Making Ourselves Useful
from Summer 1999
by Caroline Donnelly
It goes without saying: To make good decisions, you need good information. Directors deliberating a stock repricing, for example, need information that is in-depth—but not so bogged down in the mechanics that it obscures the larger issues. And they also need information that is unbiased.
Corporate Board Member strives to deliver just this sort of intelligence to readers in every issue, setting out all the options in an objective, user-friendly way. This is far rarer in America’s boardrooms than you might expect. Often, the backgrounders laid before directors have been prepared by lawyers, bankers, or accountants, who are not always spellbinding writers. More dangerous, those professionals, or the management that hired them, may have a vested interest in the board’s decision. The information they provide may be skewed, designed to “sell” a preferred outcome.
While we try to pack utility into every story, some—the ones slugged “Need to Know”—are more explicitly instructional than others. This issue includes two such articles: “Choosing the Right Investment Banker” by Randy Myers (page 54) and “Last Call for Pooling” by John R. Engen (page 68).
Of course, service journalism for directors, who are—or should be—on the bridge, is different from service journalism for the folks in the engine room. Instead of telling directors how to do something, we aim to tell them how to think about something. That goal led us to create what is now a regular feature of many of our stories: sidebars that suggest specific questions for directors to ask management, consultants—or even themselves—on issues they face. For example, see “Six Questions to Ask Before Joining a Nonprofit Board” (page 44).
Our interviews with experienced directors and others who are knowledgeable about corporate governance also provide a valuable learning opportunity. Interested in how to get the most out of a board? Check out Michael Dell on the subject (page 48).
To interview Dell, we called on CNBC anchor Tyler Mathisen, whose previous subjects have included the likes of Bill Gates and Sanford Weill of Citigroup. The Emmy award-winning Mathisen found Dell disarmingly down to earth. “Some have likened him to Henry Ford, because he reconceptualized his industry’s manufacturing process,” says Mathisen. “I found myself wondering what Ford would have thought of this young, unaffected whipper-snapper.”
The Dell story, by the way, was a fast-moving one. A reporter checking Dell’s net worth after the interview found it had gone up $3 billion overnight.
Ann Reilly Dowd has been a contributor to Corporate Board Member since its launch last summer. In “How Cooked Books Are Threatening Directors” (Winter, 1998), she systematically examined what was fueling the flare-up of accounting scandals in American business. The groundbreaking story not only caught the attention of regulators—SEC Chief Accountant Lynn Turner cited it in a speech—but the New York Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists as well. Its judges named the article a finalist for a prestigious Deadline Club award for best magazine feature reporting, pitting us against Time and Business Week. Time won, and our congratulations to those responsible. But as actress Judi Dench said when accepting her Oscar for Shakespeare in Love, “The best bit about the Academy Awards is being nominated. You live in a kind of haze for several weeks.”
Dowd, too, found satisfaction in the nomination: “I never dreamed I’d get any recognition for a story on accounting.” Dowd started out preparing the White House’s daily news summary for President Gerald Ford. Still based in Washington, D.C., she spent most of her subsequent years there covering politics and business for Fortune. Stay tuned for more of Dowd’s work in upcoming issues of Corporate Board Member.
