Leadership
The Backwards Looking Board
In a survey, more than one-third of directors say their board predominantly focuses on reviewing past actions. How can boards focus more on the future?
November 20, 2025
How Boards Can Focus More on the Future
With the average time commitment for board members ticking up, you’d think some—or most—of that time would be spent strategizing for the future.
But that’s not the case, according to a recent survey of more than 200 US and UK directors conducted by board management software company Board Intelligence. In fact, 34% of respondents said their board focuses predominantly on reviewing past performance—with the result that 46% of directors said their boards don’t add enough value. Some went so far as to say that their boards are actively holding back the organization.
What may be spurring these sentiments, in part, is that “it’s always easier to discuss and debate the output of known data, rather than looking around corners,” says Radhika Papandreou, Korn Ferry’s president of North America and a member of the Board and CEO Services practice. Old habits—such as reviewing hiring decisions well below the CEO—die hard, and any management expert will tell you how common is it for C-suites and boards to conduct root-cause analyses when errors happen. “Boards can get stuck solving the problems of yesterday, particularly after a crisis,” says Sarah Oliva, a principal in Korn Ferry’s Board Effectiveness practice.
To be sure, boards that operate in heavily regulated industries, like finance, are frequently obligated to review performance for compliance reasons. “It’s difficult to address strategy, regulation, and financial performance in one afternoon,” says Dominic Schofield, chair of Korn Ferry’s Board and CEO Services practice in London. He adds that boards could do a better job of allotting enough time for “free-flowing discussion and reflection.”
Indeed, there’s an opportunity cost to not committing sufficient time to looking toward the horizon. This is particularly acute for two groups, the survey found: directors at companies with revenues under $100 million, 53% of whom expressed negative views about board contributions; and UK directors, who were more skeptical than their US counterparts of boards being essential to value creation.
To get past the pattern of looking backwards, experts say bringing in new perspectives can help move directors’ focus away from where the organization has been, and more toward where it’s going. That’s important, given that nearly 40% of directors said strategy execution was their board’s strongest suit. Ensuring that all board members—not just the CEO and board chair—have input on the agenda is also critical, to “make sure it isn’t the same old, same old” each time, says Kate Shattuck, a managing partner at Korn Ferry.
Changing the broader agenda structure as well can help bring more focus to enterprise-wide topics than report after report from the CFO, CMO, or general counsel can. When executives do present to the board, they need to frame their business results around what’s next, rather than what’s past (i.e., “why this happened last quarter”), Papandreou says. One survey finding underscores why this matters: More than a quarter of directors surveyed said meeting-time management was the biggest barrier to board decision-making. And when in doubt, always ensure the pre-read goes out early enough for boards to absorb the material. “Too many executive teams are obsessed with board-material perfection,” Papandreou says. “The perfect is the enemy of the good.”
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