Board Room
Showing posts with label Board Room. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Board Room. Show all posts

An Influential Corporate Board

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. 

People tend to make leadership very complex, but in its most simple form, leadership is an influence. With rapid changes and exponential growth of information, the command control style of management is gradually losing its steam. Digital leadership needs to be highly intelligent and influential, to lead through influence, but brute force. The corporate board as one of the top leadership pillars must influence and exemplify progressive leadership and help to shape an ultra-modern digital organization effortlessly.

Influential Intelligence: A mindset could be called influential intelligence if it can discover the patterns of inter-relationship among different disciplines, understand the mindsets of all members of the group. The insightful board leaders has the ability to influence peers or management team as they undertake a broad range of crucial decisions involving issues such as strategy, performance, branding, technological vision, finance, talent management, etc. They do not dominate discussions, instead, they encourage open critical debates, encourage fresh perspectives, and appreciate the collective insight from peer board directors as well as various stakeholders. To "influence" means to be able to shape other people's views or opinions towards one's own views or perspectives. With influential intelligence, the contemporary corporate board can inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, exemplify, encourage, and orchestrate change. The corporate board leaders with influential intelligence have adaptability, consistency, profundity, and empathy to steer the business in the right directions under business dynamic and lead the business forward smoothly.

Expertise influence: Top board leaders need to have broader business acumen, deep expertise, transdisciplinary knowledge, cross-functional experience, and leadership skills. As a senior leadership role, corporate board directors should be the specialized generalists with “T” shaped expertise, and they are able to embrace the seemingly paradoxical point of views in order to gain a deep understanding of varying strategic topics holistically. Most of the board directors are top seasoned executives with decades of experience. Collectively, the digital board with a blend of expertise and capabilities can foster a culture of innovation and improve boardroom decision effectiveness and leadership maturity. To reach the state of knowledge proficiency and spread expertise influence, it is also important to identify and close the gap between knowledge and insight in the boardroom. Board directors are not just the follower to chase the tidal waves blindly, but able to capture the invaluable business insight to make sound judgments and effective decisions in a consistent way.

World class leadership influence: The ultimate criterion of "high-influential leadership," is the ability to create more leaders, to spread leadership, or more precisely, to groom more authentic leaders with the ability to think differently, independently, and innovatively. To amplify leadership influence, digital leaders including corporate board directors need to be constantly visible by sharing vision and enabling others to share it. Their leadership influence is made based on the leadership substances such as vision and purpose with effective digital leadership styles such as participation, coaching or delegation. The corporate board’s global leadership influence is based on their world-class leadership competencies such as self-regulation, social judgment skills, empathy, motivation to work in a global environment, cultural cognition, acceptance of complexity and its contradictions, the tolerance of ambiguity, flexibility, and learning agility. Their leadership influence must be built on the foundation of the moral competencies such as wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance.

Highly influential corporate boards are heterogeneous, inquisitive, intelligent, effective, innovative and influential. Open leadership, humble attitude, adaptability, creativity, sound judgment, inclusiveness, and fact-driven communication, are digital leadership traits to make profound leadership influence. Highly influential leaders understand themselves and have a story to tell, they develop an authentic leadership brand, and encourage others to do the same.
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Three Perspectives to Improve Corporate Board Adaptability

Board of Directors with digital acumen can both drive and adapt to changes effortlessly.

Digital means rapid change, the unprecedented level of uncertainty and ambiguity, the expanded spectrum of innovation, and the theme of people centricity. All of these changes bring significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs to lead differently. The digital corporate board leadership today needs to be future-oriented, highly adaptive, steer the organization towards the digital journey with a clear vision, a highly effective board agenda and a set of best and next practices.

Addressing emerging issues and co-designing digital landscape: The modern corporations are living systems. In systems theory, a system is conceived as a process whereby larger entities, patterns, and regularities arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities that themselves do not exhibit such properties. From a broader systems perspective, synergy is the business term for a desirable emergent property. It’s about understanding of relationships, ecosystems, market dynamics, and the connections between business units, To improve business agility and maturity, the corporate board and top management team need to focus on the emergent organizational system properties and enable the desirable emergent property being built via certain business activities or process tuning to create business synergy.

