Is Your Board Too Collegial?

Harvard Business Review (Sep 17, 2025) by Irina Cozma and Elena Rodighiero argues boards routinely confuse collegiality with alignment, producing delayed decisions, superficial consensus, unequal participation and fragmented governance. The article anchors the point in a $2-billion publicly traded energy-company case study in which the board remained largely passive — offering neither clear strategic direction nor forward-looking guidance — even as new technologies reshaped the market and competitors pulled ahead. For SEA mid-market boards whose harmony has been a deliberate cultural choice, the piece reframes politeness as a measurable governance defect.