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    On democracy, morals and business performance

    Accountability Ethics Governance Leadership Performance Societal Wellbeing
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    As 2015 gives way to 2016, many people will be reflecting on the past and looking to the future; thinking about what was and what might have been. I'm no different. One of the books I've been reading while pondering the past and the future this week is The Servile Mind by Kenneth Minogue. A friend recommended it—he wondered whether the commentary might be applicable to directors and boards. My response, having read half of the book so far, is an unreserved 'yes'! Here's the note on the flyleaf:
    One of the grim comedies of the twentieth century was that miserable victims of communist regimes would climb walls, sim rivers, dodge bullets, and find other desperate ways to achieve liberty  the West at the same time that progressive intellectuals would sentimentally proclaim that these very regimes were the wave of the future. A similar tragicomedy is playing out in our century: as the victims of despotism and backwardness from Third World nations pour into Western States, academic and intellectuals present Western life as a nightmare of inequality and oppression.
    In The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life,​ Kenneth Minogue explores the intelligentsia's love affair with social perfection and reveals how that idealistic dream is destroying exactly what has made the inventive Western world irresistible to the peoples of foreign lands. The Servile Mind looks at how Western morality has evolved into mere "politico-moral" posturing about admired ethical causes—from solving world poverty and creating peace to curing climate change. Today, merely making the correct noises and parading one's essential decency by having the correct opinions has become a substitute for individual moral responsibility.
    Instead, Minogue argues, we ask that our governments carry the burden of soling our social—and especially moral—problems for us. The sad and frightening irony is that the more we allow the state to determine our moral order and inner convictions, the more we need to be told how to behave and what to think.
    Humbly, I commend this book to all directors who want to govern well and make a difference in 2016.
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    Ten #strategy musings that generated much discussion in 2015

    Governance Leadership Performance Strategy
    Alongside corporate governance and board practice, the topic that occupied most of my time in 2015—as an advisor, facilitator, researcher and writer—was strategy. The numerous enquiries and  discussions suggest that boards are starting to acknowledge that an involvement in strategic management in some form is appropriate. And not before time: boards are responsible for company performance, after all. 
    Of the hundreds of articles published on Musings this year, strategy and strategic management received almost as much attention as corporate governance. These ten articles in particular stimulated plenty of discussion—and some folk sharing some strongly-held views as well!
    If you want to discuss any of these postings (or ask a question about a related topic, or request some assistance), please get in touch. I'll do my best to respond within 24 hours.
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    The 'perfect' board size??

    Accountability Governance Leadership Performance
    What is the 'perfect' size for a board of directors? The debate has waxed and waned for years. Shareholders, nominating committees, researchers and boards themselves have asked a range of questions as they have tried to address the conundrum:
    • ​How many directors are required to get the work of the board done?
    • What is the ideal balance between quality and quantity?
    • At what point does cost become a burden (vs. value)?​
    Answers to these questions have proved to be elusive. The reason? Context. Every situation that boards need to consider is, to some extent at least, unique. Consequently, a broad range of skills and expertise is needed in the boardroom, to address different issues that come up at different times. A configuration that works well for one situation may not work well elsewhere. Consider these vignettes:
    • What about a small board of three or four directors? One small board that I was on (four directors) was great at making decisions quickly, which was helpful for the fast-moving context within which the high-growth company operated. However, we really struggled when one director was absent. On several occasions, we found ourselves reaching for external help because vital skills were not present at the table. The board discussed the matter at length. A decision was made to petition the shareholders for a larger director's fees pool, a cheaper and more effective option that paying external advisors for assistance. Sadly, the petition was never presented: the company was acquired soon thereafter.
    • What about a bigger board, to deal with a range of complex issues? Last year, I was asked to evaluate a board with eighteen (yes, eighteen) directors. When they were asked about board meetings and board practices, the directors said that meetings "took forever", that group dynamics were "overly complex" and that several directors were "passengers": clues that something was wrong. After further discussion, including the desire to move in a new direction (purpose and strategy were MIA), one of the recommendations to emerge was to ask shareholders to consider reducing the board size to nine directors, via a 24-month transition period of fourteen directors. The recommendation was accepted, and both board effectiveness and company performance improved as a result.
    These two cases demonstrate some of the typical challenges faced by small and large boards. While the best answer to the title question is 'it depends', a sweet spot does exist. Boards with between six and nine directors is about right—as Tracy Hickman reports—because board effectiveness seems to peak somewhere in this range. My research suggests bears this out. Boards with fewer than six directors have great dynamics and decisions are generally made quickly. However, small boards often struggle to deal with an array of strategic options, decisions and monitoring tasks. In contrast, group dynamics start to become unwieldy when the board size reaches double digits. Big boards are also expensive to run and the risk of passenger-directors increases markedly!
    ​If you'd like to know more about how to improve board effectiveness, or want to schedule a board review, please get in touch.
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    Strategy without purpose is, actually, just a collection of activities

    Accountability Decision Making Governance Leadership Strategy
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    Do you know why your company exists, it's raison d'etre? Can you provide a clear and succinct response to the question, or does the question leave you somewhat flummoxed? When I ask the question of others (it's usually the first thing I ask when leading a strategy development workshop), the most common response is a description of what the company does. But this does not answer the question! 
    Most people (especially your staff, customers and suppliers) don't care what your company does, they want to know why. You need to be able to tell the story. This article, published by Harvard Business Review sums it up nicely. Here are some questions for your board to consider:
    • Does your company have a single, clearly-stated purpose?
    • Is the purpose consistent with the wishes of shareholders?
    • Is your company's strategy demonstrably linked to achieving the agreed purpose?
    • Has the purpose been communicated throughout the company?
    • Do people (the board, management, staff) buy in to it?
     Directors need to get their collective heads around these questions. It's a matter of leadership, and of accountability. Let me know if you need any assistance with this, I'd be delighted to help.
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    Effective boardroom practices: Dispatches from Singapore

