Thursday, March 21, 2019

Five Pillars of Strategic Board

To improve directorship effectiveness, there are quite a lot of things digital boards need to shape up, and there are so many issues the boards have to deal with. 

Businesses today are operated in a more volatile, uncertain, ambiguous and globally distributed world. You have to scan the external environment and make sure that you’re seeing patterns and trends that are going to have an impact on your company’s ability to continue to thrive and grow. Also, you need a directional guide from the top leadership team such as the corporate board to inspire, advise, and motivate. The effective functioning of a board depends on a number of factors, including the mix of knowledge and experience among the directors, diversity in thought processes, knowledge, experiences, industries, and situations are more important as a team.

Strategic vision: Vision is required at any given stage of an organization’s lifespan. If the company has a clear vision, everything starts moving in the right direction. The corporate board needs to play the directorial role by scrutinizing both vision and strategy effectively. Without continuous envisioning of a better future, organizations will become short-sighted, static, and even irrelevant. The reality is that the vision could be cloudy due to the “VUCA” characteristics of digital new normal. It needs BoDs with the strategic insight into the problem to carve up the vision in actionable steps.  In its strategic oversight and guidance role, the board should oversee business strategies by asking tough questions, collecting reliable information, listening to different POVs, as everything has more than one side and you have to master them all for making effective decisions. Thus, the BoDs need to gain a deeper understanding of the enterprise in order to be a credible actor in the strategic dialogue and steer the organization in the right decision.

World-class insight: Today’s workforce is multinational, multigenerational, multicultural, and multi-devicing. To develop a strategic board, it’s important to build global cognizance and profound cultural understanding. Developing world-class insight and foresight requires holistic thinking and forecasting capability. Without such leadership navigation capabilities, companies can fail to increase value and competitive edge in a global economy. It is a worldview that looks at problems or issues in such a way that a solution emerges through a collaborative multicultural approach involving global psychological capital, intellectual capital, and social capital, gain an in-depth understanding of the digital dynamic and develop a set of best and next practice to develop a strategic board. BoDs with world-class insight are business generalist demand more comprehensive skills in leadership, strategic thinking, relationship building, crisis management and public relations in addition to functional expertise. On the navigation dimension, they have more antennae focused on the trends and what’s going on in the world. At the organizational scope, it’s important for the strategic board to set good policies to build an inclusive working environment as a melting pot to inspire creativity and encourage freethinking and experimenting.

Technology savvy: As technologies permeate into every corner of the organization and information provides invaluable foresight to drive changes and enable business growth. Information & Technology is rapidly becoming an integral part of many companies’ strategic plans. Understanding the importance of IT to the company’s business model is important for the board to have effective oversight of technology initiatives. The digital boards today need to become more technology savvy, many corporate directors, and senior executives would like boards to have a more frequent and constructive role in technology oversight and IT governance. Boards can no longer avoid, delegate or ignore the need for technical competency among their ranks. A tech-savvy board will have the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, prepare, and launch change, innovation, and ensure what happens next, enable their organization capturing the growth opportunities or mitigating risks timely.

Knowledge proficiency: As a senior leadership role, board directors should be the specialized generalists with “T” shaped expertise. Most of the board directors are top seasoned executives with years of experience. the T-shaped directors are in demand to bring the breadth of the business ecosystem or the across-industry perspective and the depth of the domain knowledge and expertise to the table. The vertical bar of the “T” represents depth in one field, the horizontal bar represents the ability to collaborate across other disciplines and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise. To reach the state of knowledge proficiency at the board level, it is also important to identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight, capture invaluable business insight to make sound judgments and effective decisions. Forward-looking boards are looking for high quality and diverse experience for improving governance effectiveness. Collectively, the digital board with a blend of expertise and capabilities can foster a culture of innovation and improve boardroom digital readiness and leadership maturity.


Leadership competency: Fundamentally, leadership is about the future and direction - how to navigate their organization in the right direction. An early survey by the Corporate Executive Board showed that more than half of organizations were experiencing a leadership shortage. It is a “paradigm shift,” a radical change in thinking is required to tackle the digital leadership shortfall. Leadership competency at the board level is multifaceted. For example, the directors’ navigation competency directly impacts how they lead and what they could bring to the table. Navigation competency requires the multidimensional understanding of both tangible and intangible business success factors, overcome silo or overly rigid polarity, strike the right balance to lead change steadfastly. The board competency will directly impact business competency. Board must set an example of leadership which permeates through the entire organization for improving the organizational business culture and maturity.

To improve directorship effectiveness, there are quite a lot of things digital boards need to shape up, and there are so many issues the boards have to deal with. A Strategic Board has a broader view of looking ahead, profound insight of looking deeper, and distinguished leadership competency of looking beyond, in order to lead changes step-wisely and create the momentum for the digital paradigm shift effortlessly.

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