FORMER Australian Wool Innovation chairman Ian McLachlan, an experienced board director, long held the view that directors of a board had three clear responsibilities.

Namely, to set the company's policy direction, appoint the chief executive and monitor the performance and activities of the company.

Stray from those responsibilities and companies will run into all sorts of problems. In the corporate world it's called board-room discipline or governance.

One can't help think that AWI is beset with such problems, where, albeit well-meaning directors are over-stepping their responsibilities by wanting to take a more active role in the day-to-day management of the company.

Chairing joint AWI-industry committees and leading marketing delegations have become the norm for some of AWI's directors.

No wonder in situations where directors over-step their responsibilities that companies or organisations such as AWI have trouble recruiting or retaining skilled staff.

It reminds C&C of the early 1970s at the Australian Wheat Board, where growers in each of the mainland states each elected two growers to the board for three-year terms.

Of course that created a political battlefield.

Grower board members would jostle to be part of export sales delegations for the sake of having their name on a press release declaring that they had helped negotiate the sale of thousands of tonnes wheat to country X or Y.

Strategic battle

ON AWI and its board-room battles, it is disappointing to hear it is still struggling to finalise its operation and strategic direction plans for the next three years.

One would have thought after conducting the recent $800,000 levy vote, where AWI's plans were explained and subsequently endorsed by a majority of wool growers, that setting the strategic direction would have been something an eight-member board could have signed off in 30 minutes.

But no, it appears some directors led by UK processor Laurence Modiano want to run a different strategy with a differing marketing program to that outlined in WoolPoll.

In the meantime the wool market continues to edge up regardless. This will no doubt cause an increasing number of growers to question whether the industry really needs a marketing program.