The subprime mortgage crisis caught many financial service giants unaware, and reached far beyond trading desks all the way to their boardrooms. Indeed, despite their best efforts to govern properly, boards of directors throughout almost an entire industry missed a critical issue, and compounded that problem by not having robust succession planning to stem the crisis. Can boards do better? Owning Up author Ram Charan answers with an emphatic, "Yes!" Some boards are already doing all the right things. Leadership guru Charan describes the best emerging practices for boards--with real examples of how some of the best in the business solve today's thorniest boardroom problems--and helps readers determine whether their boards are owning up to governance by asking the most vital questions.

Ram Charan (Dallas, TX) is coauthor (with Larry Bossidy) of 2002's runaway bestseller Execution (978-0-609-61057-2) and author of The Leadership Pipeline (978-0-7879-5172-6) and Boards That Deliver (978-0-7879-7139-7). Charan is also a highly sought-after advisor to corporations, boards, CEOs, and senior executives.