The skills that my generation (Gen X) have nurtured through their education and experience are amazing – but are equally incomplete to tackle the complexity of life and business in 2025. It is this sense of having incomplete skills that I see and hear from governance leaders across the country. We need to have a serious conversation about elements such as creativity, finding comfort in chaos, complexity thinking, and harnessing the collective intelligence of groups where all too often the sum of the collated IQ barely equals 60 rather than 600 as it might otherwise appear on paper.
In my effort to contribute to wider discussion on how we might redefine collectivity for our age and our future, I humbly tender my ten suggestions for better governance. Yes, I use the word ‘better’ rather than ‘good’. Not only do I find the notion of ‘good governance’ largely unhelpful, often vacuous and mostly a virtue-signalling notion, but I strongly suggest that we may never achieve perfection, but we can strive to be a little better month by month.
Like really listen, not just wait – patiently or otherwise –for the person beside you to stop making their noise so you can roll out your prepared statement – a statement unchanged by the words of the person you are supposedly listening to. How many meetings have you sat through that have consisted of rhetorical statement after rhetorical statement none relating to the statement before? They pile like dead carcases on the floor of the meeting before the chair asks if there is anything else and the motion is passed or passed over.
We are not good at listening primarily because, at least in Western society, it is not a skill that is highly prised. But all is not lost, there are many techniques focused on the development of listening skills.
Imagine if we had a meeting that consisted entirely of open questions. You sought new information via open questions, posed possible pathways via open questions, asked others what they think via open questions, and drew out the strengths of those who have said little via open questions. The skill and art of asking open questions consistently and effectively is highly prized. For the most part, they make people nervous, and after 90 seconds or so, most are itching to jump to solutions.
If over all my years at university I’d seen a class called ‘Asking better questions’, I suspect it might have been the most valuable course of my life.
Related to this is the fact that we spend a fraction of the time we should on identifying the problem. We seem to fail to recognise that as soon as the problem is identified the parameters of possible solutions have been set. And so, we stick to our lanes, rationalising the world from our own lived experience and expertise, often resulting in solutions that are clones of solutions previously generated.
I strongly suspect that asking better questions lies near the heart of better collectivity. I would value your comments on techniques and exercises to strengthen the muscle that is the skill of asking better questions.
I once advised a board that they should fill two vacancies with a teenager and a painter. Of course, I was being provocative – but my point was that whilst they had a good gender balance, they were all of a particular age, all had significant sector experience, and were all trapped in their ability to think outside of the status quo. Unfortunately for them and the business, they operated in a sector where the status quo was fundamentally and irrevocably broken. Suffice to say they did not take me up on my recommendation– in fact, I think they thought I was crazy.
Yes, boards usually complete skills-matrixes upon skills-matrixes – but they always seem to result in the appointment of people who look, feel, think, and act just like them.
If harnessed effectively, diversity is not “woke”, it is good business.
Diversity on boards is not about appointing people who are not competent – but breaking out of our incredibly narrow conception of what competent looks like.
Whilst we are at it – keep the board tight. I recently had occasion to review a board with close to 20 members! This, of course, was strong evidence in support of the board being completely hopeless in making any decisions.
Further, the requirement that directors have sector expertise is uniformly over emphasised. Yes, there needs to be members with expertise in the sector. And yes, all board members need to fundamentally understand the core economic or social foundation of the enterprise (aka how the organisation makes money or how it serves its constituents) but do not interpret that as requiring every director to have industry experience. Intelligent, professional inquisitors who are competent in finance, law, marketing, business systems, or strategy but with no expertise in the particular industry are, in my experience, worth their weight in gold as directors.
What is the innovation paradigm relevant to your sector and where does your organisation fit within that? Do you, your board, your staff and your organisation really understand what innovation means and where you fit within it? I am often surprised by the number of directors I speak to who do not actually know what it is that their entity does – at a general level yes, but do they understand it deeply? No.
You’re not there to perpetuate the status quo – let me rephrase that, there is no such thing as the status quo in 2025. Whether you change it, or it is changed for you, the constantly shifting sands of business requires agility and adaptability – are those your strengths? You don’t all have to be crazy risk takers but at the very least understand and be able to articulate your risk appetite.
Almost every board I have ever worked with has talked a big game about being progressive, innovative, looking for opportunities, great at recognising that the future means change, blah blah blah – but when push comes to shove, most have been ultra-conservative. I understand that the pressures of being a director or trustee might lead you away from any form of risk – well, don’t be a director or trustee then.
There is nothing wrong with being ultra-conservative of course, and for looking for CEOs that are ‘a safe pair of hands’, ‘experienced and solid’, ‘predictable and safe’. But these terms are often used to justify appointments of people who do not present a challenge, are able to be controlled by the board, are not going to suggest anything new, and who lack ideas and initiative. Not even government can afford to continue with such appointments.
This aside, if you have a CEO who you think is dreaming a little big, honestly ask yourself whether this is genuinely not good for the organisation or rather is beyond what you signed up for as a director? That their ideas mean you might have to do more than you want to? If it’s the latter, perhaps it is time for you to go?
This is a foil to understanding your risk appetite. I know several CEOs who have, right this minute, got to the stage of not caring what the decision is – they just need a decision to be made – any decision! Sound familiar?
Your CEO and staff are not competition – if you are still in the mindset of “its all about the principle/ agent theory” and you find yourself paying your CEO ridiculous sums because you mistakenly believe that is what is needed to right the balance or you believe the relationship is all about control mechanisms, then I suggest there are other, more productive, avenues available in defining your relationship with your CEO.
Ultimately, I am guessing you would not drive a Mk 1 Cortina as your daily driver so do not be happy with applying 1980s thinking to contemporary problems.
Do not get me wrong, I love Mk 1 Cortinas (not that I could afford one these days), and they are, at base, still a car (and for the time being we still have cars), so my point is not that anything old is wrong, but rather, let us make the most of the tools and thinking we have available to make the very best decisions. Such decisions are seldom binary by the way but are contingent upon our ability to hold multiple truths in our heads at the same time and still be able to function (see F Scott Fitzgerald, 1936).
If you are asking yourself whether you are adding value –that is likely a good indication that it is time to go. This often takes significant self-awareness – something that ‘leaders’ sometimes lack (enter Joe Biden stage left).
Where there is CEO or Chair “capture” the tendency is to see everyone fall in behind decisions with little dissent or discussion. The same occurs where there is no difference of approach, thought, or experience on the board. How many issues can you think of where there is easy agreement between multiple individuals these days? If your answer is “a lot” then you might be in an echo-chamber or find yourself caught in a moral matrix as moral psychologists might put it, leading to the thinking of tribes shutting down openminded thinking or differences of opinion and approach. Yes, consensus is a good thing and not impossible – but in my experience it is often hard fought, fleeting, and not the norm.
Comfort and conformity are not terms that ought to spring to mind when we think of a governance board. As one scholar put it, when someone says “I don’t think you want me on your board – I’m contentious” you should likely strive to appoint that person immediately.
We all tell narratives about the world in which we are at the centre, and we are the hero. However, sometimes our narratives are not shared by others. That is ok. The trick is to recognise this – or at least have people around you that you respect and listen to who can tell you when you have lost objectivity. Becoming more isolated as you go up through the ranks is unfortunately a reality of many executives. However, this is a bad thing for you and for the people who rely on your decisions.
Photo by Benjamin Child on Unsplash
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