FICKS™ is a helpful acronym for the five key functions of a board and how a board should best segment its time.
F - Future Focus
This means
making sure you have the right Chief Executive (for the next few years as opposed to the last few), and working with management on strategy development and execution.
Spend about 30% of your time here - even though it's scary because it involves making decisions about an uncertain future.
I - Issues Identification
Understanding your environment, spotting the trends, communicating with your stakeholders so they understand what you're doing.
Spend
another 30% of your time here.
C - Compliance
It's still important to make sure you keep to the law, regulations and best practices, and monitor the risks the business faces, but not at the expense of looking ahead.
Perhaps spend 15% of your time here.
K - KPI (Key Performance Indicator) Monitoring
You don't usually need to spend half of every board meeting asking the same questions about the numbers and budgets that you asked last month.
Spend
15% of your time here again.
S - Succession and Skills
Making sure you've got the right people at the board table and in top management to deal with what we'll be facing over the next few years.
Spend the remaining 10% of your time here.
We can break this into three broader categories - the first two (F & I) are about creating value (cumulatively 60%), the next two (C & K) involve preserving value (30%), and the last (S) deals with the ability to keep adding value in the future.
In summary, the latter categories (C, K & S) are a means to the end - the end being to look ahead and build the organisation of tomorrow. That's where, as board directors, you build the legacy that makes your job worthwhile.
Of course it's never this simple or so clearly segmented in real life - any decent strategy proposal will have elements of all five. And the proportions will vary from meeting to meeting. But FICKS™ is a useful reality check on how a board really spends its time, and whether it is dealing with the right things - as opposed to dealing well but with the wrong things.