Being a board director has never been easy. But the confluence of disruptions and uncertainties in today’s business environment has made the job more and more demanding in recent years. In our experience, the role has also become increasingly consequential. As directors’ agendas and responsibilities expand, their perspectives and decisions have a growing impact on their organizations. The results from our newest McKinsey Global Survey on boards confirms that directors’ roles and responsibilities are increasingly complex.
In the survey, most board member respondents say they’re dealing with this pressure by strengthening collaboration with their management teams. This can help directors align more meaningfully on their organizations’ priorities, better clarify their own roles, and focus their time on the most value-adding activities. While we know that the board’s relationship with the CEO is especially critical, just one-third of respondents say their boards and CEOs collaborate very effectively. The results from directors whose boards are best at working with company leaders suggest three ways to enhance collaboration: establishing efficient and effective board processes, communicating more often and openly with CEOs, and fostering a strong board culture.
The complexity challenge for directors
The survey results echo our experience: board members’ work is increasingly complex, and their time and expertise are increasingly in high demand. Not only is the business environment more unpredictable than before, but the range of topics that directors must prioritize continues to expand. Two-thirds of surveyed directors say the complexity of their boards’ role and responsibilities has increased in the past two years. What’s more, many of the topics on today’s board agenda, from generative AI (gen AI) and cybersecurity to the net-zero transition, were rarely discussed ten years ago. Meanwhile, directors are still responsible for the general oversight and strategic direction–setting aspects of their role.
How have directors been managing this growing complexity? When asked in the survey about the specific tactics they use, the largest share of directors (59 percent) say they’re strengthening the collaboration between the board and management team (Exhibit 1). This is followed by the 52 percent who say they’re spending more time than before on their board work. Indeed, the average number of days per year that directors dedicate to board-related activities increased from 25 in 2019 to 30 in 2023.
The value of strong collaboration
While most surveyed board members agree that collaboration is important to their success, only one-third of all respondents (including directors and executives) say their boards and CEOs collaborate very effectively. So the majority of directors and corporate leaders stand to benefit from stronger overall collaboration. In our experience, effective collaboration among directors and CEOs can free up boards’ capacity to focus on companies’ most pressing issues. Good collaboration can also keep boards better informed about the environment in which their organizations operate, including the competitive landscape and the stakeholder environment.
CEOs, too, benefit from better collaboration in various ways. According to McKinsey’s research on CEO excellence, successful CEOs get the most useful perspective from their boards, build trust, and delineate management versus board responsibilities. They focus on developing strong, transparent relationships with their chairs or lead independent directors, as well as on interacting with individual board members.
To better understand how collaboration benefits boards in this time of increasing demands, we looked closely at the responses from a group of directors who report increasing complexity and effective collaboration with CEOs. Compared with the directors who report more complexity and ineffective collaboration, the effective collaborators are twice as likely to say their boards have very high impact on long-term value creation and much more likely (85 percent versus 47 percent, respectively) to say their boards are effective overall. What’s more, the effective collaborators rate themselves as more effective on a range of critical board activities, from strategy to talent to risk management (Exhibit 2).
Notably, the biggest areas of divergence are on strategic activities that require more active and regular board involvement—for example, debating strategic alternatives with the board and CEO, adjusting strategy continually, assessing whether a strategy is linked to the company’s purpose, and assessing management’s understanding of the drivers of value creation within the organization and its industry. In contrast with fiduciary activities, such as formal approvals, these other activities require boards to partner with management teams by actively engaging with, discussing, and providing constructive challenges to organizational strategy. In our experience, the boards that do well on these more involved, collaborative activities are comparatively more agile, have a better understanding of their organizations, and are better prepared to manage the complexity of their roles and their organizations’ overall situation.
Three ways to work better together
When we asked survey participants about specific board practices and operations, the results suggest a few ways in which the effective collaborators differ from other boards. These can serve as lessons for others to follow. First is establishing efficient and effective board processes. When boards are well run, with clear processes and touchpoints in place, directors can avoid time traps, such as discussion of the same topic multiple times in different forums, unproductive meetings, and lack of access to company information. This can free up their capacity for value-adding activities.
According to the survey results, effective collaborators are significantly more likely than others to have smoother overall operations (Exhibit 3). For example, they’re 2.4 times more likely than other respondents to say their chairs run meetings efficiently and effectively and 1.8 times more likely to provide new board members with sufficient induction or orientation training to be effective. Other ways to ensure efficient, effective operations include setting up a yearly cadence for realigning responsibilities, creating a formal process for decision making (which helps chairs run meetings more efficiently), and ensuring alignment on agenda items so that both the board and management are focused on the same priorities.
The second way to improve collaboration is by prioritizing board–CEO communication. In the survey results, the top reasons for ineffective collaboration include lack of clarity on the agenda, unclear roles and responsibilities, and poor information sharing (Exhibit 4). All of these can undermine the relationship between CEOs and their boards.
In previous McKinsey research, we saw that boards that communicate better with CEOs are more likely to provide more effective support. These boards are better informed about their organizations, so they can align as a group and respond to changes and crises more quickly than others can. When boards and CEOs communicate well, directors are also more aligned with management on the board agenda, as well as on roles and responsibilities, so directors’ time and efforts are better used.
To keep the conversations going, CEOs should stay connected with their boards between meetings—which doesn’t have to be a time-consuming endeavor. The survey results suggest that effective collaborators spend the same share of their time as other respondents do on management team communications, suggesting that how the time is spent matters more than how much time they spend communicating. It’s important for both boards and CEOs to focus on frequent and concise communication, especially through multiple channels (for example, real-time messaging apps and monthly CEO reports) and through transparency from the CEO. When chief executives are in doubt, it’s always best to share.
Finally, directors should foster a culture of trust and respect in the boardroom. The survey results show that effective collaborators are more likely than others to put this into practice, both by creating a strong culture (87 percent versus 44 percent, respectively) and by spending enough time on team building. In our experience, management teams and boards most often need advice on how to create a good team dynamic in the boardroom, sometimes with support from a coach, and many CEOs aren’t clear enough about what insights and expertise they need from their boards.
A strong team culture, as well as a positive board–CEO dynamic, helps overcome these challenges by enabling boards to take more timely action on their organizations’ pressing issues and encouraging more open, constructive discussions among directors and CEOs. Spending more informal time together—for example, by sharing meals, periodically combining meetings with field trips to production facilities or service centers, and having board chairs and CEOs make time for regular one-on-one check-ins—can help these cultural habits stick. These activities can improve the interpersonal dynamics between the board chair and chief executive and, by extension, improve relationships across the broader board and management team.
As board director roles continue to become more complex and demanding, with continually expanding responsibilities, effective collaboration between the board and the CEO and management team is increasingly critical. Strengthening these partnerships shouldn’t be seen as yet another task on the expanding list of directors’ activities but rather as a natural and fundamental way for boards to become more effective—especially on the activities that create the most value for their organizations.