Systems Thinking helps digital leaders such as board directors discover the interconnectivity and interdependence of the digital business ecosystem, and ensure that the digital business as an organic system growing and evolving with its environment in harmony. To gain the “zoom out” business views, board directors as senior business leaders are like the telescope, they are good at seeing the big picture, determine what the future needs to look like, understand the interconnectivity, synthesize information to capture the full cycle of seasonal changes and then, co-design digital landscape, take a strategic approach to make the vision rolling into reality.

Moving the needle in diversity and shaping an inclusive culture: Contemporary organizations are diversified with a multigenerational and multicultural stakeholders. To keep business dynamic and creative, the composition of the corporate board should reflect the diverse nature of its shareholders. The corporate board composition needs to embrace cognitive difference, functional difference, and other experience/capability difference. The corporate board is responsible for ensuring an appropriate mix of thought processes, capabilities, skills, knowledge, and experience are present or available for it to fulfill its fiduciary functions and improve governance effectiveness.

We are idea-rich and vision clear through inclusiveness. Businesses are stronger through diversity, it allows them to explore options that one individual or a homogeneous group might not have uncovered. In order to lead today’s hyper-connected digital organization with the hyper-diverse workforce, the corporate board composition should be synchronized with the digital perspective of the business. From top down, inclusiveness needs to be well embedded in the business culture in shaping a truly global organization.


Leading change and improving creative agility: Change is the new normal with increasing speed. It is important to bring the change wave to the boardroom as well. The  board  of directors as a top leadership team should contemplate the big "WHY" and know the dynamic of change and adapt to the ever-evolving business circumstances.

Board of Directors with digital acumen can both drive and adapt to changes effortlessly, setting the top leadership tone to rejuvenate the culture of creativity and run a highly innovative digital organization. Change leadership at the board level is important because change management is an interdependent ecosystem that includes many business factors such as the company goals, policies, internal control requirements, customer experience improvements/customer satisfaction, etc.

A change agent board has the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, prepare and launch change, innovation, and master with digital fluency to make profound leadership influence. Directors of the board with the change mind are more skillful to ask ‘right’ questions for governing changes so that the directors would be able to quickly assess any numbers and facts they are given, against applicable benchmarks and detect relevant hints for further questioning or confirmation.

Due to the complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and volatility of the digital era, the directorship in any organization must envision the future boldly, influence changes proactively, have the agility to adapt to the dynamic digital new normal, reinforce digital principles and practices, and lead the organization towards its future confidently.
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The Corporate Board’s Mentorship Competency

Digital leaders including board directors are more as a great mentor than an entitled commander, in order to harness leadership through pulling, not pushing. 

Coaching or mentoring is going to be increasingly important now because the "command & control" style of management is gradually losing its steam in the digital era of abundant knowledge and hyperconnected business normality. The mentor style board directors play a critical role in developing next-generation leaders and help the current leadership stay attuned to the realities of their industry and business ecosystem.


Mentorship is about guiding, advising, interpreting, and influencing: This is radically different from the command-and-control style of management. Great leadership includes mentoring capability, and excellent mentorship is both art and science. To be the most effective leader, board directors need to present a clear vision, proficient knowledge and communication skills, and practice open leadership style. The digital leader today is more as a great mentor than an entitled commander. Not everyone (even many top executives) makes a good mentor. There are many skills & abilities that a good business mentor needs - key amongst them are the ability to listen & observe; the ability to ask probing open questions; a degree of imagination to put oneself in the mentee's shoes to understand his/her perspective; and an openness in discussion. From the boardroom to the front desk, mentoring has always been a very integral part of an organization’s success.

Great leaders should be ideal mentors, by mentoring, you are showing that you value others: One of the most important traits for any senior leaders including board directors is self-awareness which is about understanding your impact on others, the surroundings, and how to leverage your strengths and build a high-performance team with complementary skills and experience. Even many board directors are top seasoned business leaders with decades of enriched experiences.Still, it doesn't mean they always have all the answers due to the overloading information and shortened knowledge life cycle, The mentoring style leaders are not about providing all the answers, but about facilitating continuous dialogues and help others explore their own natural skill sets, talents, and strong sides, take into account their own objectives in line with working needs. By mentoring you are showing that you value others, and in order to add value to others, you need to hold people in high regard, not only for who they are but for the potential that lies inside of them. The titles and qualifications, if well managed, are needed in every society to improve leadership maturity.

