Disruptive change has clearly intensified in today's fast-paced business world. Why are boards of directors so ineffective in dealing with the threats inherent in every corporate governance system? In Better Boardrooms, Donner Prize winning author Patricia Meredith zeroes in on how boards can help manage uncertainty. Meredith outlines the specific corporate strategies that should be implemented in order to reduce the tremendous waste of resources - financial, human, intellectual, social, and environmental - that occurs when companies fail to respond effectively to forces that are so obviously surrounding them. To regain the reputation of boards as vibrant enablers of economic growth, Better Boardrooms proposes that a broad cross-section - including policy makers and regulators, customers, suppliers, bankers, and investors - work together to create a system better suited to the business obstacles of the twenty-first century. Discussing how the current corporate system is flawed and in desperate need of a digitally focused restructuring, Better Boardrooms proposes a new model of governance, one based on dialogue and collaboration that ensures all relevant voices are heard and included. As boundaries between industries blur and stakeholders gain greater access to information, it is vital that boards of directors help set corporate strategy rather than simply approve it.

Canada's big six banks weathered the 2008 financial crisis very well. Their adherence to tried and tested twentieth-century products and services made them a safe harbour in the financial storm. However, as the modern global information economy continues to develop, the banks must confront their innovation crisis, or they will fail. In Stumbling Giants, Patricia Meredith and James L. Darroch embark on an audacious and startling examination of Canada's big banks. With banks earning forty percent return on equity from traditional retail banking, pressure from investors with short term interests has discouraged technological innovation and adaptation. Meredith and Darroch reveal the socio-technological disruptors threatening the banks' three primary product divisions - lending, wealth management, and payments - and offer innovative yet realistic recommendations for improvement. Meredith and Darroch's new vision for the Canadian banking industry involves a broad cross-section of Canadians - policy makers, regulators, customers, suppliers, investors, and bankers - and is a call to action for all interested stakeholders to work together in creating a banking system for the twenty-first century.

Although the information age offers individuals from all walks of life the power to make their voices heard, we often end up with a cacophony of competing voices rather than a conversation. With so many people empowered to join the decision-making process, the number and diversity of stakeholders in governance situations poses a special challenge: how do you steer when so many hands are on the wheel? Catalytic Governance offers a proven approach to managing this challenge, built on the insight that effective leadership and governance depends less on traditional top-down approaches and more on creating shared meanings and frameworks. Drawing on their experiences managing transformational change in a complex, multi-stakeholder environment on issues ranging from finance to climate change, health, and the digital revolution, Patricia Meredith, Steven A. Rosell, and Ged R. Davis demonstrate how to use dialogue to engage stakeholders, explore alternative perspectives, develop shared mental maps and a vision of the future, and co-create strategies and initiatives to realize that future. While elements of this approach will be familiar, this is the first time they have been combined into a coherent model and tested together in practice. The book describes in detail how this was done in the process of transforming the Canadian payments system. The catalytic approach to governance is a powerful tool for leaders in the public and private sectors looking to lead and govern more effectively.