Questions we asked that made us produce our own Board Skills Analysis

· Are knowledge, experience, and expertise the same thing as a skill?

· Does having knowledge, experience, and expertise outside of the board room automatically mean you bring all of this to the board?

· How do you know all your board members understand and define a skill in the same way?

· What are the consequences of reporting that you don’t have a skill?

· Are all skills essential to the organisation?

I smile at the last point after finding wills and probate included in some organisations’ skills matrix, where they had absolutely zero need for this skill.  But it’s ok, all board members reported 5/5 for the skill level.

So, as well as some of these points making us smile, they also became a talking point. Surely there has got to be an affordable process out there, that can create a report that really analyses the actual skills of board members without putting a data reporting burden on a team member to self-generate the insight.  

We also wanted to see a report that shows where skills are available but are not being used, that shows where skills exist but are not being given the opportunity to be showcased at board meetings.

Is it too much to ask for a governance tool that generates insight, reports on actions, drives board member training, recruitment, and acts as a trigger for change?

It was the start of months of questioning, discovery and planning.

The beginning of Governance Geek.