Elevating Change & Transformation Leadership Series - Leading Disruption with Grace (9 of 10)

Being a wise Board Director when the world keeps shifting

Are you a Board Director seeking to maintain or achieve industry leadership through periods of disruption:

• without disrupting shareholder confidence or Executive commitment?
• even if others in your industry say it is not possible?

Are you open to the perspective shifts that ease and enliven your role as a Board Business Transformation leader?

The Board, as direction setters and health monitors of the enterprise trajectory across strategic cycles, have a lot to consider while leading through disruption. That is beyond dispute.

The strategic opportunity / risk profile, leading through ongoing disruption, is very topical across the Board Director community. The personal and collective accountability is a common discussion around the table and networking events.

Following are reflections of leaders currently leading Business Transformation. Do they resonate with you?

As you look at the current situation you see:

• The range of external factors to consider is dynamic and multi-dimensional. Social, Technological, Economical, Environmental, Political, Legal, Ethical [STEEPLE External Factors model].
• Organisational sustainability continues to raise the topic of shared value and awareness of stakeholders, for example the attraction and retention of the necessary talent to deliver the current strategy and consumer awareness of issues for any of your stakeholders.
• Financial resilience concerns around economic uncertainty, the difficulty to predict timings and volumes on supply and demand as supply chains and consumer behaviour shifts, while also watching inflationary and interest rate movements.
• Digital reality and its consequences breaking service and access paradigms and opening new potential while also confronting realities of cyber security and existential crisis of longstanding institutions and Business and Service Models.
• While governance must remain for effective business, how governance is achieved is also evolving. We all can point to the full shift to online meetings and documentation of the Covid lockdown period as a striking example.
• The Director market is also shifting as Boards work to realign with the disruptive realities.

As you reflect more deeply you see:

• Chasing the latest topical shift being “hyped” is not useful as have not fully comprehended or actioned the implications of the last topical opportunity / risk.
• Board ability to lead through ongoing disruption is different to Governing and operating within established Industry operating models. It’s different feeling, thinking and doing.
• After the event of a significant organisational misstep or failure, “everyone knows” what “should” have been done and when. People with bigger reputations than Us-two have experienced the personal and career implications, such as Royals, prominent Politicians, Industry leaders, and high profile Board Directors.
• With all this discussion about Board capability and agility, what if it’s actually me not keeping up?!

For Boards, the conversation and practise in terms of Business Transformation leadership is:

• Yes, the fundamentals of governance remain.
• Yes, and … it may look and feel very different from a refreshed perspective.

Effective Corporate Governance is absolutely critical to effective Business Transformation Leadership.

While there is not one conclusive definition of corporate governance, many considered sources have captured important fundamentals.

The Australian Institute of Company Directors considers governance essentially to be the systems that direct and control – or govern – an organisation (“Not-for-Profit Governance Principles”, 2e, 2019). