Case Study: Establishing Board-CEO Clarity and Trust

Complementing the guidance of the 2025 NACD Blue Ribbon Commission Report on Building a High-Trust Board-CEO Relationship, this boardroom tool provides practical guidance for implementing Recommendation #2: Explicitly define how the board and CEO will work together.

How to use this tool: The case study, based on interviews with the independent chair of a large public company, sets out a blueprint to establish and maintain a successful board-CEO relationship. The process, with its intentional steps and questions, also provides a guide to the kind of dialogue that boards and CEOs can have at inflection points in the relationship and about the relationship’s dynamics.

The process of strategically building a foundation of trust, alignment, and transparency with a new CEO begins long before the CEO’s first day. The board recognized that strong CEO performance depended as much on board behavior as it did on individual executive capability and that the board's commitment to relational integrity helped set the basis for a successful leadership transition.

CASE STUDY

CEO Recruitment: Building a Common Board Perspective

A company with an existing board chair was undertaking a search for a new CEO. Although the company had a strong C-suite, recent shifts in strategy led the board to look outside the company for its next leader.

As a prelude to the CEO recruitment process, the chair led many robust, candid conversations among the directors. These discussions focused on the company’s business, its operating environment, the realities of the existing leadership team, the challenges that the CEO would face, and the board’s role in supporting the CEO. This process ensured that the board had reached a consensus on what was needed in the next leader, why those capabilities were vital to the company’s success, and what the CEO would be expected to do.