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Learning to lead David Stonehouse After spending well over a decade in the grip of politics, John
Manley eased back into the realm of law, joining the Ottawa office
of the prestigious international law practice of McCarthy Tetrault. Then he decided to take on Nortel Networks, where he serves on
its board of directors, trying to steer the tech giant out of
a financial quagmire. When he joined last spring, the former deputy
prime minister knew well what he was facing. "After five months with no stress or pressure," he
said in an interview at the time, "I decided it was time
to take on something with some stress attached to it." He decided it was time to go back to school too -- to learn exactly
what it takes to be a corporate director in a new age when financial
scandals such as Nortel's have forever altered the job description. "I've been living in a different cloister for the last 16
years, so it wasn't a bad thing to hear about something else for
a while," Manley says wryly. He chose to enrol in The Directors
College, offered through the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster
University in Hamilton. Away from the practice of law so long, he figured the course
would help him get up to speed with the changing responsibilities
of corporate directorships. The old days of the board being a rubber stamp for the whims
of management are gone now, as much for the sake of the shareholders
as for the company itself. And so Manley has spent weekends at a posh hotel in picturesque
Niagara-On-The-Lake with other directors eager to gain solid footings
in the shifting sands of the corporate landscape. The classes began in September, and Manley has one more of five
sessions to go. "It's fairly intense," he says. "We've dealt with
corporate social responsibility, with the duty directors have
to ask the appropriate questions. There's been a lot of discussion
around what areas of questioning and inquiry should be pursued
by directors in looking at the strategy and the implementation
of the strategy of the corporation. So it has been very comprehensive." From the Ruins While not an entirely new idea, formal corporate director schooling
is finally catching on, though it took the implosions of corporate
titans like Enron and WorldCom along with the stiff hand of new
regulatory regimes to spur it on. Staring at the ruins of these spectacular financial collapses,
it wasn't long before investors and regulators started to wonder
aloud how the questionable accounting practices and bloated profit
statements that led to their undoing could have happened under
the watch of boards stacked with marquee directors. Inevitably,
it wasn't long before the shaky financial footings of other firms
were discovered -- Nortel included. Ottawa corporate governance consultant David Brown, executive
director of The Directors College, says it has all helped fuel
interest in the issues of governance and director education. "Enron and WorldCom and Tyco and Hollinger and Nortel have
all grabbed headlines and grabbed people's attention," he
says. "They have the motivating effect of frightening people
and creating anxiety among corporate directors and executives
who don't want to be that next company in the headlines."
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