Fascinating indeed. Do you happen to have any recommended reading for those of us interested in learning how things really happen at the board level? There's so much politics and intrigue that goes on behind the scenes that rarely becomes public.
Recommended reading? not really. I expect most people would find the real stuff just sad. Much of the drama seems to be politics mixed with greed.
I've served on a couple of boards (private companies) once as an independent director and once as a technical adviser and remember wondering once if the folks I was dealing with were just bored or if they really didn't care one way or the other.
That said, I've also worked with board members at companies that were very engaged and very involved with their companies and the companies involved benefited from their attention.
The only common thread was that generally the board members had a whole lot less to lose if the company failed than the executive staff did, and so they often assume that the executive staff is motivated to make things succeed, and seem disinclined to second guess the CEO and their team's tactics. Of course things get unpleasant when the tactics make them look bad as we've seen in Uber and Theranos as well.
There are various places that recruit people to serve on boards. Some people feel like it 'boosts' their executive street cred if they are on the boards of several companies. I'm not one of the people who is impressed by something like that but I recognize that some folks are and its part of the VC "game". (sort like having rare Magic the Gathering cards I guess, "I play Unicorn Startup on your Bootstrapped Lifestyle Business.") It would probably make for an interesting subplotline in Silicon Valley.
