Managers vs Leaders: the Limits to Board Effectiveness on Corporate Strategy?

An interesting short read on what makes a useful independent non-executive director. Thanks to Soula Proxenos for pointing out! It highlights the importance of the Board's contribution to #strategy: "...Effective Boards spend up to [12] days a year on strategy, compared with just [4] for low impact Boards which adds to the non-executive’s time commitment. These factors will result in the executive team genuinely valuing the contribution of the NEDs and being more willing to engage effectively with the Board..." I am not sure of the evidence base for "12 days". My experience tells me that, for Board contribution to strategy, #quality counts far more than quantity! The #boardofdirectors can give valuable shape and polish to a competent strategy process led by the executive. That requires visionary, principled and stakeholder-goal-congruent #leadership in the executive. Given an executive that is afflicted by " #managers" who can only administer and are absorbed with short term self-interest, the best Board in the world would be hard pressed to be effective!

the Profound Account of the Virus Hunter's Personal Battle with COVID

the Profound Account of the Virus Hunter's Personal Battle with COVID...After fighting viruses all over the world for more than 40 years, I have become an expert in infections. I’m glad I had corona and not Ebola, although I read a scientific study yesterday that concluded you have a 30% chance of dying if you end up in a British hospital with COVID-19. That’s about the same overall mortality rate as for Ebola in 2014 in West Africa...Many people think COVID-19 kills 1% of patients, and the rest get away with some flulike symptoms. But the story gets more complicated. Many people will be left with chronic kidney and heart problems...Let’s be clear: Without a coronavirus vaccine, we will never be able to live normally again...Today there’s also the paradox that some people who owe their lives to vaccines no longer want their children to be vaccinated. That could become a problem if we want to roll out a vaccine against the coronavirus..."

"Time's Up?" - Evaluating the Value for Money (VFM) of Board governance

In principle, a Board's VFM to stakeholders is the ratio of gross value-added (GVA) to gross cost (GC). So, the evaluation of board effectiveness/VFM should ideally include the experienced and skilled estimates of both factors.

This GC research that is being updated contributes to that process and should be replicated in other contexts. Of course, the reasonable assessment of GVA is much more fiendishly difficult!

It is, however, increasingly evident that many traditional models of the evaluation of Board GVA are unduly narrow in scope and can benefit from the insights of modern social and business behavioural sciences. Given the increasingly worrisome impact of corporate behaviour on the sustainability of societies and on the natural environment, the time for 20th century evaluations of Board GVA must surely have ended. Nature's unleashing of COVID 19 is surely a declaration to humanity of "time's up"!

Responsible Boards will be demanding insights that deploy credible social and business science knowledge to assist them in the effective discharge of their duty of care to all stakeholders.