An engaging guide on how to navigate the pitfalls and challenges of serving on a board, complemented by anecdotes and narratives from John Tusa's vast and eclectic career as a board member of various prestigious institutions.
John Tusa's distinguished and varied career as a broadcaster and journalist has included a long association with BBC's flagship 'Newsnight' as well as broadcasting with Radio 4's 'The World Tonight'. He is well-known to the British public as presenter in the 90s of BBC TV's 'One O'Clock News'. As Managing Director of the BBC External Services, he set up BBC World Service Television. He is also a writer whose books include 'Art Matters: Reflections on Culture' and 'On Creativity'.
'On Board' is a serious story lightly told, with numerous hints and
tips along the way on how boards behave and how they should. Every
board member should read it... and learn. -- Joan Bakewell,
broadcaster, writer and President of Birkbeck, University of
London
John Tusa is one of the bravest and most thoughtful public servants
of a generation, and one of the people I admire most in British
public life. -- Rory Stewart
John Tusa deals with the great and seldom asked questions: why do
chairs and chief executives not get on? Why do boards make the
wrong appointments? What does a great board look like? His answers
- based on huge experience - are vital reading for chairs and
trustees everywhere. This is a book on an important subject full of
insight and interest: essential reading! -- Lord Tony Hall of
Birkenhead CBE, Chairman of the National Gallery and former
Director-General of the BBC
Part primer, part memoir, part history, laced with psychology and
social anthropology, On Board is an arresting and enlightening
survival guide for anyone who aspires to sit on a not-for-profit
board. It makes an eloquent case for the public value of the
independent and good governance of our intellectual and cultural
institutions - and the inherent obstacles to achieving it. John
Tusa's case studies, from the many distinguished boards on which he
has served and chaired, provide a serious and authoritative
analysis of the tenets of institutional governance. This is also a
riveting and, at times, excruciatingly candid account of personal
learning painfully acquired in what he describes as one of "the
most demanding complex and taxing activities in the world of public
life". On Board charts the perilous navigation between the Scylla
and Charybdis of personal rivalries and collective prevarication on
which so many boards can come to grief. Anyone who has served as a
Trustee will recognise his description of boards' capacities for
resilience and dysfunctionality, and, at their centre, the delicate
chemistry of the CEO/Chair relationship. Anyone asked to join such
a board will be well advised to learn from Tusa how codes,
management theory and mission statements cannot substitute for
decency, humanity and rigour, so much more difficult to achieve
than to proscribe. In the end, good governance depends on good
behaviour. -- Tim Gardam, Chief Executive, Nuffield Foundation,
former Principal of St Anne's College Oxford and former Chair,
Ofcom Content Board
For anyone considering joining a board, especially one in the arts,
this is an excellent guide for what awaits them. It gives a clear
sense of how the complex issues and relationships are handled from
someone who was there, and lessons in good governance have rarely
been so fluently expressed. And for those interested in many
leading characters of the London arts scene over the past 20 years,
this is a hugely entertaining read. -- Sir Andrew Likierman,
Professor and former Dean, London Business School
With outstanding insight, John weaves his way elegantly through
misunderstandings, personal ambition, indecision, and incompetence
to illustrate with clarity, the consequences of flawed
Chairmanship, board composition, mistaken beliefs, and finally the
privilege and honour of being part of a Board that gets it right.
-- Lady Alison Myners, Chair of Royal Academy Trust
One of the truly great and good, John Tusa has led many of
Britain's cultural institutions and led them brilliantly. This book
explains, modestly but straight-forwardly, how he has dealt with
boards of trustees as helmsman, nanny, confessor, policeman,
plotter, and Scout leader. Necessary reading for anyone involved in
schools, arts organisations or other non-profits. -- Richard
Sennett, Chairman of Trustees, Theatrum Mundi
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