Jenga Plays: Building the Ideal Board for the 21st Century Boardroom

Design a board that builds, not just observes, with the right blocks, cadence, and authority

The classic private equity board is built to watch, not to work. It scans dense decks, issues polite commentary, then waits for the next quarter. That rhythm made sense when cheap debt and multiple expansion did much of the lifting. Today, buyers pay for improvements they can verify, not promises. The board must shift from ceremony to construction, from static oversight to an on-call build team that moves the levers that change cash, customers, and capacity.

The design problem behind underperforming boards

Underperformance rarely stems from a lack of smart people. It comes from boards assembled by résumé rather than by role. The result is a panel of admirable careers that does not match the company’s next twelve months. Complexity creeps in, meetings expand, and operators return to the field with more slides than solutions. Meanwhile, the hardest drivers of value remain under-governed: talent architecture, unit economics, working capital, price realization, and now AI adoption.

The Jenga idea: assemble blocks that stabilize and lift

Think of each director as a load-bearing block. The set should be small, clearly purposed, and chosen to interlock. Swap in what you actually need for the stage and strategy of the asset, then retire blocks that no longer add lift.

Block 1: The Builder
A proven operator who has scaled the same type of business. This person translates strategy into the next three irreducible actions, spots where execution will snap, and makes adoption the test, not intent.

Block 2: The Growth Architect
A revenue leader who treats marketing and sales as investment functions. Expect fluency in price realization, cohort economics, funnel velocity, and return on growth spend. The question is always the same: what turns spend into durable margin and enterprise value.

Block 3: The Digital and AI Engineer
A technologist who pressure-tests the product roadmap, data quality, and AI fit. The job is to link digital bets to value creation levers that you can underwrite: better forecasting, faster cycles, leaner support, healthier customer lifetime value. No pilots without a P and L line, an owner, and a kill switch.

Block 4: The Financial Adult
A capital allocator who focuses the board on repeatability and durability. This block keeps the conversation anchored to cash conversion, covenant headroom, and unit economics that hold at scale, not just historical margins.

Block 5: The Talent Catalyst
A people strategist who treats capability like capital. They map critical roles, shorten time to competence, design incentives that match the plan, and help the CEO fix the org chart where it silently blocks price, throughput, or service quality.

The goal is not to cover every topic. It is to cover the few capabilities that change outcomes this year and next.

How a build-first board actually operates

Titles are not enough. The operating system is what makes the stack sturdy.

Tight agenda, short cycle
Replace quarterly pageants with a fast cadence that favors decisions and unblockers. Use three recurring forums that never drift into theater.

• Weekly Flash: 30 minutes, no slides, only numbers and blockers on orders, price, margin, backlog, collections, incidents, and attrition.

• Monthly Bridge: what moved, why it moved, what changes next, and who owns it.

• Quarterly Reset: reprioritize, re-fund, and stop low-yield work to free capacity.

One-page planning
Every initiative must earn one page: objective, three next actions, single accountable owner, and one number that defines success. If it cannot fit, it is not ready for the line.

Decision rights that travel
Publish what management decides, what the board decides, and what is co-decided. Ambiguity is the enemy of speed. If a director carries a block, they own specific decisions between meetings.

On-call sprints between meetings
Directors do small, time-boxed interventions with management, then report outcomes at the next session. Boards that only meet do not build. Boards that sprint compound.

Making AI a real value lever

Boards do not need to be labs, but they must be literate. Treat AI as a set of applied levers, not a logo in the deck. Anchor every AI initiative to one of a few auditable outcomes: better demand and price signals, shorter service cycles, leaner back office, safer compliance, or higher revenue per seller hour. Ask for data readiness, workflow fit, a named owner, and a clear stop rule. Tie any AI spend to the Value Creation Plan, not to curiosity.

Put talent and culture on the front page

A plan that ignores talent is a plan that drifts. Make leadership pipelines, role redesign, and adoption metrics a standing topic. Track internal fill rate for scarce roles, time to competence, manager quality scores, and whether standard work survives leader turnover. If the plan meets a culture that cannot or will not change, the culture wins. Boards should help the CEO act before that happens.

What great boards measure and feel

Boards that build sense tension in the system. They feel where the flywheel drags and where it spins.

• Cash control that looks forward: rolling 13-week view, AR and AP volatility, covenant headroom, and countermeasures by variance

• Commercial truth you can audit: win rate, price realization, revenue per seller hour, and revenue booked within guardrails

• Contribution margin where it matters: by SKU, channel, and cohort, with discount erosion visible

• Throughput and rework in services and ops: output per labor hour and defect rate trends, not just anecdotes

• Talent leading indicators: internal fills for critical roles, onboarding speed, adoption of standard work, and engagement in the teams that carry the plan

If you cannot see these signals quickly, you do not have a board-ready view of the business. You have a slideshow.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• Advisory posture without decision rights

• Meeting maximalism that creates activity, not adoption

• Decks that describe everything and decide nothing

• Metrics without owners or next actions

• AI pilots with no P and L line, no operator, and no end date

• Permanent seats that no longer match the company’s stage

A practical 90-day rebuild

• Confirm the value levers that matter for this asset over the next four quarters.

• Map the board blocks to those levers and fill gaps with people who have done it, not only advised it.

• Publish decision rights, the one-page template, and the three-forum cadence.

• Stand up a unified telemetry page that mirrors how the board will steer.

• Start two on-call sprints where a director and an operator co-own a narrow, measurable fix. Share results in the next Monthly Bridge.

Closing thought

The Jenga metaphor matters because placement matters. The right blocks, in the right order, with the right cadence, turn governance into a compounding engine. Assemble boards to build, not to watch. Match seats to the few capabilities that change cash, customers, and capacity in the next year. Give those seats real decisions between meetings. Then hold the system to a simple test: did the board make it easier for management to create auditable value this quarter.

Copyright © 2025 VCI Institute. All rights reserved.

References and source notes

Evidence that higher rates and valuation pressure have shifted emphasis from financial engineering to operating value creation, with record dry powder and a liquidity imperative for exits and DPI: Bain Global Private Equity Report 2024 and related outlook. Bain & Company+1
Independent synthesis that private equity returns now depend more on operational improvements to offset lower multiples and tougher conditions: McKinsey Global Private Markets Review 2024 and 2025, plus analysis on bridging the value-creation gap. McKinsey & Company+3McKinsey & Company+3McKinsey & Company+3
Board effectiveness and the need for boards that engage between meetings, with attention to working relationships and decision dynamics, not just compliance rituals: Harvard Business Review on great boards and building better boards. Harvard Business Review+1
Guidance that board oversight of AI is now a core responsibility, including risk, data, and value considerations that connect to strategy and performance: NACD resources on AI governance and generative AI oversight. NACD+1
Investor expectations for stronger governance, transparency, and alignment that reinforce board practices centered on durable, repeatable performance: ILPA Principles and updates. ILPA+1