Building a Board is not a Hiring Decision. It is a Design Decision.
- Marion Heil
- 17. März
- 5 Min. Lesezeit
When a company needs to fill multiple supervisory board seats, the natural instinct often is to run parallel searches. Look at candidates individually, fill seats sequentially, move on.
Efficient. Understandable. And usually the wrong approach.
Because the real question is never about individual candidates in isolation. It is about what the board looks like when you put them together - and whether that combination builds the board the company actually needs.
Step one: What type of board do the owners want for this company?
Before any candidate is considered, the owners and the chair need to answer a more fundamental question: What role should this board play in the company's next chapter? Which type of supervisory board are we building?
What role should this board play in the company's next chapter? Which type of board are we building?
There is a spectrum.
At one end sits the compliance and control board, built around rigorous fiduciary oversight, procedural discipline, and ex-post control. Essential, and often underrated.
At the other end sits the strategic partner board, where board and management are genuinely aligned in their respective roles, the board operates as a diverse, high-performing team, and control and advisory are oriented around regular strategy reviews rather than annual compliance cycles.
In between sit two further orientations: the control and advisory board, which extends the oversight function with genuine strategic depth and forward-looking advisory input; and the advanced board, which adds a layer of best-in-class ambition. Directors who push for depth in both oversight and advice, engage actively on talent and succession, and treat CEO succession as a standing agenda item rather than a crisis response.
These are not levels of quality. They are orientations, each suited to a different company, a different ownership context, a different moment. And choosing between them is not a technical question. It is a governance philosophy question that belongs to the owners.
What role should the board play in this company's next chapter? How much strategic input does management actually want - and how much can it productively absorb? What is the relationship between board and executive team today, and what should it become?
These conversations are sometimes skipped in the rush to fill a vacancy.
But they should happen before you think about first candidates.
Step two: What gaps does the existing board have?
Once the target orientation is clear, the next question is equally concrete: Where does the current board fall short of that target?
Every supervisory board that has been in place for several years develops a particular character. Strengths may accumulate in some areas and blind spots in others. A board that is strong on financial oversight but thin on strategic challenge. Deep in sector expertise but without a voice that pushes seriously on talent and succession. Experienced in governance but passive when it comes to the company's long-term direction.
Naming and analyzing those gaps honestly is the most important step in the process. And it is the step most often skipped. Because it requires looking clearly at what the current composition actually delivers, and where it falls short. Not in theory, but in the room.
Step three: Which combination of profiles builds the board we want?
Only now does the candidate question become meaningful.
The question is not "Is this person qualified?" Almost everyone on a serious shortlist is qualified. The question is rather: “What combination of experience, skills and personality - across all candidates together - closes the gaps we have identified and moves us towards the type of board we want to build?”
The question is not "Is this person qualified?" The question is rather: “What combination of experience, skills and personality, across all candidates together, closes the gaps and moves us towards the type of board we want to build?”
This requires thinking simultaneously about several dimensions for each candidate.
Experience
Where have they sat before, what kind of boards have they shaped, which conversations have they been part of? A director who has spent two decades in highly regulated industries brings a different instinct than one who has built and exited several companies. Neither is wrong. The fit depends on what the board needs.
Skills
Which functional competencies are currently missing - financial depth, operational credibility, international perspective, digital fluency, sector expertise, ESG, people and culture expertise? Each gap points to a different profile.
Personality
This is harder to assess, but crucial. Some people are energised by the control function - they are comfortable asking difficult questions, sitting with tension, holding management accountable. Others come alive in the strategic conversation. Some are instinctive mentors, others instinctive skeptics. A board that is trying to evolve towards a more strategic orientation does not just need people with strategic experience. It needs people whose natural operating mode moves the group in that direction.
You might, for example, identify several distinct gaps in an existing board - not just functional, but in orientation and in the type of challenge the board is capable of bringing to management. Each gap will point to a different profile. One candidate might, for example, bring deep transformation experience and a natural instinct for strategic challenge. Another might bring deep industry experience, operational credibility and a rigorous oversight orientation, the kind of director who asks the questions management would rather avoid. Another one might address the international dimension the board is missing, with the interpersonal confidence to shift the dynamic in the room.
Individually, all three might be very strong. The question is now which combination, together with the existing board, will build the type of board the company is aiming for.
The right mix is key
Holding multiple profiles in mind simultaneously means asking: which gaps does each candidate cover? Where do profiles overlap, creating redundancy? Where do they complement each other? And how will the personalities interact with each other and with management?
A board heavy on strategic thinkers and light on rigorous monitors will have dynamic conversations and loose governance.
A board of precise, compliance-oriented directors will be disciplined and slow.
The right composition creates productive tension - enough diversity of orientation to cover the full range of what a board is asked to do, enough coherence to function as a group.
This means that a candidate who looks less impressive in isolation may be exactly right in context, because their particular combination of experience, skills and personality fills a gap that none of the stronger-looking candidates address. And two individually excellent candidates with overlapping profiles may not both belong in the same board.
This means that a candidate who looks less impressive in isolation may be exactly right in context.
A well-run board evaluation and search should not just produce a ranked list of individuals. It should produce a view on the right constellation - which combination of candidates, filling which specific roles within the existing group, moves this board closest to the type it is trying to become.
That requires starting in the right place. Not with the candidates. With the question of what kind of board this company wants - and needs - to build.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marion Heil is the founder and managing director of Board+CEO Advisors, a Vienna-based boutique specializing in executive search and board advisory for C-Suite and supervisory board mandates.
