John Carver on Board Leadership [Paperback]

John Carver (Author), Sir Adrian Cadbury (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0787958441 | ISBN-13: 978-0787958442 | Publication Date: October 15, 2001 | Edition: 1st

This one-stop board leadership resource, written by one of the world's leading governance consultants and author of the bestselling Boards That Make a Difference, offers you a broad range of material including the best articles from the Board Leadership newsletter, articles from various publications, and previously unpublished short works. Each chapter has been carefully selected and arranged to provide you with a distillation of John Carver's revolutionary Policy Governance model.

Editorial Reviews

Review

.."packed with information and advice.."(Modern Management, February 2002)

Review

"John Carver has given board effectiveness a unifying vision, a logical and coherent base-an integrated theory of governance. This collection of his writings brings home the intellectual rigor of his thinking and the coherence of his Policy Governance model."
— Sir Adrian Cadbury, director of the Bank of England, chairman of Cadbury-Schweppes, Chancellor of Aston University, chairman of the Committee on Financial Aspects of Corporate Governance in the UK (The "Cadbury Report"), and author of The Company Chairman

"John Carver, like Robert K. Greenleaf before him, is a revolutionary of the very best kind. Carver's Policy Governance model has provided the means for trustees to live out Greenleaf's challenge to boards to act as both servant and leader. In so doing, John has proven himself to be one of our greatest servant-leaders."
— Larry Spears, CEO, The Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership, editor of Reflections on Leadership and Insights on Leadership

"The conceptual clarity of Dr. Carver's approach provided us an excellent basis for development of new governance arrangements in defence, helping us to sharpen our focus on results and the associated accountability framework."
— Dr. Allan Hawke, Secretary, Australian Department of Defence, Canberra

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 665 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (October 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787958441
• ISBN-13: 978-0787958442
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,375,000 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Carver is internationally known as the creator of the breakthrough in board leadership called the Policy Governance model and is the best-selling author of Boards ThatMake a Difference (1990, 1997, 2006). He is co-editor (with his wife, Miriam Carver) of the bimonthly periodical Board Leadership, author of over 180 articles published in nine countries, and author or co-author of six books. For over thirty years, he has worked internationally with governing boards, his principal practice being in the United States and Canada. Dr. Carver is an editorial review board member of Corporate Governance: An International Review, adjunct professor in the University of Georgia Institute for Nonprofit Organizations, and formerly adjunct professor in York University's Schulich School of Business.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The rest of John Carver, November 13, 2001

By 

GARY DAVIS (Lincoln, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John Carver on Board Leadership (Paperback)

If you have read John Carver's books and watched his videotaped lectures, you have just begun to scratch the surface. In addition to "Boards That Make A Difference," "Reinventing Your Board," and "A New Vision of Board Leadership," Carver has produced an amazing array of short pieces designed for those who want to use Policy Governance. This book, "On Board Leadership," is a convenient compendium of these articles. It's well organized with a reliable index, an understandable table of contents and a list of "frequently asked questions" with references to the articles.

What this means is that my frequent trips to the file cabinet to riffle though my file of Carver's occasional writings are a thing of the past. From now on, I'll grab "On Board Leadership" and turn right to the article I need. If, for example, I am struggling with the concept of "cost," the index sends me to page 96 where I read that a board can only do so much. So the board must satisfy itself that by giving up end X in order to accomplish end Y, it is doing what its "owners" would want. The only tool I now lack is a "Carver Concordance."

Wide ranging discussions well organized. Just what every Policy Governance advocate can use. The book belongs in every association executive's library.

Gary Davis
Executive Director
Illinois Community College Trustees Association
401 E. Capitol Avenue, Suite 200
Springfield, IL 62701

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Policy Governance (R) model in board leadership, November 9, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John Carver on Board Leadership (Paperback)

John Carver On Board Leadership is a collection of articles that demonstrate the Policy Governance (R) model in board leadership, as written by its creator, John Carver, a man who has over twenty years of experience working with a variety of corporation boards. Addressing how to use the model of governance to improve communication and overall effectiveness, the role of committees, means for resolving disagreements, and much, much more, John Carver On Board Leadership is a solidly written, reader accessible, and effectively useful title recommended for anyone charged with the often difficult and complicated task of coordinating or leading a governing board.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Addition to Carver's Work on Governance, November 7, 2001

By 

James V Hyatt (Boulder, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: John Carver on Board Leadership (Paperback)

With his breakthrough work on how boards may govern effectively, John Carver has invented a body of thought and a set of distinctions that simply did not exist before. While others have tinkered with the organizational problems facing nonprofit and public entities and come up with various tips and ideas, Mr. Carver has given us a complete, seamless model, called Policy Governance, that upends traditional notions of organizational behaviour. The very distinction of governance from management is one most nonprofits never make. The failure to do so opens a Pandora's box of problems and issues that continue to plague these organizations without the ability to understand or address their causes.

In his seminal works on Policy Governance, including Boards That Make a Difference and Reinventing Your Board, Mr. Carver has distilled the theory and methodology of his governance model. John Carver on Board Leadership brings us a wide range of his writings that delve more deeply into the many aspects and implications of his work. It is well organized by topic and cross indexed with FAQs that allow us to go from the problem to his solution rather than from theory to application.

Board and staff members alike, with a specific issue in mind, will be able to find useful articles that address just that issue while harking back to the theoretical foundation. On many occasions I have wished I had a way to sift through years of newsletters and periodicals to find a particluar writing on a particular issue I was grappling with. I now have that resource, and with it, the opportunity to observe Mr. Carver's thinking in greater detail, beyond the distillation of his theoretical works.

I highly recommend it.