How effective is your board, really?
An independent, evidence-based answer: confidential director input, structured analysis against our effectiveness model, honest benchmarking, and an action plan your chair can execute, not a report that gets filed.
Our members, alumni and clients come from iconic organizations
_logo.svg.png "NHS"){kind=logo}
Boards that never look in the mirror repeat the same year twice
Every board develops blind spots: agendas captured by reporting, dominant voices unchallenged, information that arrives too late or too thick, committees drifting from their mandates. Directors see these things privately. Evaluation is the mechanism that puts them on the table safely, with evidence, so the board can fix what individuals can only tolerate.
Regulators and investors increasingly expect it too: annual internal review with periodic external facilitation is now standard language across governance codes, including in the GCC. The difference between a compliance-exercise evaluation and a real one is design: guaranteed candour, an experienced outside eye, and findings that convert to actions with owners and dates.
Choose the depth your board needs this year
Every engagement is scoped to your board after a short brief, no off-the-shelf documents, no generic templates.
Tier 1: Guided self-assessment
GBI's structured questionnaire tailored to your board, confidential administration and analysis, benchmarked report and a facilitated debrief. The right cadence choice for interim years.
Tier 2: Facilitated external review
Everything in Tier 1 plus confidential director interviews, board and committee meeting observation, board-pack review, and individual chair feedback. The periodic deep look codes call for.
Effectiveness report
Findings across our six-domain model, stated plainly: what works, what doesn't, and what it costs you, with anonymized evidence throughout.
Prioritized 90-day action plan
Each finding converted to an action with an owner and a date, sequenced so the board fixes the highest-leverage issues first.
Chair debrief and board session
A private debrief with the chair first, then a facilitated board session to land the findings and commit to the plan.
Committee and individual modules
Optional add-ons: committee effectiveness reviews and individual director feedback with 1:1 debriefs, scoped to your appetite.
A clear process, designed around your board's calendar
We keep demands on director time deliberately light. Most of the work happens between meetings, not in them.
Scoping
We agree tier, scope and confidentiality protocols with your chair, and tailor the assessment instrument to your board.
Input gathering
Questionnaires and (Tier 2) confidential interviews, meeting observation and document review, designed to take each director under 75 minutes total.
Analysis & benchmarking
Evidence assembled against the six-domain model and benchmarked against comparable boards.
Chair debrief
The chair sees findings first, privately, including feedback on their own chairing, delivered constructively.
Board session & action plan
Facilitated session to land findings and adopt the 90-day action plan. We check in on progress at day 90.
The GBI Board Effectiveness Model™
Six domains, assessed with evidence. Scores tell you where to look; the interviews and observation tell you why.
Composition
The right people: skills, diversity, independence and succession readiness.
Information
Board packs, management reporting and the quality of what directors know before they decide.
Process
Agendas, meeting discipline, committee mandates and the governance calendar.
Dynamics
Candour, challenge, airtime distribution and the chair's leadership of the room.
Focus
Where board time actually goes versus where strategy needs it to go.
Outcomes
Decision quality, follow-through, and the board's real impact on performance.
The Board Effectiveness Self-Diagnostic
A 15-minute scored diagnostic across all six domains of the GBI Board Effectiveness Model. See your board's likely strengths and exposures before you commit to anything.
- 18 scored questions across the six effectiveness domains
- Instant scoring bands with interpretation guidance
- The 5 findings that appear in almost every first external review
- Internal vs external evaluation: a one-page decision guide
Get your copy
Delivered to your inbox immediately. No spam, ever.
Advisory led by practitioners, not theorists
Wassim Karkabi
Founder & Executive Chairman, Global Board Institute
Wassim advises boards, chairs and shareholders across the GCC and internationally on governance, board effectiveness and director development. He leads every advisory engagement personally, supported by GBI's global faculty of experienced chairs and directors.
“The report said what nobody had been willing to say for three years, and said it so fairly that nobody could argue. Half the action plan was done in a quarter.”
Chair, regional bankFrequently asked questions
Internal or external evaluation: which do we need?
Most codes expect annual internal review with an externally facilitated evaluation periodically (every 2-3 years is the common rhythm). If you have never had an external review, or the last one predates significant board change, Tier 2 is usually the right starting point; it resets the baseline honestly.
Is director input really confidential?
Yes, and structurally so: input goes to GBI, not to the chair or company; findings are reported thematically without attribution; and the protocol is agreed in writing before any director is asked anything. Candour is the product; we protect it accordingly.
Does the chair get evaluated too?
Yes. Chair effectiveness is assessed within the Dynamics domain, and the chair receives that feedback privately, constructively, before the board session. In our experience chairs value this more than any other component.
What if the findings are uncomfortable?
Some should be; that's the point of independence. We deliver hard findings with evidence and without drama, sequenced so the board can act rather than react. What we never do is soften findings to keep an engagement comfortable.
Can you evaluate committees or individual directors?
Both are available as modules: committee effectiveness reviews (audit committees are the most requested) and individual director feedback with 1:1 debriefs. Many boards add individual feedback in their second cycle with us, once trust in the process is established.
How is the fee set?
By tier, board size and scope (committees, observation days, individual modules). We quote a fixed fee after a short scoping call, and if a guided self-assessment is all you need this year, we will tell you so.
Find out what your board already suspects
Book a confidential call with our founder. We will help you choose the right evaluation tier for this year, even if that's the lighter one.
Prefer WhatsApp? Message us directly · Or email info@globalboardinstitute.com