A Board Seat Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Harvard Business Review sponsored content from Egon Zehnder (July 2025) reframes a board seat as a leadership role, not an achievement award, and argues directors who underperform diminish the effectiveness of the entire board. Its prescriptions: rigorously manage the board matrix by cross-referencing needs against each director's skills and experience; treat seats as continuously earned through explicit expectations and measurable performance; and install a performance-management process with external review elements. Calls out two common SEA mid-market failure modes too: "friends and family" seat selection and weak candidate due diligence.