The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Greene: Board directors should never directly make operational suggestions to management
“I don't ever suggest something. That's like a golden rule.”
Greene: Board members should never dictate strategy to company management
“You don't, you totally agree, you don't want to tell them how to do strategy. I would never do that. And they're going to be better at it. I actually like to think in an early stage company you shouldn't be telling them how to do strategy either”
Greene: Directors should master one business unit to calibrate overall management
“It's important for me to have depth in one part of the company, because the company has a uniform culture, and so I have a context for anything I'm hearing about, and in a few ways I can calibrate, because when they talk about the area where I have a lot of de…”
Greene: Startup boards are either unnecessary or ignored during crises
“The reason I don't go on startups is my experience with being on startup boards is either they don't need me at all because everything goes so great. Or they really need me, and they don't want to listen to me.”
Greene: Board members add value by asking questions from outside perspectives
“The board member frames things in their mind very differently from people inside the company, and so you can often ask a question that was just coming at such a different angle from people immersed in the day-to-day that it's really useful to them. So, and I t…”
Greene: Prescriptive board members require strong management teams to filter bad advice
“You need a really strong management team if you're gonna do things like that. You have to be really careful if the management team isn't strong enough to handle, you know, because they have even more context.”
Greene: Startup CEOs open up much more to non-board members
“Cause the CEO is much more likely to open up to someone not on their board for sure.”
Greene: VMware required board members to offer annual resignations
“Thing is that you make sure, and I did this in my startup, and I don't know if startups do this, but I adopted the big board practice of you resign every year. You offer your resignation every year.”
Greene: Larry Sonsini joined VMware board out of anger at Intel
“He got so, the reason he joined was I told him what was happening with Intel, and it made him so angry, he's like, okay, I'll join your board.”
Greene: Board audit committees should frame problems as company issues, not CEO failures
“In the audit committee, when you see something not going well, it isn't really a CEO thing. It's a company thing. So, so you're not, You know, when you're doing the readout, you're just saying, we see this problem at the company. You're not saying the CEO is m…”