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Do white males fill nearly all your board seats? Here's how to bring diverse perspectives to your board without compromising your standards. BY DAVID H. HOFFMANN AND ALEXANDRA HENDRICKSON
Angelique X. Irvin knows the importance of boardroom diversity firsthand - what it's like to be the sole woman on a board. "Women bring complementary skills to a board, such as the ability to view how a business works as a set of interdependent systems," says Irvin, who was the only woman board member when she ran her first private company, a manufacturer of optical devices for the telecommunications, military and aerospace markets. After she left to found Clear Align, a company that supplies optical systems to defense and aerospace clientele, she was determined to incorporate diversity on her board.
"Traditional, homogenous boards can become focused on one area of the business and miss key success factors," she explains. "For example, a board can get focused on cash flow and cost reduction as key issues. A good board will look at a problem from many angles. I have found this is more likely when a board is diverse in skill set, cultural background and, of course, gender."
Successful companies today have management that is younger, more diverse and globally oriented. Diversity in boardrooms likewise produces better decisions and stronger companies. Yet the number of women on for-profit corporate boards is increasing at a snail's pace. According to a study conducted by Catalyst, women held 14.7 percent of the seats on Fortune 500 corporate boards in the U.S. in 2005. The number of women on for-profit corporate boards in 1996 was 9.6 percent. At this rate, it could take 25 years for women to reach parity with men.
We asked several current women board members why and how they were recruited to their boards. One of the most striking findings from the women we spoke with was that corporate board membership was not on their radar screen until they were asked to join a board. "It's hard to tease [women executives'] out," says Janice Reunie, a board member at NOVA Chemicals. "Women arc so busy with family and careers, they don't have the time."
Both a proactive approach and creativity are essential when searching for diverse...