The Performance Quotient
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The Performance Quotient
Unraveling Board Dynamics - Insights on Leadership and Alignment with Jim Courtney
What is the biggest blind spot leaders face when working with investor-led boards?
With 2025 shaping up to be a year of fast-paced transactions, the relationship between leaders and investor-led boards has never been more critical.
In this episode, Jim Courtney, a seasoned leader who has worked with corporate boards to heavily investor-led boards - shares his insights on navigating these different entities.
Jim shares his perspectives:
- The key differences between corporate and investor-led boards
- The challenges leaders face when working with finance-driven boards
- Best practices for building trust, alignment, and influence with board members
- Strategies for leveraging the board chair to strengthen relationships and eliminate surprises
Finally, Jim shares his #1 piece of advice for executives looking to build more effective, high-trust relationships with their boards.
Tune in to gain insights that can transform your leadership approach when managing various types of boards.
Seeking to align your leadership, culture, and capital goals - we'd love to hear from you. No sales talk - just a conversation about your challenges - book a call today.
Welcome. Today I'd like to discuss an important relationship between board members and senior leaders, particularly CEOs and CFOs, and the reason. 2025 is looking to be a heavy year of transactions, where companies are going to be looking to sell themselves and to be acquired, and whenever we're going through an acquisition or a transition, one of the most critical functions that's going to drive financial return is that relationship between board and leaders, and today I've invited Jim Courtney. I've known Jim for years. He's a very veteran business leader who knows a lot about what's going on, especially in the board space. He's one of the few people that I know of that's had the opportunity to transition from a corporate board to a heavily investor-led board, so I think he'll bring a lot of insight into the importance of that relationship, and so, with that, I'd like to give Jim an opportunity to introduce himself before we tackle the three questions about boards and leaders. Welcome, jim.
Jim Courtney:Thank you, appreciate being on. My background is fairly straightforward. I graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in business administration, major accounting, minor economics and then the journey began. I was very fortunate to work for mentors who saw that I had some ability to help companies move from where they were to where they needed to be, whether that was due to dysfunction, technology or new business need. The other thing is it gave me a great opportunity to work with people both domestically and internationally, as one of my opportunities was working with a company with its headquarters in Tokyo, japan. That was an experience.
William Lindstrom:And so let's talk a little bit about that relationship with that company in Tokyo, Japan, because I think that's where a lot of people are going to be interested in, because in that relationship, having known you for a while, is that this organization was actually investing in you because they're looking to start a financial services firm. So basically they gave you access to all the funds that you needed to launch this organization. So they're acting as that investor. So can you share a little bit of background about that relationship and how that was set up, Because I think it'll be really fascinating and really topical for how we think about working with boards.
Jim Courtney:Certainly, it was an interesting opportunity because I was given a blank sheet of paper to build a captive finance and leasing company in the US market for their products. It allowed me to learn there are different ways that boards work. As you pointed out, I was working with a board that was basically headed by a person internally in the company and the bank, and that was a new experience working directly with bankers to have access to funds, so that you had one of the three elements of building a great business time, money and resources.
William Lindstrom:And so, as you kind of transition from that corporate environment, which gets to our first question here, which is, what was the kind of the experience or the difference between going from a corporate environment board to a now investor led board where most of the people on that board are investment bankers or heavy finance people, that may or may not have that operational experience that some traditional boards board members bring.
Jim Courtney:True. In the traditional boards, your biggest difference is you have skill sets. There you got a large board. They probably have every you know war story to go related to any business kind of activity that you've ever seen. In an investor-related board, it's really about how do we drive the business to be successful financially. So it was a little bit of a different scenario in terms of having access to information about different things about the business and a lot of access to how the finances work. So it was truly a great experience. But that biggest difference was when I needed help. I had a broader ability to get access to resources with a large board versus the investor-led board with a large board versus the investor-led board.
William Lindstrom:So no, that's really good insight. So if we narrow in and kind of focus on the investor-led board, where they have heavy finance skill sets but not necessarily operational skill sets, what was the biggest challenge that you faced, or some of the toughest situations you faced, working with a heavily investor-led board?
