236. Are we sure we use our experts well?

This season, every episode of OMG focuses on a question that directors really need to answer. OMG is written, produced, narrated and scored by Matt Fullbrook.   TRANSCRIPT: Question #34: Are we sure we use our experts well? It goes without saying that you can’t just stick a bunch of smart people in a room together and expect them to get along, let alone to make patient and well-informed decisions together. Things get even worse when those people aren’t just smart, but also have serious depth of expertise in areas that are directly related to the decisions that they need to make. Add to that the time scarcity and information asymmetry that are unavoidable characteristics of the work of a board and, well, we basically have the perfect illustration of why I think good governance is intentionally cultivating effective conditions for making decisions. If we’re not intentional, then our experts will be set up…not to fail, exactly, but certainly not to be as awesome as they could and should be. Just turning to an expert and saying “hey, you’re a pro at this, what do you think we should do?” is opening the door for the overconfidence effect that we talked about last week in episode 235. Just leaving things to chance and hoping everyone engages in the right way at the right time is, well, I suppose it’s the opposite of being intentional and also unlikely to succeed. It turns out that we need to understand not only the nature of each person’s expertise, but also a bit about their personality. We need to have a clear sense of what conversations we need to have (shout out episode 218). We need a sense of what insights management needs from the board. And once we know all that, we’re ready to flip today’s question a bit and ask: what do we need to do to make sure we use our experts well today?