Advice for CEOs

In reflecting on many years of experience on boards, as a Chair and board member of companies and non-profit organizations and as a CEO, I believe that the roles of a company board can be boiled down to five:

My experience as chair of three governing bodies and a member of four others has convinced me that many boards could benefit from clarifying their role and differentiating it from that of executive leadership. The systematic application of these three simple tools to make boards work better can greatly improve the contribution of most statutory and advisory boards.

Private companies represent almost all of the businesses in the United States. Hundreds of thousands are born each year and about as many die. They generate more than half of all paychecks and most net new jobs. They employ almost half of high tech workers and account for a high portion of all U.S. exports.

In the first part of this article, I discussed the reality that creating and building a business to scale is not an easy feat. As an entrepreneur you're not alone. Most will make the same types of mistakes.

For many entrepreneurs, getting back on the path to success is as simple as looking hard in the mirror.

Every emerging middle market company that Newport works with must define and secure its vision of the future. At the same time, the company’s present may at times seem precarious. The gap between where a company wants to go and where it finds itself right now can look very wide.