What Does A Company Actually Gain When Its Executives Serve On An Outside Board?
Everyone Has An Instinct. This Study Puts It To The Test, And You Can Help Shape The Answer In About Three to Six Minutes.
The Question
Research has established what the executive gains from outside board service. The harder question, and the one this study takes up, is what the sponsoring company gets back: on retention, on readiness for the top job, on the strength of a succession slate. Companies are making this call on instinct, in both directions. This study sets out to add evidence to that instinct.
Why Take Part
For about three to six minutes of your time, you help answer a question the field is still working out, and you receive a peer benchmark you can put to use: if you help lead a company, in your succession and talent decisions; if you serve on an outside board, in understanding what your service means for the company you serve. Your responses are anonymous. If you would like the findings first, before they are published anywhere, you can leave an email at the end. It is optional, and nothing else identifies you.
Who Should Take Part
Any executive who serves, or has served, as an independent director on an outside corporate board, and anyone who helps lead a company whose executives do. Whether you answer from the company's side, reflecting on executives you lead or have led, or from your own experience serving on an outside board, every vantage point sharpens the findings. Every path matters to the answer.
Why You Can Trust It
I am running this study as an independent researcher, and I will publish the method alongside the findings: the sample, how participants were reached, and what the data can and cannot show. Responses are anonymous, reported in aggregate, and never linked to you. The study never asks for anything you owe in confidence to a board you serve.
Dr. Keith D. Dorsey is a sitting independent director, an NACD Directorship 100 honoree and Directorship Certified, a researcher, and the author of The Boardroom Journey (Wiley).
More about my background and board service.
About three to six minutes. Anonymous. Optional results by email.