The Fish Rots From the Head: The Crisis in Our Boardrooms: Developing the Crucial Skills of the Competent Director

by Bob Garratt

A company's success or failure depends much on the performance of its board.

Genres: Leadership

240 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

Reviews

[Natalie · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a painfully clunky, self-aggrandizing book. The subtitle is ‘Developing Effective Boars Directors’ and the corresponding heading in the book isn’t introduced until page 235 and ends on page 256. The book is filled with innumerable lists of company/corporate challenges but rarely offers useful solutions or steps to resolve these challenges. For example, rather than saying that a company needs accountability and here’s how every country does this wrong, it would be more helpful to have practical instructions on ways companies succeed in accountability. Don’t waste your time on this one.

[Allie Way · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very informative in addressing the fundamental role of boards and executives, along with a useful guide on how corporate governance can and should improve, following a string of poor ethics and practices of corporations and their leadership in particular over the past 20 years.

In Australia, this peaked more recently at the 2018 Royal Commission into Banking and Financial services, where poor practices and a lack of accountability saw customers, shareholders, and the general public’s expectations on corporate conduct and governance brought more strongly into focus.

The book has a great message to corporate leaders on what needs to change in the global business climate, and tools for how to structure and support a well functioning group of directors geared to longer term success and sustainability.

My one criticism and reason for 3 stars is that it’s very repetitive, with unnecessarily long sentences and jargon. There’s a good summary of the authors key points and suggestions towards the end.

[Susan Wilson]

The cover and the title are genius. The content is forgettable because the structure feels like a sermon. Did not finish.

[Josephine Olok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even though this is a 2010 edition it is still relevant to board learnings. Provides a good reference for topical issues relating to corporate governance.