We are a group of experienced and independent board reviewers who have come together to enhance the value of the board effectiveness reviews that we do by sharing best practice lessons with each other and contributing to the wider debate on excellence in corporate governance.
Our values
We are united by a desire to bring open-mindedness, inquisitiveness, flexibility, rigour and empathy to board effectiveness reviews.
These values mean we have developed best practice standards to our work as set out in our Code of Practice.
We believe that all board effectiveness reviews should be value-adding exercises which lead directly to improvements in performance. And that any board review should use the appropriate corporate governance standards as its benchmark for best practice. Guild members run board effectiveness reviews using the UK Corporate Governance Code, the QCA Corporate Governance Code, and the Charity Commission Governance code amongst others.
What we do
Our role is to get to the heart of any issues that prevent our clients’ boards from performing at their best. As such, we seek to develop responses which overcome those issues and enable enhancement right across the boardroom and beyond. Five qualities underpin our approach:
- Open-mindedness
- Inquisitiveness
- Flexibility
- Rigour
- Empathy
Open-mindedness and inquisitiveness help us unearth the principal issues that our clients’ boards need to address. Flexibility and rigorous process ensure that we understand those issues well and can present insightful analysis and pragmatic solutions. Empathy enables us to understand the context of the client and its board to develop recommendations that are appropriate and implementable but without compromising governance standards.
We work closely with clients to understand the specific objectives of a particular board review and ensure that our assessment approach achieves those objectives. We always aim to be as flexible as possible in our approach and methodology to meet the client’s objectives but without ever compromising quality.
Key to the success of board effectiveness reviews carried out by Guild members is the value we place on integrity. We are all committed to:
- Acting completely independently in our approach to and relationships with clients
- Being courteous and respectful in our dealings with individuals contacted during the course of assignments
- Adopting the highest standards of integrity in performing any assignment
- Thoroughness in discerning and understanding the issues that we explore in our work
- Sensitivity and discretion in all our dealings with clients and boards
And the Code of Practice which all our members comply with enshrines our approach and these values.