Best Practice for Recruiting a New Board Member

Cardinal Board Services is an executive search firm that specializes in recruiting new board members for privately owned companies. Many private and family owned companies that generate $25 million in revenue or more ideally will have a board of directors to help manage the changes as that company grows. Other reasons for a company to have a board of directors includes company succession and managing the company culture overall.

Recently Jim Zuehlke was interviewed by David Fondler at the Pioneer Press to discuss how Cardinal Board Services is helping companies build from the top leadership first. Zuehlke mentions the important roles of board members which include the different roles each board member represents for company stakeholders and the challenges in building a board of directors. He mentions “the way you set up your bylaws is very important. It’s one of the critical things we do in board formation. You need to assume there are going to be problems along the way, so you need to have that all thought out in the bylaws. For example, how do you get rid of a board member who’s not all that effective?”

“You have to think about that ahead of time as to how many people you want on the board, is there a way to get them off, is there an age limit. So there’s lots of thought that has to go into your bylaws and how you operate the company.” Check out the Pioneer Press article for all the details in building and recruiting a board member for private and family owned businesses.