In this recent post: "New Thinking on Board Evaluations: Give Directors Feed-forward," RHR International's Paul Winum discusses how to evolve the board evaluation process from a rearview-focused feedback approach to a forward-oriented, actionable "feed-forward" approach to enhance individual director contributions and overall committee and board effectiveness going forward.
Recommendations include: (i) the board chair or lead director clarifying and regularly updating the board's and each director's expected value contribution (see these noteworthy underlying director survey results), (ii) emphasizing future organizational needs and associated expected, actionable behaviors in lieu of past performance (other than as may be appropriate under the circumstances), and (iii) supplementing the annual evaluation with input from the board chair or lead director on an ongoing basis, which is more apt to engender the behavioral or other changes contemplated by the annual review process.