ON BOARD

Foster, the founder and managing partner of Current Capital Partners, offers a set of precepts for improving corporate management.

With this work, the author aims to provide a corporate handbook for an ever-changing business world by basing it on four tenets: that the board of directors oversees management, but management handles the details of a business; that directors should be held entirely accountable; that mergers and acquisitions or leveraged buyouts should be viewed as “a significant part of the corporate landscape”; and that corporations should be aware that their role in society is in the midst of a period of intense debate. With all these tenets in mind, Foster then turns to his central subject: the idea of corporate governance. He offers a brief overview of the history of this concept and shares many quotes from people who are in positions to insightfully comment. For example, he speaks to former White House chief of staff under the Biden administration and current chief legal officer for Airbnb Ron Klain: “The president is the chair of the board and in some ways the entire board himself,” Klain observes. “What you’re trying to do is muster the organization to achieve his or her goals and objectives.” Throughout, these expert outside voices complement Foster’s when addresses every phase of corporate directorship, in good times and bad. Former bankruptcy judge Shelley Chapman, for instance, talks with the author about the “very big challenge and responsibility” of being the director of a distressed company, and how that circumstance changes the balance of priorities.

This personalized contextualization gives Foster’s book a steadily accumulating feeling of authority. While discussing each aspect of corporate leadership, the author presents real-world examples, as in the case of Nikola, a maker of alternative-fuel trucks that was led into chaos by its former chief executive: “Inaccurate disclosures by a company, particularly by its chair and/or CEO, can cause a crisis,” Foster writes, adding commentary from current Nikola CEO Steve Girsky to hammer home the lesson: “Having a group of independent directors is valuable,” that executive tells Foster. “You want people who are comfortable with discomfort.” The remit of Foster’s book is deliberately narrow, mainly tailored to his fellow executives and C-suite directors; however, his consistent grounding of precepts in pragmatic examples—often narrated by the people who were there at the time—will certainly increase the book’s value for that readership. Foster repeatedly asserts that corporate governance has grown stronger over the past generation, and he offers his book as a way to lay the groundwork for future improvement. Specifically, he urges companies not only to think about their shareholders, but also to take into account a broader crowd of stakeholders: the people and communities affected by their decisions. These stakeholders will likely be happy to note this book’s consistent tone of moral uprightness and ethical responsibility—although more cynical readers, noting numerous examples of modern-day corporate corruption, may wonder if anybody’s listening.

A richly detailed and context-heavy guidebook for improving corporate directorship.