Inspire Board Leadership & Changeability

The corporate board leaders demonstrate vision, adaptability, and consistency to steer the business in the right directions. 

The digital era upon us means the exponential growth of information, the increasing speed of change, continuous disruptions, and fierce competition. Digital transformation means to break down the past and lead toward the future with a quantum leap. However, many BoDs are undereducated about their role and responsibility while the business change is accelerated across global scope and the knowledge life cycle is shortened significantly. 

 At the board level, creating trends is about steering direction and anticipating changes. The corporate board represents the ownership and they really cannot do a good job if they don't have the knowledge to set the broad strategic goals and take logical steps in rejuvenating corporate boards to get digital ready.

Inspire & motivate leaders and managers to drive bold change and take smart actions: While there are many components of leadership, one of the most important ones is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. In fact, change is the “DNA” of modern leadership, and it starts at the board level. How bold change initiatives would be often dependent on how inspirational, aggressive and motivational change leaders are. The transformative leaders at the board level have to set fair principles, or if necessary, rewrite the rules for guiding radical changes, leverage information to envision not only where a company believes it is going but how it will get there and how it might be missing out on opportunities. Often, they should craft their own playbook with well-defined digital rules to guide through the journey of going digital.

Have an advocate for change on the Board significantly improve the success rate of change and amplify change impact. Because if you want meaningful change in an organization, it will not really happen until you get buy-in and sponsorship from senior leadership teams such as the corporate board. Without this, you will get chaos and some temporary change on the surface, but not change that rejuvenates mindsets, cultivates digital cultures, and moves the business forward solidly. The contemporary corporate board can inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, influence, exemplify, and orchestrate change, as change is often uncomfortable, but a necessary part of reaching the future and sustaining success.

Make a board meeting a positive experience: Corporate boards often have to spread their time very thin on many issues and practice their judiciary duties effectively. It’s crucial for their discussions and activities to become more performance-driven, not just compliance-focused. It's important to make an objective assessment of how the board meetings are organized, how to facilitate a few hot topics, and how to improve senior leadership effectiveness. For example, how much percentage of time has been spent on the meeting, are they worth the time & energy? Do they usually reach the expected goals? How to set the right priority to improve meeting productivity Do meetings actually improve morale, enforce communication? Do you do enough homework before the meeting? Who are the participants and do they have the cognitive difference to express opinions? Will those opinions lead to more effective and objective decision making? Do you get enough feedback and keep track of problem-solving? Etc.

Usually, the corporate board’s meetings are not a comfortable place but continually challenging in order to step outside their comfort zone. Make the board agenda reasonable and stay focused and make the corporate board meeting stimulating and effective - beyond relevant. Boards are more effective with a mix of generalists who can drill down in some areas and experts with the bandwidth and experience to see beyond their silos and all be able to communicate with each other. Both listening and telling are crucial for understanding issues insightfully and providing advice wisely.

Set the right tone for corporate culture and business reputation enforcement: Reputation is part of the business brand, and the business brand usually also reflects the enterprise reputation. Reputation management, brand protection, and risk governance become increasingly intertwined and crucial due to the overwhelming growth of information and the omnipresence of technology in the internet age. The spirit of the organization comes from the top, the corporate board should be accountable to set a positive tone on business reputation. Therefore, keeping close monitoring of reputation management for transparency and analysis of potential long-term consequences must become the corporate board agenda. In specific, the corporate board’s business reputation oversight needs to ensure that the management has put in place effective GRC processes for protecting business brand and reputation. It also helps the management clarify what the brand stands for, how the company wants its stakeholders to see and perceive the brand name and the connotation it wants its stakeholders to associate to, as well as the primary activities through which the brand name gets communicated.

Corporate reputation and business culture are intertwined. An innovative culture nurtures a strong corporate brand and builds a long-lasting business reputation while a mediocre culture tarnishes organizational reputation in the long run. In order to identify the sources of reputational risk and address them, as well as manage them effectively, the BoD must institutionalize a robust governance model, to guide and govern management's decisions and behaviors along the brand's value chain and throughout its entire life-cycle. The BoDs set policies to shape the culture of innovation. They have to shift gears and mindsets to see the culture of an organization as a collective whole living breathing thing, a human organic system composed of uniquely diverse people who have much to offer to grow and develop the culture. If not, then the policy is more than likely not needed.

The corporate board leaders demonstrate vision, adaptability, and consistency to steer the business in the right directions. They have to keep evolving and gaining fresh views, leverage information for discovering unexpected connections between the business and its rich environment, inspire and build the right set of digital principles and policies to catalyze changes, enforce governance discipline, and shape the brighter future of their company cohesively.

Posted in: Board Room,Leadership Master