Governance Solutions: The Ultimate Guide to Competence and Confidence in the Boardroom

This is not just a book "about governance," it tells you how to "do governance."

Authors David A. H. Brown and Dr. Debra L. Brown deliver:

• Proven Governance Solutions: It is a single source—the ultimate guide—for solving your governance problems.
• Access: It includes almost 70 governance concepts and tools that are unique only to this book.
• Competence and Confidence: It covers the broad spectrum of governance issues from governance structure and process, through boardroom leadership, culture and behaviour.
• Answers! It tells you not only what works, but as importantly what does not work in governance.

This is the ultimate guide for board members and executives regardless of sector-private, public and not-for-profit. Whatever the jurisdiction in the world, this guide remains a highly relevant resource. Designed to build both competence and confidence, its principle-based approach allows any reader interested in governance to benefit from its solutions and tools.

Practical and comprehensive, everything you need to succeed in the boardroom can be found in this one place. There are principles, tools, and clear explanations of the board's role for all five levels of governance: strategy, risk, policy, people, and resources. And it includes profound insights into, and tools for, boardroom culture and behaviour--those less tangible but substantial aspects of effective governance, oversight and leadership.

This ultimate guide will deepen the governance understanding of even the most seasoned leader. Readers will understand the depth and breadth of how to add value and provide strategic oversight to any organization. From the role of the board in strategy and risk oversight, effective policy setting and compliance reporting, successfully navigating the board's relationship with the CEO, succession planning, and protecting and stewarding the company's financial and other resources, to governance systems, committee structures and meeting processes, this book has solutions designed to help you succeed and excel.

Canada's leading thinker, speaker, writer and practitioner in corporate governance, David has co-founded over a dozen board governance education programs including university accredited certification programs in Canada and abroad. Having served both as a CEO and a Board member, David is well-positioned to help corporations deal with issues in the boardroom. Principles-based governance underpins all of his work, and is foundational to corporations selecting the right governance model and board practices. This framework has been adopted by organizations as diverse as leading telecom providers, banks and credit unions, government agencies and Crown corporations, universities, health authorities, pension funds and military commands. David has worked at the board and CEO level with hundreds of major private, public and not-for-profit sector corporations in Canada and internationally in the field of governance, in countries ranging from Bahrain to Malaysia, Guatemala to South Africa. He helps organizations strengthen their governance practices through diagnostics, benchmarking, dialogue, seminars, workshops and hands-on custom work with boards.

Founder, President and CEO of Governance Solutions Inc. Dr. Debra Brown has developed it into a full-service firm providing governance consulting, research, training and tools. Under Debra's leadership, GSI has developed and tested a comprehensive, principles-based governance system that has been adopted and adapted by award-winning, leading governance organizations across sectors: private sector, federal and provincial governments in the public sector, and numerous not-for-profit organizations and associations. It is also the foundation on which GSI created the program and curriculum for The Directors College, and The Professional Director Certification Program(R) and other governance education and university accredited certification programs for the Health, Colleges and Universities, School Board, Cooperative and Indigenous sectors. Comfortable and confident with both boards and executives, Debra's mix of experiential and conceptual insights uniquely qualify her to advise organizations on their governance. She has served twice as a CEO, reporting to boards, and as a board member of several organizations, including as Board Chair and Governance Committee Chair, and so she is able to see governance issues from both sides of the boardroom table. Debra's doctoral thesis topic "Using Governance as a Tool to Transform Organizational Culture," enabled her to develop a proprietary, leading edge diagnostic tool by which boards and executive teams can identify their dominant culture, and work on steps to capitalize on cultural enablers and mitigate cultural challenges. Currently, Debra serves on major international non-profit corporation boards, and has worked in corporate governance as far afield as Malaysia, Bahrain, Indonesia, Cuba and Guatemala. Co-author of Governance Solutions: The Ultimate Guide to Competence and Confidence in the Boardroom, she is an acknowledged and sought-after thought leader in corporate governance, also authoring over two dozen major research articles published in Canada and internationally.