When William Clay Ford Jr. recently stepped down as president and CEO of Ford Motor Co. – the company founded by his great-grandfather – it illuminated a lesson for investors.

With Ford shares having lost half their value since early 2004, it’s important to remember that family connections don’t always equal business success. It takes someone extraordinary to run a major company. Well-run companies search high and low to find the best.

When the top spot is held by a descendent of the company’s founder, it’s fair to wonder whether the board of directors was truly objective in picking him. Ford eventually conceded that he was not the best man for the job, and this month hired Boeing executive Alan Mulally, who grew up in Lawrence and graduated from Lawrence High School and Kansas University.

Shareholder advocates have been complaining for years about poor corporate governance, with little effect. But now there’s an opportunity to give shareholders more power to expel bad directors.

On Sept. 5, a federal appeals court ruled that American International Group Inc. improperly denied a shareholder request to open the director-nomination process.

The proposal would have given shareholders having at least 3 percent of a company’s stock the right to nominate their own director candidates and have them appear in the official proxy material and ballot alongside the candidates approved by the directors themselves.

That seems a modest request, but business groups favor the status quo, which makes it so difficult and expensive to challenge the board that it rarely happens.

Following the court’s ruling, the SEC announced it would revise its rules in this area, and has a hearing set Oct. 18.

For small shareholders, the renewed debate and recent events are a reminder that corporate-governance problems are still with us.

An open nomination process is more than a way to discourage Enron-style criminality – it’s a way to encourage excellence. And that’s how you get the highest shareholder returns possible.