One of the challenges discussed as an imminent board challenge is communication with shareholders. Unfortunately, most corporations (and their I.R. departments) see communications as one-way - from the corporation to the shareholder.


What is needed is a "listening to shareholders" capability whereby corporations learn what their shareholders want in terms of specific (and not assumed) outcomes - and aligns the corporation to the delivery of those outcomes. And we're not talking about listening to a few shareholders, as they do now (i.e. the institutional investors as proxy for all shareholders.) Instead, we're talking about surveying all shareholders and establishing the company's Shareholder Metrics.

Corporations' failure to deliver shareholder outcomes is generating a growing and powerful activist investor community. There are activist fund managers and investment portfolios currently and quietly building their war chests in order to pounce on weak and indolent registries. Be warned.

Couple this with the inevitable morphing of the power of social media into the investor market and you have a new and powerful threat that will give boards, their members and executives severe headaches in the coming years - but will deliver greater accountability to the corporations' owners.