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Board Services

Helping CEOs and boards strengthen their collaboration to enable more dynamic, effective leadership and guidance
An effective board of directors understands how a company creates value, where potential risks lie, and what the strategic considerations are. Our research suggests that the strongest boards spend more time interacting with management teams about performance and strategy, supporting CEOs without overfocusing on fiduciary activities.
We help clients achieve an effective collaboration between management and the board by facilitating strategic discussions, helping prepare CEO succession models, and supporting redesign of board reports and materials. We help boards improve their capabilities so they can better evaluate resource allocation, offer robust feedback and incisive debate of alternative strategies, assess trends and uncertainties, and work with CEOs to create greater value.

What we do

Board benchmarking and enhancement

We support clients’ board-effectiveness discussions by analyzing how they use their time, how they work together, and how they perceive board performance overall. Benchmarking against our extensive global sample, we help create more forward-looking, effective boards of directors.

Onboarding and development

We provide induction sessions and continuous training for board chairs and directors to strengthen the board’s expertise for the long term, with a combination of tailored development programs and field-and-forum sessions. We offer a dynamic combination of board-specific modules and relevant industry perspectives.

Governance transformation

Our proven approach to creating an integrated group and subsidiary governance framework helps CEOs and boards respond to new regulatory requirements for multinational organizations. We help our clients define consistent principles that guide the composition of boards, balance group and subsidiary board responsibilities, and align meeting schedules.

Peer network

We provide various platforms where chairs and board directors can candidly discuss critical governance challenges with industry peers, in a confidential setting. Participants benefit from one another's experience and hear from experts, both in client-specific and multi-client formats.

Examples of our work

Strengthened exchange among portfolio board chairs

An investment holding company sought to become a more active owner by enhancing board effectiveness of its portfolio companies. We helped analyze the companies’ boards to identify initiatives that would add the most value. Among them, we created a new program to bring all portfolio company board chairs together to exchange their experience and knowledge on how they get involved on key matters such as digital disruption.

Defined regulatory-compliant group and subsidiary board governance framework

A global bank faced increased regulatory pressure to strengthen the operational independence of its major subsidiaries. After thorough analysis of the internal setup and external legal and regulatory requirements in relevant jurisdictions, we worked with local lawyers to create a multinational group and subsidiary board governance framework.

Onboarded and trained new board directors and chairs

A global building materials company annually seeks our support in running a tailored annual training program for their board directors, a combination of latest core functional and industry insights. We also supported multiple new board directors with fully tailored onboarding programs, combining the latest perspectives on the role of the board and driving board effectiveness with industry-specific insights and trends.

Introduced a continuous board improvement process

A leading financial services corporation wanted to enhance its board’s effectiveness, with periodic assessments to build ongoing improvement. We helped the company create a baseline by running annual analysis of the board’s effectiveness through surveys, interviews, and core documentation reviews over the course of several years. The resulting insights are once a year discussed with the full board to identify continuous improvement initiatives.

Featured insights

Collection

Board governance

A collection of insights for corporate boards, CEOs, and executives to help improve board effectiveness including: board composition and diversity, board processes, board strategy, talent and risk management, sustainability, and purpose.
Issue

The Board Perspective - Number 2
– A collection of McKinsey insights focusing on boards of directors
Issue

The Board Perspective - Number 1
– A collection of McKinsey insights focusing on boards of directors
Article

The board’s role in embedding corporate purpose: Five actions directors can take today
– A large spotlight is shining on corporate actions these days, and all stakeholders have growing expectations. A board’s... involvement in defining purpose helps meet those expectations.
Collection

Inside the Strategy Room
Join leading experts, senior management, and board directors inside the strategy room as they share their insights on how to break... through inertia and unlock big strategic moves

Featured experts

Frithjof Norman Lund
Managing Partner and Senior Partner, Oslo
Leads McKinsey Board Services, our global service line helping CEOs and boards of directors improve corporate governance, and...
Celia Huber
Senior Partner
Leads the North American Board Services practice area and advises organizations on strategies to help them thrive within the context...
Akshay Kapur
Partner, Chicago
Serves leading healthcare organizations on strategy, growth, M&A, and performance transformations
Sven Smit
Senior Partner, Chair of Insights and Ecosystems, and Chair of McKinsey Global Institute, Amsterdam
Leads research on economic and business trends and works with companies to develop business strategies and transformations
Joydeep Sengupta
Senior Partner, Singapore
Leads McKinsey’s Center for CEO Excellence in Asia and works with leading companies to transform their businesses
Hugo Baquerizo
Senior Partner, Panama
A leader of McKinsey’s strategy work across Latin America, helps leading companies across the region to shape bold strategies...

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