“How to Ensure Organizational Resiliency,” a featured article in the latest issue of NACD Directorship magazine, explores what directors think boards can do to ensure a company’s survival — despite high rates of business failure.

NACD Directorship magazine is an exclusive benefit of membership in the National Association of Corporate Directors, but NACD has made this article available without a subscription.

The article discusses roundtables co-hosted by NACD and Dentons to explore directors’ perspectives on what contributes to the resiliency of an organization.

Prior to the dinners in Scottsdale, Chicago, and New York, each group of the invited directors was asked to consider the following questions:

• What is the board’s role in assessing threats, determining responses, and in educating or monitoring employees?
• How are risks presented to the board by management?
• How are risk assumptions challenged?
• How does the board approach the identification of new risks?
• What are the common threads running through business failures such as Arthur Andersen, Barings Bank, Enron, Lehman Bros., and others, and what can be learned from them?
• How do you assess insider threats?

Read the article.

Morae Legal has posted a discussion about disruption in legal service delivery, involving Morae Legal Chief Strategy Officer Joy Saphla and Pearson plc Senior Vice President & General Counsel Bjarne Tellmann.

In this conversation, Tellmann asserts that the paradox of the massive increase in necessary legal work due to new legislation and regulation — coupled with fewer jobs for attorneys — is foundation for disruption in the practice.

The discussion focuses on how this disruption has altered legal service delivery, including changes in the models general counsel can use to staff matters and build legal teams in new and creative ways.

The conversation covers:

• How in-house teams are changing and growing with highly specialized experts.
• Optimal allocation between in-house and outsourced work.
• Specific examples Pearson has employed to reduce costs and become more efficient within their legal department.

Download the conversation.