2026 Board Effectiveness Survey

Govt confidence in board effectiveness has reached an all-time excessive, with 41% of greater than 500 surveyed C-suite executives ranking their boards as wonderful or good, up from 29% in 2021. However that confidence is concentrated amongst executives with the closest board entry; amongst those that hardly ever work together with the board, simply 17% give the identical ranking, exposing a notion hole that will not floor till boards are beneath actual strain.

Another key findings:

• Director bandwidth and tempo of change are the main constraints on board effectiveness, with executives citing overboarding (47%), sluggish response to rising dangers (35%) and issue maintaining tempo with digital transformation (34%).
• Practically all executives (99%) consider boards ought to be utilizing AI for oversight, however solely 35% say their boards presently achieve this.
• 9 in 10 executives see room to enhance how board assessments are used, significantly to tell succession planning and drive follow-through on board enter.