The current recession and business failures have brought renewed attention to corporate governance.

Over a period of years, I have developed and presented a series of business cases to corporate directors in my role as professor of management and Academic Director of Executive Education at Columbia Business School. These cases allowed the directors to consider inflections within the business cycle, and how they could survive the subsequent demands on them and their CEOs. As the discussion ensued with these directors, it became apparent to me that an organized body of knowledge could help facilitate their fiduciary roles as the CEO’s boss. With that knowledge, it becomes much easier to understand what they need out of their CEO, and when they need to step in and show a little “tough love” to a CEO going off-course, and what the future holds for boards of directors. In my recently published book, The CEO’s Boss: Tough Love in the Boardroom, I make several predictions about how the dynamics of the board will change; the following is an extract. [1]

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