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 The digital tone is set at the top and echo spirally to all levels of the organization. 

We live in a world in which change is the norm, with increasing speed, one of the most important qualities of leadership is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. 

The corporate board as an advising role is responsible to provide an “outside-in” view of the business via multidimensional lenses, oversee business strategy and steer the organization in the right direction. They need to ask tough questions, challenge assumptions, ponder deeper about how to build a progressive board to catalyze digital transformation.

What tends to be the biggest gaps and “blind spots'' in achieving and maintaining the right board composition? Business complexity is diverse, ambiguous, and dynamic with unpredictable outcomes. The blind spots are perhaps inevitable as we all have different perceptions, knowledge base, experience or cultural background. As a senior board leader, the blind spots will cloud your vision, cause decision ineffectiveness, and compromise leadership competency. If you feel like you have lost the virtues of trust and respect, go now and be humble yourself, and be ready to deal with another blind spot smoothly. Consider how to build a heterogeneous team which can bridge the perception difference, complement capability and skill set, to lead the business forward smoothly.

 
There are both blind spots in strategy formulation and execution. The corporate board’s oversight of strategy and methodology with clarity directly impacts the business effectiveness and maturity, enhances a robust corporate brand, and develops a solid corporate reputation. Most board directors are top seasoned executives with enriched experience, but they still need to learn and relearn all the time, clarify the vision, criticize strategy, share fresh insight, frame the right questions and answer them in a “mindful” way via collective wisdom. Thus, it’s important to build heterogeneous, high-performance boardroom team with cognitive differences, updated knowledge, complementary skills, and distinctive capabilities in order to fill blind spots, clear business vision, and spur creativity to solve problems effectively and consistently.

Which steps is your board taking to position itself for the future? Complexity and uncertainty are part of reality. The real BoD’s dilemma is that driving the business forward is extremely difficult, because you need to look into an unknown future and attempt to define the landscape with its risks and opportunities. The senior leadership such as the corporate board should reflect on how profound of your thinking and how persuasive your communication is. The insight of the situation requires deep observation, in-depth understanding, fresh perspective, comprehensive knowledge to make strategic decisions and lead transformative change smoothly.

With strong digital acumen, the BoDs present an in-depth knowledge about the business and expertise in multiple domains, provide an insightful outlook about what the future of the digital organization should be and what the existing problems and challenges are. They can sense emergent opportunities and predict potential risks, set attainable vision, and build a strong roadmap for getting there. Also, keeping close monitoring of reputation management for transparency and analysis of potential long-term consequences must become the board agenda.

How to invest wisely to catalyze innovation and digital transformation? There are both opportunities and risks for every investment. The corporate board oversees the strategy, sets the priority to stay focused, work closely with business executives, identify promising big ideas for investment that will accelerate bold change, to oversee portfolios of investments, continually evaluate individual and aggregate investments in terms of value, risk, and reward, to ensure the organizations are on the right track to reach their vision.

BoDs set the right policies for encouraging business innovation and transformation. Applying the right investment procedures and policies allows the company to create a realistic budget with few surprises, and keep developing the best practices to adapt to “continuous changes.” They should also continue to review the ROIs of existing investment, make the evaluation based on financial metrics, project future revenue, customer satisfaction, or employee engagement. The corporate 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 management disciplines. Also, set the broad strategic goals, culture tones, and the digital theme of the boardroom itself.

 
Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity, and Velocity of the digital era, one of the most important components of leadership is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. The digital tone is set at the top and echo spirally to all levels of the organization. The board directors in any organization are able to advise, inspire the management to drive transformative changes, cultivate well-defined cultures, strengthen the weakest links in strategy management, motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals, monitor performance for delivering higher than expected results continually.

Posted in: Board Room,Digital Master,GAPs