from First Quarter 2010
Corporate Board Member
by Bonnie Azab Powell
Imagine that a company whose board you sit on has just fired its CEO. An emergency search for a replacement is in progress. Group e-mails are flying between you and the other directors, the search firm, and the CFO, with résumés, background checks, and laudatory-cover-profile PDFs of the candidates attached. People are forgetting to “reply to all” or to change the subject line when they start a thread about a new candidate. The search firm realizes it sent out an old version of one CV and sends a new one, but forgets to rename it.
It’s chaos, and it wastes time. One frustrated, tech-savvy director steps forward. In minutes she sets up a password-protected online workspace, uploads all the candidates’ files into named folders, and sends out a link to the special site. There’s a document, prominently marked “Candidate List,” that compares backgrounds, skill sets, and salary requirements, and the board and certain other interested parties can open it online and comment on it—simultaneously and regardless of where they are.
Using a shared calendar feature, the savvy director schedules a Web-based conference call in which board members can go over the choices together, the shared spreadsheet in front of them. And thanks to the magic of cloud computing, your geek goddess did all this for free, without even having to ask for help from the company’s IT department.
Topic tags: corporate governance, technology
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