Business big cheeses and City bods have become obligatory members of art organisations boards in recent years to boost efficient management and value for money.
The idea was that the arts had lots to learn from the money men.
But for the life of me, I cannot see why.

Not even English National Opera or the Royal Opera House in their respective darkest days ever managed incompetence and bad practice on the levels achieved by those who thought that packaging bad debt and selling sub-prime mortgages was a good idea or conjured up the business plan that proved to be the downfall of Northern Rock.
The average arts organisations works miracles on comparatively small sums of money run by people whose salaries to not even begin to equate to the levels of responsibility and hours they work.

And there are few in any line of business to rival the skills of cultural leaders of the likes of Nicholas Serota (Tate), Nicholas Hytner (National Theatre), Michael Lynch (Southbank Centre) and Tony Hall (Royal Opera House). No insult intended to the legions left out of that short, illustrative list.
So I was heartened massively this morning by the words of David Kershaw, one of the founders of M&C Saatchi and now chairman of the Government-funded Cultural Leadership Programme.

Prompted by a discussion of the importance of good governance and the implications for boards, trustees and arts executives, Mr Kershaw speculated on whether business might not benefit at least as much from the input of creative non-execs on their boards as arts organisations are supposed to do from City input.
"It's interesting why cultural executives aren't being used as non-executive directors on commercial boards," he said.

It might be "fun to explore" the appointment of arts figures into business and see whether  business might benefit, he added. The "hackneyed notions among our merchant bankers" might be shaken up positively by a little creative thinking.
And arts types do it all the time without six-figure bonuses.