Behind Closed Doors

‘The Boardroom: How to get in, get on and make a difference’

From his 30 years of serving on boards, Simon Laffin provides a guide on how to get appointed to a board, and what to do, and what to look out for, when you. He covers a wide range of board issues from what financial numbers to look out for, the understanding risk and cash-flow, decision-making, mergers and acquisitions, how to work with colleagues, even to how to handle sexual misdemeanours in the boardroom. He also tackles controversial subjects, such as diversity and excess regulation. The book is full of tips and techniques to help even experienced directors make a difference. Simon argues that what boards need is education and encouragement, to get a better understanding of board issues. He explains that boards do not need more invasive regulation. He wants to open the doors to the boardroom so that insiders understand better what is happening and what they need to do, and outsiders get a clearer view of what happens inside the boardroom.

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Notes From A Non-Executive

Topics covered range from what to look at when you are thinking of joining a board, to handling difficult issues that arise, to what to expect if your company gets bid for.

Risks & The Boardroom

This is a plea for boards to take corporate risk registers seriously and suggests ways to enable boards to think about risks in a constructive way.

Corporate Governance

A blog on recent corporate governance changes, lesson that can be learned from failures such as Carillion and Northern Rock, and issues around the audit industry.

Economics

Articles looking at various aspects of economics

Recent Blogs

The audit punch-bag: Where is the voice of industry?

The audit punch-bag: Where is the voice of industry?

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Storm clouds are gathering over the audit market. Government, politicians, media and regulators are all queueing up to condemn companies and auditors over the few, but well-publicised, failures of certain companies. Lack of knowledge about the audit process is no bar...

How a bow-tie can smarten up corporate risks

How a bow-tie can smarten up corporate risks

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Imagine that you are worried about your infirm mother and want to make sure that you do everything to protect her. If you adopted typical corporate risk management practice, you would identify a risk that she falls over. You would then calculate the impact (maybe a...

Carillion – What can we learn?

Carillion – What can we learn?

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The collapse of Carillion was a tragedy, especially for its 45,000 employees and 25,000 pensioners. In an earlier article, I looked at its last Annual Report to see if there had been clues that could have tipped readers off to the impending catastrophe. Since then, we...