What do you know about getting on a corporate board?

Maybe you know a lot. Maybe you already sit on multiple boards. If that’s the case, you can probably skim the first half of today’s email.

But if you don’t know much, here’s your chance to learn a few things. Because this week, Kellogg professor Victoria Medvec sheds some welcome light on the strangely opaque process. Plus, what we can learn from Sriracha’s losses on the hot-sauce battlefield.

Draft a board bio

Before you can begin a board search, you will need a board bio. This one-page document should tell a story about who you are and the skills you’ve acquired that would make you a valuable board member.

“A board bio is not a resume. It is not listing and describing everything you have ever done. Instead, it is a description of what you would bring to the board,” says Medvec, who gave a fascinating hour-long webinar on joining your first corporate board as part of our The Insightful Leader Live series.

She cautions that the skills that will make you an attractive board member are different from those that make for a strong executive.

“Your ability to interact well and listen and give advice are much more critical than your ability to lead a team of 3,000,” she says. “So you really want to think about: What are your unique competencies around strategy, CEO succession and planning, fiduciary responsibility? What would you bring into that boardroom, and what proof points do you have that you can really operate at that director level?”

It’s fine to start with a general template, but you will also want to tailor the bio to a given opportunity. For instance, one pharmaceutical board Medvec was considering already had several members who were scientists. But the firm had just conducted an IPO, so she tailored her bio to highlight her commercial experience.

But whatever you do, don’t go hunting for board opportunities without at least your template in hand. “The most common thing people say in any conversation is, ‘Send me your bio, send me your information,’ and you don’t want it to take 6 weeks for you to follow up on that request,” she says.

Medvec has a lot more great advice, too—like why you’ll want to talk to your CEO early in the process. You can watch the entire webinar (or read a summary) here on Kellogg Insight. Or, if audio is more your jam, listen to some highlights on our podcast.

And for more practical career advice, consider joining us at 12 PM central for our live webinar with Craig Wortmann tomorrow (Thursday, April 18). We’ll discuss how to craft brief but compelling “elevator pitches” for ourselves, our jobs, and our companies.

Too hot to handle

Hot sauce is certainly having a moment. People can’t get enough of spicy, wing-themed talk series or documentaries about people who’ve gone deep into chili-pepper subcultures. Some might even say sauces like Tabasco or Sriracha are “hot” right now. Or, at least Sriracha was.

More recently, Huy Fong Foods, maker of the rooster-branded Sriracha sauce, hit a rough patch, and its flagship Sriracha got very hard to find on shelves. At the same time, rival hot sauce giant McIlhenny (maker of Tabasco) emerged as market leader in 2023 with its own Sriracha.

So what can explain this divergence of fortunes?

According to Kellogg professor Achal Bassamboo and Kellogg clinical professor James G. Conley, Huy Fong Foods waited too long to diversify.

Writing in MIT Sloan Management Review, they describe how a lack of supplier diversification left Huy Fong Foods ill-prepared to manage the loss of its sole supplier of peppers, as well as, years later, climate-change-related underproduction from its new suppliers.

But Huy Fong Foods failed to diversify its products, too. By focusing only on its flagship Sriracha sauce for revenue, it had little else to fall back on when competitors like McIlhenny adopted the “sriracha” label themselves. (Because the term is a geographic one, trademark protection was limited.)

Capitalizing on Huy Fong Foods’ mistakes, competitors were able to win market share. The takeaway for leaders? “If you’re aiming for long-term success,” say Bassamboo and Conley, “diversification is a must.”

You can read the entire article in MIT Sloan Management Review here (paywalled).