From the April 15th Article titled, “The New Normal:Legislating a Place at the Top for Women.” Full article can be viewed at http://bit.ly/9P1mnS.
Regarding the idea of quotas to increase the number of women sitting on boards:
Joel Koblentz, a Goizueta advisory board member and senior partner of the Koblentz Group, an Atlanta-based leadership advisory and executive search consultancy, shares Magee’s view. It may be the politically correct answer, he says, and, for some businesses, it may well be the right answer, but companies need the flexibility to pick the best available candidates. “Generally speaking, diversity on boards is a good thing,” he says, “but diversity is more than gender, race, and creed.” Koblentz stresses the importance of diversity of competencies and experience. “The best boards I have observed perform as teams,” he notes, “and as a team, the board should be composed of individuals who bring to bear different relevant skills, experiences, and competencies to the necessary judgments that effective corporate governance requires.” Key to a well functioning board, Koblentz says, is “respect among board members for various points of view.” Such respect makes possible “open and candid conversations, as well as full participation,” he says, leading to “diversity and convergence of thoughts and insights.” Koblentz, who has placed more than 300 board members, says that in the last few years, many companies have found themselves unexpectedly in life-and-death crises and are looking for board members with deep expertise who are able to ask the right questions at the right time. While boards tend to incorporate diversity when they can, “diversity for diversity’s sake is not something they’re interested in,” he says. If board members are not competent, he cautions, “they’ll be buffaloed by the leadership.”