34. Boardroom Bound with host Alexander Lowry

Alexander Lowry is a professor at Gordon College in Wenham Massachusetts where he is the Executive Director of the Master’s in Financial Analysis program and the creator, voice and driving force behind ”Boardroom Bound” - a weekly podcast about boards of directors, how to become a board member, how to excel at the job and the important impact that boards have on business and our society.

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Links

Alexander Lowry Bio

Gordon College Masters of Science in Financial Analysis

Recommended Books

Authored by Boardroom Bound Guests

Governance in the Digital Age/Dottie Schillinger

Dare to Serve/ Cheryl Batchelder

Be Board Ready and Behind Boardroom Doors/ Betsy Atkins

Boards That Lead/ Ram Charan, Dennis Carey, and Michael Useem

Authored by On Boards Guests

Family Business Handbook - How to Build and Sustain a Successful Enduring Enterprise/Rob Lachenauer and Josh Baron

The Board Members Guide to Risk/David Koenig

High Performance Boards/Didier Cossin

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business/Matt Blumberg

Our Common Ground: Insights From Four Years of Listening to American Voters/Diane Hessan

Quotes

Boards are one of the most important things in the business world and people weren't talking about - that’s what led me to start Boardroom Bound.

If someone says, "Help me get a board seat," that's like saying, "Help me get a job.” I don't know what to do with that. What industry you want to work in? What size of company? Is it compensated, non-compensated, public versus private? There are all these sorts of things you have to help me figure out to know what you should do, and it only then that I can even begin to start giving you guidance. It’s as if I went to you guys and said, "Guys, help me get a job," you’d say, "What does it mean?"

Even after you have given some thought to getting a board seat, I would test you a little bit. All right, so tell me what's most important. Is it the compensation?" And some people would say, yes. I appreciate their honesty, but that's not a good driver for it. "But okay, if it is the compensation, what do you think you're going to make in what are you trying to do?" "Well, I want to be on the board of JP Morgan and make $250,000 a year." I'm like, "Hmm. What kind of size company did you work in?"

”I worked at a bunch of startups." "Well, that's probably not realistic. Let's take what you came up with and let's talk about reality. You're probably not going to be on a board with a company cap size bigger than where you’ve worked before.

If, for example, you have only worked in private companies, then you should focus on that. There are lots of different opportunities there. I would take exactly what you said, Joe, let's dive into it a little bit more, make sure we're all coming from the same page, and then you can come up with a game plan to do it.

Once you've got that, okay, networking is going to be a big part of it. For some people that's a dirty word. It doesn't need to be a d...