A recent Agenda article on board evaluations highlights how corporate boards are moving away from treating self-assessments as a formality, using them instead to drive real change in the boardroom.
Christine Greybe, president of leadership consulting at DHR Global, spoke to the stakes of skipping robust evaluations. She warned that boards without strong evaluation practices risk being unprepared for volatility, more exposed to activist pressure, and less fluent in technology. She also cautioned that weak evaluations can mean missed best practices and gaps in succession planning — both of which carry direct consequences for the business.
Greybe also pointed to a shift in how companies talk about their evaluation processes publicly. She observed that proxy statements now show greater openness about the evaluation process, since companies have found ways to disclose more while still protecting confidentiality. In her view, the real change isn’t that more boards are running evaluations — it’s that expectations have risen: stakeholders now expect these evaluations to actually produce change, not just check a box.
Her comments align with broader findings in the piece: PwC’s 2025 Annual Corporate Directors Survey found that a majority of directors don’t feel their current assessment process fully captures the board’s performance, and boards that bring in outside facilitators tend to find the process far more worthwhile.
“If you’re not conducting robust evaluations, you won’t be prepared for the volatility … you could get pressure from activists, you could be lacking in your technology fluency,” said Greybe. “You could be missing out on best practices, which would impact the business, and you may also not have the right succession plans in place.”