About 54% of advisory firms are inactive in mentoring: Survey

NEW DELHI: There seems to be a gap between the expectations of corporate and board deliverable today as certain responsibilities like, management mentoring and succession planning needs to be addressed more proactively by the boards, says a survey.

According to a research study by Athena Executive Search and Consulting on the changing composition and evolving role of boards in India, the advisory boards are 54 per cent inactive in mentoring the CEO's and management teams thereby making an organisation ineffective.

"Mentoring and couching, of the CEO and the key leadership team, is one of the most significant value that an organisation's stakeholders expect the Boards to deliver on," Athena Director Bhavishya Sharma said.

Sharma said "ironically, it is also one of the most widely experienced gap by organisations having structured Boards/Advisory Boards".

The boards today have evolved in terms of delivering value across the larger spectrum but there is definitely a gap which needs to be bridged, the study said.

"Certain business linked responsibilities like CEO, management mentoring, succession planning, business and competitive intelligence needs to be addressed more proactively by the boards," it added said.

The survey highlighted that mentoring and coaching is one of the most significantly emerging expectations of the management today but it is also the most inactively dealt with expectation.

Inactive engagement of board in mentoring CEO's often results in poor compilation of strategies and inefficiency to address overcoming challenges, the survey said.