Boards Uneasy About ‘The Survivor Question’

Nominating and corporate governance committees are grappling with how to make board evaluations more meaningful, and one niggling question that has emerged is whether boards should ask individual directors to rank the contributions of peers.

At Stanford’s recent Directors’ College event, board members and governance experts debated the merits of asking individual directors to judge whether a board seat is occupied by the best possible director. The question is casually referred to as “The Survivor Question” — a reference to a popular television show — because if a director doesn’t receive a strong enough level of support from colleagues, they might not be renominated for a board seat.

Phil Neiswender, president of the Center for Board Excellence and a member of the company’s board, says the question is usually considered overly harsh when it’s referred to flippantly as “The Survivor Question.” But in reality, he says, the question is meant to push boards to be self-critical, which is one of the main purposes of a board evaluation.