2. They consider the board of directors a statutory nuisance and the strategy is to neutralize by careful planning any possibility that the board will interfere with what management has decided to do. The directors are selected with care for their rubber stamp qualities, told as little as possible, and often carefully instructed beforehand by the chief executives as to how they are expected to vote. Here the case rests on the conviction that the management group contains all the knowledge and experience to run the enterprise with maximum effectiveness. At the other extreme is the board of directors who thinks that it is the only group within the corporate structure capable of making sound decisions and that the management team is not to be trusted to act on any matters of importance in the absence of specific board approval. Such a board freely crosses over the line which usually defines the limit of a board's activities and invades the proper province of management. As between these two extreme views, the first at least carries the possibility for performance, provided the management is really capable. They may view the board with contempt but contempt is preferable to hostility plus contempt which are the essential ingredients of the second approach. The second approach has no chance for success. Whenever a board moves into the management area, the enterprise is in trouble. It will not recover until the board fires the management, replaces it with management in which it does have confidence, and retreats to its proper place in the corporate functioning. The hiring and, if need be, firing of the chief executive are the most important functions any board performs.