While in golf it’s nice to take a “Mulligan” or “breakfast ball” after you put your first tee shot into the parking lot, it’s a little harder to take back a bad business decision. Sure, we’ve all made them, but rarely are there “do-overs” in the boardroom. Worse still, some poor business decisions come because directors didn’t have enough information, or, perhaps, the right information at the right time.
It can be extremely challenging to recognize how much information is enough before making a critical business decision, and sometimes equally hard to recognize the most important information. To return to the golf analogy, a good caddy knows just how much and what information to give a player and what is overload that wouldn’t help. Failures at company boards may result from directors not asking the right questions, not probing deeply enough, or not corroborating initial answers received from the CEO with other company executives or information available.
