The Dead Board of Directors
Recruit history's greats as mentors you consult through their books
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 80%
Sharma's method turns great historical figures into a personal advisory board you consult through their books. You assemble a metaphorical board of directors made up of people you respect — Mandela, Gandhi, Einstein, Basquiat, Onassis — and assign each a domain of expertise. When a big decision arises, you go into a quiet room and ask what the relevant advisor would do: a moral question routes to Mandela, a business question to Onassis, an artistic question to Dubuffet, a spiritual question to Osho. The mechanism substitutes deliberate study of how great people operated for the mentor most people never find, and it forces reflective, values-based decisions instead of reactive ones.
Origin
Sharma offers the idea in The Wealth Money Can't Buy: if you cannot find a live mentor, recruit a dead one through their books and assemble a dead board of directors.
Core principles
- 01If you can't find a live mentor, find a dead one
- 02Books are how history's greatest people mentor you
- 03Build a library, not just an entertainment feed
- 04Different decisions call for different advisors
How to run it
- 1
Pick your advisors
Choose historical figures you deeply respect across moral, business, artistic and spiritual domains.
Pro tip Read their books to learn how they actually operated, not just what they were famous for.
- 2
Assign each a domain
Give each figure an area of counsel so you know who to consult for which kind of decision.
- 3
Consult them on big decisions
Retreat to a quiet room and ask what that person would do given the choice in front of you.
Pro tip Frame it concretely: what would Mandela do, what would Onassis do.
In the wild
Facing a moral dilemma, Sharma goes into a quiet room and asks what Mandela would do. For a business question he asks what Onassis would do; for an artistic one, what Dubuffet would do; for a spiritual one, what Osho would do. Each figure has been studied through their books, so the answers carry the texture of how that person actually thought and acted rather than a vague guess.
→ A hard decision gets counsel from the most relevant great mind instead of being made reactively.
Common mistakes
Choosing figures you only admire superficially
Without actually reading how a figure operated, their advice becomes a projection rather than genuine counsel, so study precedes consultation.
Is it for you?
Best for
Ambitious people without access to live mentors who want higher-quality counsel.
Not ideal for
Those who need real-time, situation-specific human feedback and accountability.
From the transcript
“if you can't find a live mentor, then look for a dead one”
“assembling a dead board of directors, I think is very powerful”
From the episode
Why $1,000,000,000 Won’t Make You Happy - Robin Sharma - #784
Robin Sharma