Jim Courtney:Yeah, actually the board made it easy for me in that we created meetings outside of the board meeting so that we were actually working one on one around topics they wanted to work on. So we went through those things in a very focused environment, sometimes one onon-one, sometimes a small team, but we were able to get those things really resolved. So there weren't any surprises when we came to the board. We had such a great relationship before the board meetings that the board meetings became like 30-minute activities to approve things we'd already decided, and it was something I had never experienced before.
William Lindstrom:That's really interesting because you know that's a different experience than I think a lot of people have. So you know, I know, just having known you, that culturally it's kind of the way the Japanese market works or the Japanese organizations work, is they do a lot of things offline, but taking that best practice and trying to apply it to the American or the US situation, especially investor-led boards, how would you think about or how would you approach building those relationships to create that synergy?
Jim Courtney:Even though I didn't have that exact same experience with US boards, that outside relationship outside of the board meeting was still critical in the success of what we were trying to accomplish. It was always good to be able to sit down with the chairman of the board and ask them what do you see as our greatest challenge? And then share what you saw and come to an alignment so that you can move forward. Share what you saw and come to an alignment so that you can move forward. That was something I learned here and I used in those other environments.
William Lindstrom:But it's so important that you build a personal relationship as well as a professional. So for for those that maybe have had a little bit of a different experience in boards and mine's have been much more confrontational when you know, how would you? You know, have you ever had the experience when you're trying to reach out to a board member or you're trying to figure out how to build that relationship where they wouldn't want to have a one-on-one with you or they wouldn't want to get with you, or have you ever seen that experience? Or if someone's trying to figure out how to do it, how would you recommend someone build those relationships that aren't necessarily traditional approaches in the US market.
Jim Courtney:Yeah, sometimes you run into people they just have a certain way and they don't want to meet with you for whatever reason In those environments. Frequently I went to the chairman of the board or other people in the board and asked for their help in getting those kind of relationships built. It didn't always work as successfully as I would like, but at least there was some level of success to where you gained the respect of each other and you found ways to resolve those questions that were in that board member's mind so that you could move forward.
William Lindstrom:Interesting and then, if you know so, for those you know, for those situations where they wouldn't want to meet with you. You know what role or where you're struggling to kind of build those relationships. What role or how did you lean into the chairman of the board and what role did he play in helping you build those relationships?
Jim Courtney:Basically the chairman of the board, and what role did he play in helping you build those relationships? Basically, the chairman of the board, whether it's a man or a woman. Basically all you're doing there is saying I really want to get a relationship built with this person. They have really great questions, but they surprise them on me in the board meeting. So what I'd like to do is have a relationship where they are sharing those questions prior to the board meeting so that when I come in I've got excellent answers for their questions. Can you help me? And normally the chair would then say let's do this. And depending on the chair's own makeup, it might be they just set up a meeting, invite both of us and then there's a three-way and we got things nailed out. But the chair can be extremely helpful in getting past those conflicts.
William Lindstrom:That's really good insight. So we kind of hit the end of our three questions. So with that I'd really like to thank you for joining, particularly give us those insights on how we can be better at building relationships between board members and senior leaders, and particularly leveraging in some best practices from organizations or situations and cultures like Japan. And so, as we wrap up, I'd love to leave you with the opportunity to give us that one piece of advice that you think would be really critical to help leaders be more effective and board members be more effective in working with each other.
Jim Courtney:One thing I would say is be coachable, be open to unfiltered feedback, whether that comes from an individual, whether that comes from systems. Be open to that feedback and then bring together the people necessary to get it resolved. Work with your board, work with your team. Be aligned. The old adage the company that wins is the one that has everybody rowing in the same direction.
William Lindstrom:That's really good advice, and so with that I'd like to say thank you again, and to everybody else. I hope you enjoyed listening to Jim and his great, great insights and tune in next time.
Jim Courtney:Thank you, thank you.
