for these reforms.
As one might expect, the prevalence of majority voting and declassified boards is higher at large-cap companies, which are subject to more public scrutiny and generally have greater institutional ownership. However, there are some practices, such as independent board chairs, that remain more common at small and mid-cap firms. Directors on a typical S&P 500 board tend to be more independent, more diverse, and slightly older on average than at smaller-cap companies.
These are among the findings in ISS’ annual Board Practices study, which examines director elections, board and director independence, and board diversity, among other factors, at S&P 1500 firms. This year’s report, which analyzes board practices and characteristics based on index, includes data as of June 30, 2011, from 1,461 companies and 13,760 individual board seats in the S&P 500, the MidCap S&P 400, and the SmallCap S&P 600.
Here are some of the key findings from the 2012 edition of Board Practices: The Structure of Boards at S&P 1500 Companies:
There is a compelling argument to be made for greater international representation on boards. But, if that is the case, why aren’t boards doing more to close the gap between their global aspirations and the international directors who represent such an apparent advantage? The answer is that while these directors can provide great value to boards and their companies, identifying and attracting them is a difficult and daunting process. It can be done,
Based on anecdotal evidence from our client work and broader observations about global companies and their boards, we have long believed that global boards can be a valuable resource to companies pursuing a global strategy. We set out to quantify the current state of the “globalness” of boards of large companies, beyond what we experience day-to-day with our clients, and to determine if and how board composition links to business success.
The results of the study confirmed our belief that there is a gap between companies’ global activity and longer-term plans, on the one hand, and the board resources that help to shape and guide that strategy, on the other. The troubling news is that this gap is large. The good news is that once companies are aware of the extent of the gap between their global strategy and their director resources, they can work toward closing it. In light of the positive correlation we are seeing between companies that perform better on key business metrics and those with international representation on their boards, we suspect many companies will take steps to ameliorate this deficit on their boards.
Très bonnes réflexions d’Yvan Allaire sur le dogme de la séparation des rôles entre PCA et PDG. À lire sur le blogue Les Affaires .com.
Rien à rajouter à ce billet de l’expert en gouvernance qui , comme moi, cherche des réponses à plusieurs théories sur la gouvernance. Plus de recherches dans le domaine de la gouvernance serait grandement indiquées… Le CAS et la FSA de l’Université Laval mettront sur pied un programme de recherche dont le but est de répondre à ce type de questionnement.
« Parmi les dogmes de la bonne gouvernance, la séparation des rôles du PCA et du PDG vient au deuxième rang immédiatement derrière « l’i
ndépendance absolue et inviolable » de la majorité des administrateurs. … Bien que les études empiriques aient grande difficulté à démontrer de façon irréfutable la valeur de ces deux dogmes, ceux-ci sont, semble-t-il, incontournables. Dans le cas de la séparation des rôles, le sujet a pris une certaine importance récemment chez Research in Motion ainsi que chez Air Transat. Le compromis d’un administrateur en chef (lead director) pour compenser pour le fait que le PCA et le PDG soit la même personne ne satisfait plus; le dogme demande que le président du conseil soit indépendant de la direction ».
Gouvernance | Jacques Grisé 