Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance.

Building Better Boards: A Blueprint for Effective Governance. By David A. Nadler, Beverly A. Behan and Mark B. Nadler. Jossey-Bass, 301 pages. $39.95.

This timely and thoughtful book opens with a wry anecdote about what happened when Felix Rohatyn, the New York financial guru, joined the board of Avis in the 1960s. He was greeted by the CEO with the observation that "a really good board is one that only reduces the efficiency of the company by 20 percent."

Needless to say, times have changed. The toppling or retirement of a host of "imperial CEOs"--think of General Electric's Jack Welch, Disney's Michael Eisner or AIG's Maurice "Hank" Greenberg--and the regulatory changes wrenching boards toward independence have truly put U.S. corporate boards in an altered state.

The authors, executives at Mercer Delta Consulting (where David Nadler is chairman and CEO), argue for a new model that eschews previous roles as a lapdog or watchdog of management, and instead "strike[s] the right balance between contention and collaboration." In the process, they write, board members should strive to become "a high-performing team offering real value to the company, its shareholders, employees and corporate leaders."

Critical to that process, they say, are seven core principles that are outlined in the book. Interestingly, a central thread to those principles is a performance review, both of the board as a whole and that of individual directors--the latter a flaw that too many boards have long been willing to sweep under the rug.

Drawing from their interviews and research from the University of Southern California business school and the National Association of Corporate Directors, the authors find some telling anecdotes and offer effective diagrams to illustrate key concepts. Building Better Boards is an excellent primer on doing just that.