Waypoints: Ideas and Insights to Navigate Enterprise Complexity

I don’t know if it hit everybody this way, but when I flipped my calendar over to June and realized that the next time I turned a page half of 2017 would be gone, I was a little shocked. We’re heading into a key time of the calendar year, when executives look at the 6-month numbers and start to get a clearer picture about the forecast for the end of the year. It’s time to ask some important questions about your first-half results and your second-half projections:

One of the benefits of working with a variety of clients is that the PMM team is able to observe excellence in governance first hand. Many of our clients are putting best practices to work in their organizations, and they have high expectations for the performance of their boards of directors and their audit committees. I’d like to share some of the traits I see as hallmarks of high-performing audit committees. You can use my observations to assess the performance of your own audit committee. After all, you might be one of the companies we think are the best.

If the recent financial crisis taught us anything, it taught us the value of a high-functioning board of directors. An educated, involved board can help steer an organization away from needless risk and into a balanced governance structure – the board handles oversight while management handles day-to-day operations.

If you follow professional football, you know how valuable a left tackle is to a team. One of his key responsibilities is to protect a right-handed quarterback’s back or “blindside.” These players are so valuable that they command salaries second only to the quarterback.

I’ve worked with a variety of companies – both public and private – during my career, and I have seen a variety of approaches to the role of audit committees. In the best cases, the audit committee works in collaboration with the internal audit group, the external auditor and management, and all of them share common goals.

As I work with companies that are growing and facing new challenges, I am often asked if they should create an audit committee, and the answer is – it depends. I would like to present some recommendations that can help you decide if you should establish an audit committee in your company. Of course, these suggestions apply only to private companies, as SEC registrants are required to have independent audit committees.