How to keep your board match-fit
Creating a high-performing board is not ‘set and forget’. There are changes in board membership, CE succession, changing senior team dynamics – and that’s just the people side of the business. Strategy must also be agile and responsive. External geopolitical shocks, pandemics, cyber security, as well as more localised impacts, such as flooding, earthquakes and the rise of political activism, can make a strategy out of date in days, not years.
So, what are some practical tips for keeping the board match-fit?
Seek the truth about how you're doing
Board evaluations are one tool in the kit. These can be focused on individual director performance, whole board dynamics, or more targeted challenges such as board succession and potential chair suitability. Doing the same kind of assessment every year is a recipe for survey fatigue, so it is best to mix up who does the evaluation and what its focus is. All evaluations must have direct chair involvement and individual follow-up discussions. If the whole board agrees to follow-up actions and monitors progress, then it is showing commitment to becoming and staying a high-performing board.
Get the whole board on board
Boardwide is a great tool to help everyone get on the same page. In many organisations, only a few directors are IoD members, so non-members are less up to date with emerging issues and don’t get as much interaction with other directors. Joining the whole board up to Boardwide means attendance at conferences, courses and networking events is easier and cheaper. Supporting directors’ development is a positive investment in quality governance for any organisation.
Put your strategy front and centre
Keeping the strategy live and relevant requires constant attention. While ‘strategy day(s)’ can be effective in creating or testing the strategy, it is more powerful for elements of the strategy to be constantly reviewed as part of the board’s workplan during the year. Putting these discussions up front in the agenda and making sure there is sufficient time for consideration avoids the strategy being out of date soon after its creation. Having the visual ‘strategy on a page’ and the forward workplan up front in the board pack sets the scene for quality conversations.
Bring in board insights – 'I've been thinking'
Keeping the board match-fit also requires constant exploration of evolving opportunities and risks for the business. Directors often pick up emerging themes from the external business environment, so creating space for their outside-in lens can be powerful. An easy way to stimulate discussion is to assign one board member for each meeting to do a 10-minute (no more!) presentation on ‘I’ve been thinking’. The opportunity to expand on their insights is appreciated by most directors, and management usually finds it valuable. Good chairing is needed to make sure everyone understands this is about ideas and provocation.
Hang out together
It’s an oldie but a goodie – the board getting together socially to strengthen trust and build insights into their colleagues’ lives is powerful. When someone shares the good and tough stuff going on in their life and/or work in an informal environment, it gives helpful context to boardroom discussions. Meeting as a group for dinner or breakfast/coffee before the meeting also helps anticipate the contentious issues that the chair may need to manage. Bringing the professional self to the board table is much easier if the human self has been acknowledged.
Fire up fast feedback
Finally, reflecting on how the meeting went and how we added value as a board can be quick and easy. My colleague, Michael Ahie’s tip: at the end of each meeting ask board members and management to have a two-minute discussion (in pairs) on the topic of ‘What did we do well? What should we do differently?’ Stick to two minutes. Feed this back into the group, and in less than 10 minutes you have reflected on board performance and have some insights into doing better next time. ‘Do well/Do differently’ can become a fun and important part of each board meeting.
Dr Helen Anderson CFInstD is the chair of Studio Pacific Architecture Ltd. She recently stood down as chair of Scion and as a board member of Antarctica NZ and has held numerous other private and public sector directorships.