Helping CEOs and boards strengthen their collaboration to enable more dynamic, effective leadership and guidance
An effective board of directors understands how a company creates value, where potential risks lie, and what the strategic considerations are. Our research suggests that the strongest boards spend more time interacting with management teams about performance and strategy, supporting CEOs without overfocusing on fiduciary activities.
We help clients achieve an effective collaboration between management and the board by facilitating strategic discussions, helping prepare CEO succession models, and supporting redesign of board reports and materials. We help boards improve their capabilities so they can better evaluate resource allocation, offer robust feedback and incisive debate of alternative strategies, assess trends and uncertainties, and work with CEOs to create greater value.
What we do
Board benchmarking and enhancement
We support clients’ board-effectiveness discussions by analyzing how they use their time, how they work together, and how they perceive board performance overall. Benchmarking against our extensive global sample, we help create more forward-looking, effective boards of directors.
Onboarding and development
We provide induction sessions and continuous training for board chairs and directors to strengthen the board’s expertise for the long term, with a combination of tailored development programs and field-and-forum sessions. We offer a dynamic combination of board-specific modules and relevant industry perspectives.
Governance transformation
Our proven approach to creating an integrated group and subsidiary governance framework helps CEOs and boards respond to new regulatory requirements for multinational organizations. We help our clients define consistent principles that guide the composition of boards, balance group and subsidiary board responsibilities, and align meeting schedules.
Peer network
We provide various platforms where chairs and board directors can candidly discuss critical governance challenges with industry peers, in a confidential setting. Participants benefit from one another's experience and hear from experts, both in client-specific and multi-client formats.
Examples of our work
Strengthened exchange among portfolio board chairs
An investment holding company sought to become a more active owner by enhancing board effectiveness of its portfolio companies. We helped analyze the companies’ boards to identify initiatives that would add the most value. Among them, we created a new program to bring all portfolio company board chairs together to exchange their experience and knowledge on how they get involved on key matters such as digital disruption.
Defined regulatory-compliant group and subsidiary board governance framework
A global bank faced increased regulatory pressure to strengthen the operational independence of its major subsidiaries. After thorough analysis of the internal setup and external legal and regulatory requirements in relevant jurisdictions, we worked with local lawyers to create a multinational group and subsidiary board governance framework.
Onboarded and trained new board directors and chairs
A global building materials company annually seeks our support in running a tailored annual training program for their board directors, a combination of latest core functional and industry insights. We also supported multiple new board directors with fully tailored onboarding programs, combining the latest perspectives on the role of the board and driving board effectiveness with industry-specific insights and trends.
Introduced a continuous board improvement process
A leading financial services corporation wanted to enhance its board’s effectiveness, with periodic assessments to build ongoing improvement. We helped the company create a baseline by running annual analysis of the board’s effectiveness through surveys, interviews, and core documentation reviews over the course of several years. The resulting insights are once a year discussed with the full board to identify continuous improvement initiatives.
Featured insights
Collection
Board governance
A collection of insights for corporate boards, CEOs, and executives to help improve board effectiveness including: board composition and diversity, board processes, board strategy, talent and risk management, sustainability, and purpose.
Better together: Three ways to boost board–CEO collaboration
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As the board’s role becomes ever more complicated, stronger partnership with management, especially the CEO, can help directors...
Geopolitical resilience: The new board imperative
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Geopolitical risk is at the top of the CEO agenda. Board members can help by sharpening their understanding of the geopolitical...
The Board Perspective - Number 3
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A collection of McKinsey insights focusing on boards of directors
The board perspective
Join leading experts, senior management, and board directors inside the strategy room as they share their insights on how to...
Featured experts
Kaushik Das
Senior Partner, Southeast AsiaSingapore
Advises clients in the energy, mining, and consumer industries, as well as the public sector, to design and implement long-term...
Celia Huber
Senior PartnerBay Area
Leads our North American board services sector and advises organizations on strategies to help thrive within the context of global...
Eric Kutcher
Senior Partner, and Chair, North AmericaBay Area
Eric is a Senior Partner and McKinsey & Company’s Chair, North America
Frithjof Norman Lund
Managing Partner and Senior PartnerOslo
Leads McKinsey Board Services, our global service line helping CEOs and boards of directors improve corporate governance, and...
Joydeep Sengupta
Senior PartnerSingapore
Leads McKinsey’s Center for CEO Excellence in Asia and works with leading companies to transform their businesses
Sven Smit
Senior Partner, Chair of Insights and Ecosystems, and Chair of McKinsey Global InstituteAmsterdam
Leads research on economic and business trends and works with companies to develop business strategies and transformations