Longer Articles – Page 2 – The Unlisted Board

Learning From Boardroom Battles – Pistols At Dawn in Calcutta, 1780

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-23T11:57:29+01:00July 9th, 2021|Fixing Broken Boards, Company Governance History, Longer Articles|

Boardrooms notoriously, if unsuspectingly for the naive, can become Cauldrons Of Emotion. Power, betrayal, plotting and deceit can become the order of the day. But it’s probably been a while since they were resolved by pistols at dawn… In the late 18thC there was a long-running saga involving Board conflict between the East India Company’s perhaps best-ever Governor General in India, Warren Hastings, and a State appointee to a newly-formed “Board of Control”, Sir Philip Francis. This was a classic example where Board frictions superficially arise from personality differences. However as in many such cases there are underlying organisational issues

The “Fish Rots From The Head Down” Board

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-23T11:58:09+01:00November 12th, 2020|Fixing Broken Boards, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

[Extract from Chapter 9 of Realpolitik "Fixing Broken Boards] Whatever your Board challenge your Chairman is likely to be the first port of call – after all apart from “it [the Board] is his job” he really should have vastly more experience of Boards than you. As a founder/CEO in a sense you’d like to delegate a lot of the Board functioning to the Chairman in the same way you’d like to delegate Marketing to a CMO. You want to retain involvement in input in both but you would really rather someone more experienced and better at it than you did all the heavy lifting

If You Didn’t Have Board Meetings Then, Apart From Not Being Part Of A Chain Gang, What Two Key Things Would You Miss Out On?

By The Unlisted Board|2022-01-28T12:26:51+00:00October 22nd, 2020|The Board - Theory and Practice, Longer Articles|

The legal aspects of Boards differ from country to country and in some cases from State to State. There are LLCs and Corporations, Listed and Unlisteds, Limited Liabilities and Partnerships or indeed Limited Liability Partnerships. In France a quick Google tells me you can have SARLs, EURLs, SELARLs, SAs, SASs, SNCs. The list goes on and on. Spend too much time looking at it and you start wondering whether it isn't maybe time for the Good Lord to send a flood and wipe the slate clean again so we can start over. It would certainly provide a different answer to

You Never Buy “A Fruit” So Never Hire “A NED”

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-23T11:59:05+01:00October 15th, 2020|NEDs, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

You never buy "a fruit" so never hire "a NED". The Engine of Growth Board will be designed to complement the skill set of the executive team, to fill in gaps. This can be a challenge in itself if you have a super-controlling VC who sees the Board as a mere vehicle for them to maximise their control and not actually to improve the Company. But that's a separate topic for another day - the simple summary being that VCs don't just come "with money" but as "a package" and you need to be savvy enough to compare packages, or

The IPO-Ready Board: When Two Tribes Go To War

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-23T11:59:15+01:00October 9th, 2020|The Board - Theory and Practice, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

The cultural transformation of the Board from an Unlisted Board to a Listable Board is one of the more painful phase shifts a successful founder has to undergo. The successful founder will have hand-crafted a Board that, yes, does the Corporate Control Thing, but one which is rooted in the vital Corporate Creativity mentality. As we saw Prometheus and the Muses are essential to inspire and to create something that never existed before - an extraordinary metaphysical achievement possible only for Gods and Man. This commercial value-add-centric Board vibe will, in all likelihood, suffer the fate of a Canadian seal

How The First English Companies Were Governed

By The Unlisted Board|2021-09-28T09:53:43+01:00September 24th, 2020|Company Governance History, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

How were the first English Companies governed? Actually far better than today's companies are but that is a much longer story. Who invented the two-tier Board? I bet you can guess but everyone I have ever asked has got it wrong. Let's go back to 16thC England and have a look. [Excerpt from Realipolitik, numerous footnotes sadly extracted as they don't work well on a blog (too much paging up and down)] "A thousand years ago the Italian merchant states of Florence, Venice, Genoa et al were far ahead in business. They utilised Commenda and Societas, partnership structures that date

What Founders Need To Know About Boards Well Before They Have One

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-23T12:00:24+01:00September 10th, 2020|The Board - Theory and Practice, Longer Articles|

One of the most interesting things about speaking, as of now, to over 100 unlisted Board folk is how important ones initial frame of mind is to so many things that one meets on the journey of growth from idea to substantive company. As we discussed in “Prometheus the Muses and the Startup” your whole enterprise grows from a single creative seed which arises in your mind and which must be nurtured. Separately a thirty-year VC emphasised to me that it is what the founder thought long before they decided to raise capital that makes all the difference. Indeed one can

Vital To Know For Founders – Your Board Is What You Make It – For Better Or For Worse

By The Unlisted Board|2021-07-23T12:00:48+01:00August 27th, 2020|The Board - Theory and Practice, Longer Articles, Realpolitik Extracts|

There are two vital lessons to take-away from by now conversation with 100 entrepreneurs, Chairman, NEDs and Capital Providers about their experience of Boards. (1) the Board can be an Engine of Growth and (2) you the founder either get what you design or what someone else designs for you - your choice! Extract from Chapter 1 of Realpolitik “Eight Essential Aspects Of Small Company Boards” Essence 5 – Your Board Is What You Make It - For Better Or For Worse Will you consciously create your Board or will it just happen as a result of happenstance and ad hoc pressures from capital providers? What

What Serial Entrepreneurs Know About The SmallCo Board That First-Time Founders Don’t

By The Unlisted Board|2020-08-21T08:54:27+01:00July 20th, 2020|The Board - Theory and Practice, Longer Articles|

There is one mistake that is so common that it is near ubiquitous amongst the inexperienced first-time Founder when it comes to their company’s Board. Over the past six years I have podcasted with getting on for 150 founders and over the past two and a half years, in the course of writing "The Realpolitik Of The Unlisted Company Board" interviewed over eighty SmallCo Board members - most of whom were founders. So I’m in no doubt about the mistake. Not just that but the dynamics that lead to it. It is this - first-time founders do not take