Keep shareholders happy and manage for the long term.

Earning a board seat is a rite of passage. But directors must juggle many responsibilities, from steering company strategy, managing risk, and appointing leaders to setting the right incentives, meeting shareholder expectations, and dealing with activist investors. How do you balance it all?

If you read nothing else on boards, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you set your board up for success.

This book will inspire you to:

• Ensure you have directors who can meet company goals
• Establish a robust succession-planning process
• Encourage the risk-taking that will generate breakthrough innovation
• Prioritize the health of the enterprise without neglecting shareholders
• Provide the critical support a new CEO needs to succeed
• Ignite nonprofit board members by engaging them in work that matters
• Take on the world's toughest economic, social, and environmental problems

This collection of articles includes "What Makes Great Boards Great," by Jerey A. Sonnenfeld; "Building Better Boards," by David A. Nadler; "The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership," by Joseph L. Bower and Lynn S. Paine; "The New Work of the Nonprofit Board," by Barbara E. Taylor, Richard P. Chait, and Thomas P. Holland; "Dysfunction in the Boardroom," by Boris Groysberg and Deborah Bell; "The Board's New Innovation Imperative," by Linda A. Hill and George Davis; "Managing Risks: A New Framework," by Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes; "Ending the CEO Succession Crisis," by Ram Charan; "Comp Targets That Work," by Radhakrishnan Gopalan, John Horn, and Todd Milbourn; and "Sustainability in the Boardroom," by Lynn S. Paine.

HBR's 10 Must Reads paperback series is the definitive collection of books for new and experienced leaders alike. Leaders looking for the inspiration that big ideas provide, both to accelerate their own growth and that of their companies, should look no further. HBR's 10 Must Reads series focuses on the core topics that every ambitious manager needs to know: leadership, strategy, change, managing people, and managing yourself. Harvard Business Review has sorted through hundreds of articles and selected only the most essential reading on each topic. Each title includes timeless advice that will be relevant regardless of an everchanging business environment.