Name: Introducing Fortune’s 2022 Modern Board list
Uploaded: 2022-04-18
Duration: 4 min 16 s
Description: Here’s what it takes to make the cut.

Introducing Fortune’s 2022 Modern Board list

Features

the modern board list is a list of the most innovative boards in corporate America right now. So we wait a number of factors. As we created this ranking, we looked at things like gender parity, racial and ethnic diversity, corporate governance metrics and certainly E. S. G. Components. Given that we know the increasing importance of this wide range of topics, environmental, social and governance. This is a way to kind of incorporate the extent to which the company is future leaning. Ultimately the point of a board is to be on top of risk mitigation and the big picture long term strategy of the company. So that was kind of our reasoning for for including the DSG metrics. This is a really challenging time for anyone who's running a company. Companies are responsible to more stakeholders than ever before. They're being more attentive than ever to what their customers need, but also what their employees need, what their communities need there being more attentive to the environment. They're being more conscious of issues around racial equity and gender equity. You really need the best team possible to help you run your company correctly. And the board of directors is an essential part of that team. Historically, the boards have been made up with former CEOS and CFOS. We've seen that expand. We're seeing the addition of chief people officers, Chief town officers and chief diversity officers right now, of course, tech expertise is something that every company needs more of regardless of whether they are in fact a technology company. So finding board members who have had a lot of experience with tech innovation within their companies. The modern board list is really for the first time trying to measure what makes the board good and objectively rank the companies that succeed at those things. Top five companies on the list are Microsoft, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, Walgreens, Boots Alliance Intel and three M. Microsoft was the top company on the list. I would say they're bored. Was really interesting for a lot of different reasons. They have not just this wide range of corporate expertise, but they also had some government expertise on their board as well. Looking at their board makeup, eight out of 12 Of the board members represent gender or ethnic diversity. And so I think that was something that really helps them stand out. What's interesting about the top 25. They're not really concentrated in any particular industry. I mean you've got tech companies but you've also got drug stores. Uh, you have a giant mining company for example, uh, you have companies that make pharmaceuticals, uh, you've got a company that makes paint. So it's really kind of all over the map. Mm hmm. One of the primary challenges to transforming the board is that historically board members have had long tenures. And so if five or 10 years ago, you know, you had a startup with all white milk, this gender board members and now we fast forward today and we say, okay, well we want to completely re example board and increase more diversity. You really only have two options, wait for their tenure ship to end or push them out. You can't instantly make a great board a lot of times companies have been building these great boards over time. So a company that ranks high on the list right now has probably been being very thoughtful about who's on their board for for a pretty long time, like five or 10 years to get the right team together to be able to adapt to the rapidly changing environment. We believe that boards need to adapt as well and it's not just that boards need to have different people, They need to operate differently as well. We're seeing that boards are meeting more often that they're investing more in educating their leaders and that they're getting a little bit more hands on. Um, even with the companies and meeting a wider range of people than, than just the Ceo. Any of the company on this list has likely been prioritizing innovation at the board level for a long time.