“As an interviewer carrying out an external board evaluation on a FTSE company working with Genius Methods and their process, I have been extremely impressed with the multi-staged approach Genius adopts.
The combination of a series of detailed questionnaires specifically tailored for the company, together with one to one interviews provides a high order of rigour, breadth and depth to the evaluation. The multi-stage process is both structured and creative and provides a superb combination of hard, quantitative information as well as surfacing and teasing out the softer, human orientated and communication issues as well as those that are difficult to address or handle.
These are facets highlighted by Walker, The UK Code and from experience, those issues that impact board effectiveness.
However, the key value of the process is not just its highly bespoke nature, it is the exceptionally detailed approach to questionnaires and interview post-processing. The sheer volume of evaluation and comparison work that is undertaken on respondent’s answers ensures all aspects of Board workings are assessed in considerable detail and from a number of different directions. All issues are given fair and equal air-time, not only the noisiest subject.
The benefit of this firstly is that the interview stage is a highly informed event for the interviewer who is then able to provide an unbiased focus on the key issues identified. Secondly the interview results are analysed and compared to the questionnaire, highlighting further key variances.
What the Board gets out of the process is the detailed output required to prove that the evaluation has been meticulous, professional and impartial. More importantly the Board receives extremely valuable information upon which it can act to address recommendations and prioritise accordingly over the year.
The bespoke questionnaire, with possible minor tweaking, is then an excellent tool to use for the next two years’ board evaluations and provide year on year benchmarking”
