The Progressive View of the Corporate Board

The further-looking board’s progressive view helps to cultivate the culture of innovation and improve leadership maturity.

The modern society is a dynamic continuum with collective human progress. Progress represents change. Without change, one cannot even stagnate. The corporate board must exemplify progressive leadership to help build an ultra-modern digital organization. The progressive view of the corporate board in a collective setting can sustain a balance of diversified perspectives, creativity, discipline; opportunities and risk; individualism and teamwork, democracy and unification; science and art, intuition and of course, forward-thinking and situational leadership.

Progress represents change: Progress itself is a change, either by individuals, group efforts or induced by environmental and cultural tangible and intangible force. The BoD role sets the top leadership’s tone for progression and affects most through cohesive communication, congruent behavior, and continuous endorsement of the change to keep the momentum. Digital leadership is a unique combination of leadership mindsets and behaviors that develop and achieve high quality and meaningful results over a sustained period of time. Insightful digital BoDs who can laser focus on using energy and resource strategically, have better chances to figure out the “secret sauce” of directorship and make the progressive view to make positive leadership influence and advise the business management to achieve the higher-than-expected business outcome.

Set the top leadership’s tone for progression: Is corporate board progressive enough? The corporate board as top leadership team exemplifies leadership influence and set principles and policies for driving business changes. Thus, the board must be progressive and advanced enough to lead ahead rather than lag behind. The board needs to be open-minded, foresightful, knowledgeable, innovative and committed in order to contribute to strategy oversight effectively when required at all times. On one side, board directors should be the open-minded visionaries who can predict future trends; on the other side, they need to be the strategic business leaders to “keep the ends,” in mind. The progressive digital boards should provide a clear vision, steer the business in the right direction via leadership skills such as delegation, decision-making, and monitoring. The board can also set the top leadership’s tone for progression and make leadership influence through cohesive communication, congruent behavior, and continuous endorsement of the change to keep the momentum.

Advocate innovation and pursue progress proactively: From the board composition perspective, it is time to not just think outside of the box on what type of persons should make up your board but to seek people who truly think-outside-of-the-box, or more precisely, who can shape a new or bigger thinking box and bring the outside in viewpoint to push for collective progress. It’s important to set up a team with cognitive differences, and its team members can proactively and progressively stimulate the new energy of fresh thinking. Digital is the age of innovation, innovation leads to future performance. Innovation needs to layout different structures, thinking, and solutions to allow developing into its potential where organizations are combining all that is available to them in imaginative and advantageous ways. The corporate boards need to advocate innovation and pursue progress proactively.

The further-looking board’s progressive view helps to cultivate the culture of innovation and improve leadership maturity. Progressive boards make sound judgments based on their in-depth understanding and multidimensional intelligence. Progress is not hanging onto judgments from a way that does not apply. From one generation to the other, from the primitive agricultural society to the siloed industrial age and we now steadfastly move into the today’s hyper-connected digital era, the human society is pushed forward via the contemporary minds which convey the vision and advocate progress. And such a progressive journey should never end.

Posted in: Board Room,Leadership Master