Guides for Faith-based Boards
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If you missed the Lessons from a leading director session at the 2023 IoD Leadership Conference, we’ve captured some outtakes from Ann Sherry FAICD. These highlight some key themes and insights from her session and outline a few specific actions for directors and boards arising from it.
The practical lessons and action steps for board members were that they should:
- take a long-term value add perspective, while paying attention to the short-term
- anticipate risks and look to the opportunities that come with mitigating and managing these
- take proactive steps to manage cybersecurity with a clear-eyed view of the risk-adjusted costs and the investment required to manage/ mitigate these risks
- move to effective and meaningful engagement with stakeholders and beyond cursory engagement
- see not-for-profit boards in the same way as other boards and not as a “parking lot for the well intentioned”.
Australian director Ann Sherry FAICD, with significant private sector governance roles (banking and transport), and experience of the not-for-profit and public sectors (university), shared key lessons for directors, canvassing what good governance in the future could look like.
Taking a long-term view is seen as the “holy grail” for governance. Yet many directors and boards, particularly in the current difficult financial and economic climate nationally and globally, suggest that without a focus on the short-term there won’t be a business or organisation in the long-term.
Sherry had a different take on this. While recognising the need for some short-term focus, she emphasised that:
Cyber was among the highest-probability, consequential risks she concentrated on. In many cases, hackers are more organised than companies and other organisations the target. She offered boards some practical questions to ask chief technology officers and chief information security officers:
Cyberattacks were raising the profile of many organisations with stakeholders. Climate change, business practices (notably in banking), concern about the quality of environmental disclosures and practices (“greenwashing”) and concerns about workplace bullying and sexual harassment (alongside wider concerns about workplace health and safety generally) were also driving stakeholders to be more organised and active.
Faced with this situation, directors and their boards need to ensure that they and their organisations:
Not-for-profit (NFP) boards, including those for universities and in the public sector, are facing the same challenges with complexity as all other boards.
Sherry noted that NFP boards are “not a parking bay for the well intentioned”. In that sense, NFP boards needed to have the same focus on their capability, skill and experience requirements and ongoing learning as the boards of any other organisation, including those in the commercial sector.
While many directors hearing Sherry’s view of the governance future might feel weighed down by the issues and challenges, she concluded that: