The Monthly “Digitizing Boardroom” Book Tuning: An Inquisitive Board Nov. 2019

Business leaders including board directors need to ask tough questions, clarify the goals, and identify pitfalls on the way.

Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses in the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have the agility to adapt to changes and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals. Here are the multiple perspectives of shaping a strategic boardroom.

                    An Inquisitive Board  

An Inquisitive Board: How to Ask the Tough Questions Generally speaking, Boards have a couple of main functions such as strategy oversight, governance practices, providing advice to executives, and resource provision, etc. So the Board should be knowledge enough to set broad strategic goals. They need to educate themselves by hearing different views about the organization, its environment, and strategic alternatives. Even the majority of BoDs are senior executives, they need to breakdown the “status quo,” present learning agility and show the inquisitiveness to ask tough and right questions. The board represents the ownership and they really cannot do a good job if they don't have the courage and knowledge to question and challenge and set the broad strategic goals, culture tones, and the digital theme of boardroom itself. As an inquisitive BoD: How do you ask the tough questions?

The New Book “Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As” Conclusion: Build an Inquisitive Digital Board Organizations today have to live up with the business dynamic which is uncertain, ambiguous, complex and flux. The board of directors as the de facto guardian of modern organizations has an important role to play in steering the organization toward the uncharted water and blurring business territories. To improve directorship effectiveness, the corporate directors are senior leaders, shall they ask or answer questions? How shall they ask good and pertinent questions for governing changes and driving digital transformation? And how to build an inquisitive digital board to get digital ready?

The Digital Board’s Digital Inquiries The digital era is hyperconnected, volatile, complex, uncertain and ambiguous. It is the digital paradigm shift. Adopting a different paradigm is like changing the glasses and new possibilities might emerge. The corporate board plays an important role in overseeing digital strategy, advising executive teams and monitoring performance. To run a high performance and high mature digital organization, it is important to bridge the multitude of leadership and management gaps and creating the momentum for speeding up changes. Here is a set of the digital board’s digital inquiries.

The Digital Board’s Digital Inquiries (II) Digital boards play a directorial role in strategy oversight, business advising & monitoring, advocating changes and inspiring innovation. Board as a whole needs to be able to create a holistic digital view via listening, brainstorming, and questioning, This implies that Boards of the future will need to work much more closely and collaboratively, to become the “mastermind” behind the digital transformation. Here are a set digital board’s digital inquiries.

Three Tough Questions Digital Leaders need to Ponder for Driving a Smooth Digital transformation The pervasive digital technology and exponential growth of information can bring unprecedented opportunities and risks, many organizations are like to explore digital by following nonlinear patterns with accelerated speed. They have to strike the right balance between chaos and order, innovation and process, change and stability, etc. Business leaders including board directors need to ask tough questions, clarify the goals, and identify pitfalls on the way. At the high level of maturity, organizations have to stretch out in every business dimension for driving the full-fledged digital transformation.

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