In this insightful podcast, our CEO, Sharon Constançon, unveils the hidden challenges hindering board effectiveness through an intriguing octopus analogy, suggesting a unified cause at the core. She elaborates on elevating the emotional intelligence of key figures like the company secretary, chair, and directors as a strategic move to tackle these elusive problems, propelling the board toward realising its utmost potential.
Board effectiveness conversations are always peppered with the conversation around “challenge”. What is actually meant by challenge is to constructively ask questions of the management and topics in question to determine that all the right considerations have been taken account of, to offer insights and value to the conversations depending on the information being received to questions.
Cohesion within a board can be a precarious balance; excessive unity leads to groupthink and rubber-stamping decisions, while insufficient cohesion results in misalignment and protracted decision-making. This equilibrium directly impacts risk management, with too much cohesion dulling the collective risk sensitivity and too little leading to a chaotic, ineffective approach to both existing and emerging threats.
Whenever people are involved, things are not always simple and logical. Anyone who has been on a Board will know that notwithstanding Structure, Demographics and Attributes being in place, something else is impacting the Board’s effectiveness.
In order to answer this question, it is important to establish what the objectives set in the first place were? Very often, this is not clarified between the Chairman and the Board Evaluator in the beginning which is a missed opportunity to define achievements gained in the process.