---
id: "action-boards-demand-raw-signals"
type: "action-item"
source_timestamps: ["§ What Boards Must Demand"]
tags: ["corporate-governance", "board-of-directors"]
related: ["claim-boards-failing-governance", "concept-success-theater"]
action: "Bypass executive summaries and demand unfiltered access to real-time signals and bounded experiment metrics."
outcome: "Piercing the 'Success Theater' distortion field, allowing boards to make accurate survival assessments of leadership."
speakers: ["Jonathan Rosenthal", "Neal Zuckerman"]
sources: ["governance"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-governance"
originDay: 7
articleStem: "hbr-sig-59-consensus-decision-making"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/04/decision-making-by-consensus-doesnt-work-in-the-ai-era"
sourceTitle: "Decision-Making by Consensus Doesn’t Work in the AI Era"
---
# Boards Must Demand Unfiltered Signals

**Action:** Bypass executive summaries and demand unfiltered access to real-time signals and bounded experiment metrics.

**Outcome:** Piercing the 'Success Theater' distortion field, allowing boards to make accurate survival assessments of leadership.

Corporate boards must stop accepting heavily curated, committee-approved executive summaries from the C-suite. They must exercise their fiduciary duty by demanding access to raw, real-time signals and the results of short, **bounded experiments**. This directly attacks [[concept-success-theater]] and the [[concept-information-distortion]] behind it, and enacts [[claim-boards-failing-governance]]. It requires the background in [[prereq-corporate-governance-d7]] and represents the boundary-crossing argued in [[contrarian-board-meddling]].

**Calibration (from enrichment):** A more balanced implementation improves the *quality and independence* of board information (structured risk reporting, independent assurance, targeted deep dives) rather than piping raw real-time operational data to directors, which risks overwhelming them and blurring the oversight-vs-management boundary.


## Related across articles
- [[framework-board-cyber-engagement]]
- [[action-evaluate-cyber-executives]]
- [[framework-board-evolution-pyramid]]