Leadership is methodical, but there is some magic in there: Every effective leader needs to fill a certain gap or multiple gaps in order to lead to the future. The expert power has the foundation of in-depth knowledge, profound insight, and abstract wisdom to connect the minds and win the hearts. Effective leadership is methodical, it takes hard work and endurance, the substance of leadership never changes, A well established and functioning mentoring process is invaluable for an organization to develop its next-generation leaders and for the current leadership to stay attuned to the realities of their ecosystem. Learning, coaching, and practicing leadership are methodical processes that are improved by constant learning and practice. It has to be institutionalized and lived by the top of the organization to be successful.

Digital leaders including board directors are more as a great mentor than an entitled commander, in order to harness leadership through pulling, not pushing. Beside their vision and leadership substance, as well as a unique set of leadership competency; they will also need to adjust their leadership styles accordingly in order to catalyze change and drive digital transformation effortlessly.
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The Monthly “Digitizing Boardroom” Book Tuning: The Corporate Board’s Digital Fit Sep. 2019

The corporate board plays a significant role in overseeing business strategy, setting effective principles and policies, making sound judgments and assurance of corporate actions within a framework of practical knowledge. 

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.



                 The Corporate Board’s Digital Fit 




The Corporate Board Change Fit Change is the only constant, and the speed of change is increasing rapidly. The corporate board directors should become interactive change agents that represent the organization, stockholders, and senior management, make significant influences on setting digital tones and shaping the digital mindset of the organization, both walk the talk and talk the walk and set the digital tone for others to follow.

A ‘Fitting’ Board Organizations today have to live up with the business dynamic which is uncertain, ambiguous, complex and flux, Board as high-level governance body plays a crucial role in business advising & monitoring, as well as setting key tones in organizational culture style and leadership quintessential. What does it mean to build a fitting Board, and who is the best fitting BoD, a specialist or a generalist?

The BoD’s Knowledge Fit The corporate board plays a significant role in overseeing business strategy, setting effective principles and policies, making sound judgments and assurance of corporate actions within a framework of practical knowledge. Not only do today’s BoDs need to have sufficient knowledge to understand the business ecosystem, but they also should have the collective insight to present today and foresee the future.

The Corporate Board "Performance Fit" Performances are not just numbers with metrics, they are numbers in context, results related to business goals. Business performance can be affected by numerous factors of which governance is one of them. The corporate board as one of the most crucial governance bodies in the modern enterprise plays an important role in setting digital principles for improving performance management effectiveness and monitoring business performance smoothly.

The Best-in-Class Digital Board Corporate board as the top leadership team plays a significant role in business advising, leadership exemplarity, policy setting, and governance practices. How to build a best-in-class digital board? Is there any way for shareholders and key stakeholders to evaluate board leadership effectiveness?

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What’s Inside the BoD’s Tool Box

The board directors who are equipped with a set of powerful tools have the advantage of communicating effectively and deciding wisely.

Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and velocity of the digital era, the directorship in any organization becomes more critical and challenging. The purpose of the governing body, or board of directors, is to direct the organization in the right direction, practice governance discipline, and monitor its performance. Corporate governance is to make sure that management is doing its job properly. The corporate board needs to shift from reactive to active and proactive mode for adapting to the dynamic business environment with continuous disruptions. To improve the directorship effectiveness, what’re supposed to be inside the board of directors’ toolbox to enforce its governance discipline?

SWOT Analysis: We live in an era full of uncertainty, velocity, rapid changes and exponential growth of information, the result is a higher risk of conflict and inertia, etc. Decision makers including corporate board directors need effective tools to help them navigate between the rocks of analysis-paralysis, foresight-hindsight, and blind guesswork. the business strengths and weaknesses need an evaluation in order to have a decision-making ground. SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat) Analysis is a good tool which provides a starting point to scrutinize strategy and helps to take a wide look around at what's going on outside the organization and how it might affect the organization (an environmental scan), and identify opportunities and threats. It also helps to take a hard look at what's going on inside the organization, including its strengths and weaknesses. By adding the Trends, you're asking the organization to look at what's happening now and what's coming down the pike so that they can be proactive in preparing for it. How effective the tool is depends on the SWOT users, do they ask the right questions, and answer them via multidimensional lenses, and understand them in context by zooming into the future more clearly.

