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THIN ON TOP
WHY CORPORATE GOVERNANCE MATTERS AND HOW TO MEASURE AND IMPROVE BOARD PERFORMANCE
Bob Garratt
"What ever size company you are leading, Garratt's unflinching analysis makes for essential reading. This book is a challenge thrown down to the business community: do you really understand - and can you justify - the way your business is being run? Don't read this book for comforting words or an easy life. But if you are serious about leading your business on to a healthy and robust future, get hold of a copy right away."
Stefan Stern, Business Voice, May 2003
Taking readers behind the boardroom door, Thin on Top issues a wake-up call to directors and executives, government regulators and lobbyists, owners and investors, about what it will take to break the cycle of corporate misdeeds, professionalise directing, reduce corruption and ensure a civil society.
Garratt advocates a back-to-basics approach based on the centuries-old value of good governance - accountability, honesty and transparency to owners, whether public or private, as he demystifies the role of the CEO, debunks the three most widely-held organizational myths about the limits of openness and personal power and details a system of metrics to measure and manage a new set of competencies for the board, its directors, and the company as a whole. Rigorous application of these alone will prevent most of the directoral disasters we read about in our daily newspapers.
"Bob Garratt is the ideal person to write about corporate governance,boards and directors and this is the right time for this book. That he has warned us of most of the problems that now appear everywhere daily is part of the appeal; the rest is that he has a gift for words and, frankly, fears no man in his insistence on honest analysis. We are all fortunate in the timing of this book's publication."
Robert A G Monks, author of Power and Responsbility
Bob Garratt advises corporate leaders on director development and strategic thinking as head of his own consulting firm, Board Performance. An associate of the Judge Institute of Management at Cambridge, he is also a visiting professor of the Management School at Imperial College. He is Chairman of Media Projects International in London and of Organization Development Ltd in Hong Kong. His previous books include The Learning Organization, Learning to Lead, Developing Strategic Thought and The Fish Rots from the Head.