A Roadmap to Your Next Board Seat
How Senior Executives Get Directorships
A Roadmap to Your Next Board Seat was written with two groups of readers in mind: current board directors seeking additional seats and aspiring board directors, pursuing their first one.
The Board Selection Process
Many senior executives have the experience, judgment, and leadership record to contribute in the boardroom. But being qualified for board service is not the same as being selected for a specific board role.
Being board-ready means having relevant operating and functional experience, sound judgment, governance capability, and the maturity to serve as a director. Becoming board-selected requires more: translating that experience into a clear board value proposition, aligning it with a company’s future needs, and building relationships so decision-makers see the fit.
A Roadmap to Your Next Board Seat: How Senior Executives Get Directorships is a practical guide for senior executives and current directors who want to become better positioned to be selected for the right directorships.
This book gives executives and current directors a practical framework to move from board-ready to board-selected. Readers will learn how to:
Clarify what they bring to a board beyond their career history
Identify companies and boards where their experience is most relevant
Build a board-focused profile and narrative
Develop the right relationships
Build and execute a proactive, relationship-based outreach plan
Prepare for the distinct realities of board interviews and director selection
What People Are Saying About the Book
Tate Pursell has created a practical, insightful guide for aspiring directors. As a fellow board director, I found his advice grounded, actionable, and spot on.
- Dan Neuburger, Author, The Last to Leave
The result is not simply advice about becoming ‘board ready.’ It is an actionable system for conducting a board-seat campaign.
- JoAnn M. Laing, CEO | Board Director | Author
Reading Tate Pursell’s A Roadmap to Your Next Board Seat caused me to think about board service in a very strategic way. My first strategic takeaway is that finding the right board seat starts with the right governance fit. It is not enough to have had a successful career or to be “board qualified.” A prospective director has to hold up the mirror and strategically ask: What governance value do I uniquely bring, and what kind of company and board actually need that value? Tate makes the important distinction between being board-capable and being board-selectable; and that distinction is especially relevant in today’s more complex corporate governance environment.
My second strategic takeaway is that the definition of a board-ready director is changing. Corporate boards are now governing in a “changed world” from changes related to increasing technological, economic, geopolitical, demographic, and organizational complexity; with AI now an integral part of that changed world. Tate brilliantly outlines the board service progression from basic AI literacy, to AI governance competency, and ultimately to becoming an AI-enabled director who can effectively use AI for enhanced governance insight and foresight. For me, this reinforces a key modern governance principle: best-in-class directors keep developing and elevating their personal governance competencies. Past experience matters, but the ability to recognize and learn new patterns, ask better questions, and exercise sound judgment in a rapidly changing environment matters even more.
My third strategic takeaway is that board service has to be pursued tactically, with enhanced intelligence. Tate turns what can feel like an uncertain board search process into a practical step-by-step guide: clarify your board value fit; target companies with the best fit to your specific board value proposition; build strategic relationships that create a board search network; prepare a modern-governance oriented board resume and bio; and intelligently execute the search as a disciplined process. The combination of strategic fit self-assessment, modern governance orientation, and intelligent board search execution is what makes Tate’s book extremely valuable. I highly recommend A Roadmap To Your Next Board Seat to not only someone seeking their first board position, but also to experienced corporate directors who want to think more strategically about where they can add the greatest modern governance value.
R. Brad Oates, Chairman, Stone Advisors
A Roadmap to Your Next Board Seat, published by Tatum & Davis, is available for preorder and will publish on October 1. Available through Amazon, Bookshop.org, and participating booksellers.
ISBNs: 979-8-9978610-0-1 (Paperback); 979-8-9978610-1-8 (Hardcover); 979-8-9978610-2-5 (eBook)