Business Architecture: Business Architecture is more than a "hint of the business process," but an effective communication tool at the higher level. The business architecture could become a great executive communication tool, particularly when the architecture discussion is kept at a higher level and keep all executives at the same page by walking through the discussion about strategy planning, governance, transformation, etc. The board of directors with an architect’s mindset can translate the abstract concept back into the real world example. Thus, it also has the ‘visual’ ability to “see” an idea and express it in visual terms via interactive way. The real value of business architecture is how to keep the priorities in balance and make the sound judgment without losing the big picture. The board of directors who can speak architectural dialect is able to facilitate the digital dialogues between organizational decision makers and thereby assist the organization in continuously designing and redesigning itself in pursuit of new and more viable strategies, enhancing cross-functional business coordination, developing knowledge and expertise, and enforcing business responsibility.

Balanced scorecard: The well designed balanced scorecard with well-selected metrics can harness information-based communication at the board level. A balanced scorecard is very useful to provide a “balanced” view of tradeoff variables for facilitating discussions and ensure decision makers understanding the various trade-offs and making the strategic balance, business dependencies, and constraints between components, individuals, and overall risk exposure. A balanced scorecard helps the board capture the holistic picture, make sure that the strategy execution is on track. It enables feedback & learning, as well as adjusting the strategy accordingly. They can become more confident and accurately judge the coming curves and obstacles on the path, and get into actions in a creative, positive and proactive way, to lead the digital transformation journey smoothly.

At today's business dynamic with digitalization and globalization trend, the top leadership team such as board directors who are equipped with a set of powerful tools have the advantage of communicating effectively, deciding wisely, and pulling enough resources and pushing the business to reach the next level of digital maturity.
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The Corporate Board Change Fit

Leadership or directorship is about setting directions and inspiring changes.

Change is the only constant, and the speed of change is increasing rapidly. The corporate board directors should become interactive change agents that represent the organization, stockholders, and senior management, make significant influences on setting digital tones and shaping the digital mindset of the organization, both walk the talk and talk the walk and set the digital tone for others to follow.


Change is the “DNA” of modern leadership: Change starts at the board level. We live in a world where change is the norm and if we don't embrace it, accept it, roll with it or make it happen, we're not going to be successful. While there are many components of leadership, one of the most important ones is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. It is a basic human ability to inspire self and others to look beyond limitations and make continuous improvement. This is particularly important at the board level because board directors help to oversee the business agenda for change and digital transformation, they also must help to push this agenda, pull all important business resources to achieve it. The contemporary corporate board can inspire, innovate, improve, interact, interpret, influence, exemplify, encourage and orchestrate change, as change is often uncomfortable, but a necessary part of reaching the future and sustain the success. 

Change capability is a strategic skill on leadership qualities: While there are many components of leadership, one of the most important ones is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. The leadership team such as corporate board must push the change agenda, and pull the resources to achieve it. We live in a world where change is the norm and if we don't embrace it, accept it, roll with it or make it happen, we're not going to be successful. It also makes it possible for everyone to be on the same page speaking the same language and fosters an atmosphere of accountability. Change leadership concerns the driving forces, visions, and processes that fuel large-scale transformation. Leadership is all about change management and also the ability to take initiative (change leadership). So accepting and embracing change has put leaders more at ease because of its consistency. It's also given digital leaders such as BoDs confidence because you know you are able to positively adapt to any given situation.


The boards of Directors sets policies and principles for changes and digital transformation: Change is the new normal, and the speed of change is increasing, Without well-preparation, major changes in an organization’s ecosystem could have unforeseen consequences that negatively impact the company’s productivity and performance. More than 70% of Change Management effort fails to achieve the expected result. Thus, it is important to bring the CHANGE wave to the boardroom as well. Digital leaders including board directors should contemplate the big "WHY" and know the dynamic of change and adapt to the ever-evolving business circumstances. Change leadership at the board level is important because change management is an interdependent ecosystem that includes many business factors such as the company goals, policies, internal control requirements, customer experience improvements/customer satisfaction, etc, which should be synchronized without compromising the need for any item.

Leadership or directorship is about setting directions and inspiring changes. Change Management has a very wide scope and is a relatively new area of expertise, it needs to focus on coordination and facilitation, follow the right set of principles and take the best or next digital practices.
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