    Conferences Decision Making Diversity Leadership Performance Research Speaking Engagements Strategy
    ​Nearly fifty chairmen, directors and company secretaries from around South-east Asia, the Middle East and Northern Africa gathered at the Ritz–Carlton Millenia Hotel in Singapore this week for The Boardroom Agenda conference. Delegates received presentations, shared stories and debated issues over two days (23–24 November), under the Chatham House rule. I had the honour of contributing to the discussion on the second day. Here are some of the takeouts:
    • Neal Cross, Managing Director and Chief Innovation Officer at DBS Bank provided a stirring keynote presentation to kick off the day. Disarmingly frank in delivery, his topic Fostering innovation in the boardroom was both challenging and well-received. Cross asserted that banks simply must innovate, and radically so, lest their market collapses around them as fintechs and large technology companies (read: Google, Amazon, Apple, others) eat the bank's lunch. He then outlined the DBS approach to innovation, which includes a three-day 'hackathon', whereby teams of staff are set up to create new product ideas. The resultant ideas are pitched to the board, and funding is provided to commercialise the best ones—entrepreneurship in action.
    • Raoul Chiesa, Board Member on the Italian Association of Critical Infrastructures delivered a wake-up call to delegates. Speaking straight off a flight from Europe, Chiesa, an expert of information security matters, summarised the history of hacking and the crucial need for boards to take information security seriously—all with some powerful (and quite alarming) case studies and real-world examples. Delegates were amazed at the scale of the problem and the material risk to commerce that 'the bad guys' present. The cyberthreat is widespread and poorly understood, especially in boardrooms. The message was clear: boards need to get up to speed, by receiving presentations and updates from experts; asking probing questions; taking a strategic view of risk; and, empowering the CEO to act.
    • The pre-lunch session took the form of a panel discussion and dialogue with delegates. I joined Ralph Ward at the front of the room. A wide range of topics were explored including the merit of codes of conduct; diversity in the boardroom;  the conundrum of balancing conformance and performance; confidentiality; conflict management; the conduct of effective board evaluations; and, the difference between so-called independent directors and independence of thinking. Delegates seemed to appreciate the candid responses from panelists, including recognition that no one-answer-fits-all; best practice often isn't; and that the work of the board can be messy.
    • After lunch, delegates attended one of two streams. I chaired the Board Insiders one. Dr Lim Lan Yuan, a Singapore-based business and law scholar and company director spoke first. He managed to squeeze forty years of experience into a thirty-minute talk. It was a sight to behold. Delegates were enthralled with his summary of how boards should work; how they actually work (or don't); the importance of a clear division of responsibility between board work and management activity; the importance of the board undertanding the business of the business, strategy and market trends; boardroom dynamics; and, anecdotes of associates that messed up (badly) and went to jail. That Dr Lim was able to move seamlessly between theoretical concepts, practical recommendations and real-life stories as he spoke helped the delegates gain considerable value from the talk. The only person who struggled with his commentary was me: Dr Lim covered off several of the points that I was going to discuss in the following slot. Consequently, a few on-the-fly adjustments were needed to extend the discussion to related areas of interest (see pic below). That the delegates heard similar stories and recommendations from two different speakers with different cultural and business backgrounds was hopefully encouraging—and supportive of the notion that 'good practice' is good practice almost anywhere.
    • The final session of the day was a 'deep dive', whereby delegates gathered around one of two tables to consider a table-question and to share experiences. One table was asked to identify factors that contribute to both good and bad dynamics in a boardroom, and the other was asked to discuss how a board should function in the event of a major crisis. The groups had 30 minutes or so to wrestle with the assigned question and then report back. The insights shared were great, and the good-natured banter demonstrated that the delegates had built a good rapport with each other. Thank you to Dr Lim and Curtis Chin who moderated the table discussions. You made my job of session chair very straightforward.
    • The conference was organised by marcusevans. Their people did a great job, both in the weeks leading up to the conference and at the venue itself. If you get the chance to work with them, take it.
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    ​I've come away from the conference with the impression that the quality of corporate governance and board practice in Asian and Middle Eastern economies is rapidly improving. Overall, the hunger to improve board effectiveness was plain to see, as was the desire to learn from those with experience gained elsewhere (if the many conversations, requests to return and business cards in my satchel are any indication). However, care must be taken to ensure that models and frameworks in use in the Anglosphere are not blindly implemented in this region. Such colonialism is unwarranted and patronising, and it may be culturally demeaning as well.
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    The boardroom agenda: Raising the bar on board effectiveness

    Conferences Governance Leadership Performance
    I will be in Singapore early next week (23–25 November) for the "The Boardroom Agenda" conference at the Ritz-Carlton Millenia. The attendance list includes senior chairmen, directors, company secretaries and chief executives from across Asia and the Middle East.
     The main aim of the conference is to 'raise the bar' on board performance and take the board's effectiveness to greater heights. In addition to five plenary presentations, two parallel streams (Board Insiders and Council, and Board Guardians) of cases studies, mini think-tanks and deep dive sessions are scheduled. The third day is dedicated to an optional masterclass workshop.
    My main contributions will be on Day Two. I will be a panelist (The Board Governance Dialogue); delivering a presentation (Responding to the re-emergence of director's duties and liabilities); and, chairing the Board Insiders and Council stream. ​For more information:
    ​Summaries of important insights will be posted here.
    Finally, if you are in Singapore on Mon 23 or Tue 24 and wish to meet privately to discuss other matters of interest, I am available to do so over dinner. Please get in touch if you want to take advantage of this.