Ready for BadBoardMember.com?
from
May/June 2007
by Don Morrison
In an earlier and simpler age, the worst punishment you could expect for doing something offensive in a public place was a dirty look. Nowadays you risk having a video clip of your misbehavior posted on the Internet for all the world to see.
The rise of blogs and the proliferation of cell phones with built-in video capability have turned everybody into an enforcer of public probity. If some speeding, lane-switching maniac cuts you off on the way to the office, for instance, you can post his license-plate number and a description of his offense at PlateWire.com. Indeed, there has been a flowering of websites dedicated to showcasing transgressions of all sorts, from inept parking (Caughtya.org) to littering (LitterButt.com) to cell-phone abuse and other loutishness (RudePeople.com). At YouTube.com—the Home Depot of video clips—and its still-photo counterpart Flickr.com, galleries of egregious humanity are on display, from flatulent children to psychotic brides-to-be. Hester Prynne would die of shame: The pillory has gone digital.
Why should board members be exempt? Rather than decry this modern rush to judgment, ponder its positive side. Now you can name and shame fellow directors who transgress the bounds of civilized behavior—and you don’t even have to show your face, since most websites accept pseudonymous contributions. Privacy is assured; vengeance is yours.
You can blow the whistle on such boardroom pests as doodlers, paper-folders, nodders-off, throat-clearers, nose-pickers, incorrigible interrupters, in-their-lap BlackBerry users, cell-phone yakkers, and sotto voce flight-rebookers. When that nitpicking ex-CFO who inexplicably made it onto the board starts getting difficult about some obscure number in the budget, quietly whip out your Nokia and soon the smarty-pants will be famous. Same for the chronic late-arriver, the serial name-dropper, the long-anecdote retailer, the agenda-strayer, the why-weren’t-there-flowers-in-my-hotel-room prima donna, and everybody else who talks too long to little effect. Say cheese, losers.
A greater challenge will be to wreak Internet justice on board members whose sins are serious but less photogenic. We’re talking about directors who toady to the CEO, rubber-stamp management idiocy, help conceal a deteriorating financial position (or an improving one, just before the insiders’ buyout), accede to backdated stock options, and approve overgenerous, performance-averse compensation packages. In those cases, a permanent, preferably hidden security camera might be advisable. If, in this governance-obsessed age, a CEO can go to jail for signing off on a faulty financial report, his or her boardroom enablers should at least be exposed to the glare of notoriety.
So far, no websites are explicitly dedicated to exposing the boorishness, thoughtlessness, fecklessness, self-indulgence, and mendacity that can take place around a board table. But some savvy Web entrepreneur is sure to launch a BadBoardMember.com or a DreckyDirectorWatch.org any day now. In the meantime, you can post just about anything on YouTube and its ilk. So charge up those cell phones and strike a blow for civility. Just don’t let your fellow directors catch you. They can be boorish when they’re angry.
