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Ten minutes that will transform your (Zoom) board meetings

I’d guess that most of us have held more board meetings virtually than in person over the last 18 months. Remote meetings, still a rarity two years ago, are business as usual and here to stay.We’re learning how to make the most of them: To interpret non-verbal signals (aka body language) from only our colleagues’ faces; To stop people talking over each other, most of the time;And to manage the unusual constraint that everything we say and every facial gesture is seen by everyone ...

The three levels of medalling, in board diversity

Over that inspiring fortnight of distraction, the Tokyo Olympics, two new verbs have joined the mainstream, as in ‘I can’t believe we’ve medalled... we were only aiming to podium at the next Games.’  As those verbs have entrenched themselves in the sports lexicon, so ‘diversity’ has become possibly the most discussed, most abused and most poorly understood term in board vocabulary. Let’s look at diversity in the language of the last few weeks:    ...

When your board member is the subject expert: three hidden traps

How often do we hear boards discussing the type of skills they’d like to attract … ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we had an engineer/micro-biologist/blockchain expert on the board?’I’m fully in favour of making sure our boards have people with the right skills and experience for the business. We’ve all heard of corporate train-wrecks where their absence has been a factor: insurance companies with no insurance or risk experience; building companies with no construction experience; ev...

When the Chair wants to become the Boss

Last week the New Zealand Herald revealed that, among candidates for the chief executive’s role at Greater Wellington Regional Council, the current Council Chair Daran Ponter had thrown his hat into the ring.It’s far from the first time that this has happened, not only in local government, and it can work perfectly well – as long as the process is handled fairly and impartially. The first problem the Council faces, of course, is that the Chair is the person most likely to have be...

The (other) Rule of Six – and the mistake we make in using it

Last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson introduced the ‘Rule of Six,’ limiting gatherings to six people, in order to slow the spread of Covid-19. This brought to mind the older ‘Six Block Rule’ that directors have used to guide them on their capacity to accept new roles. The ‘Rule’ proposes that, in general, a competent director can manage up to six full board positions (blocks) at any time, with a chair role counting as two blocks, and a committee chair as one-and-a-half. It...

The Four Levels of Board Maturity … and what you need to do about yours

Some people tower over their profession: Albert Einstein – physical sciences, Chuck Yeager – test flying, Florence Nightingale – nursing (and statistics – check her out). In corporate governance, few are as respected as Professor Bob Garratt, author of ‘The Fish Rots from the Head’. It’s an excellent metaphor to illustrate his discussion of board leadership, albeit, as a marine biologist once advised me, biologically incorrect. Professor Garratt is one of the western worl...

Who saw that coming? The A.R.T. of Risk Governance

I don’t suppose any of us fully anticipated what we, and the rest of the world, have experienced in these last few months.  Most of our boards have well considered and often colourful risk registers, which they review regularly. So why was this coronavirus such an ambush? How many registers contained something like: ‘Global pandemic, forcing us to close our business, and generate zero revenue for several weeks’? Perhaps many Chief Risk Officers were too nervous to present an...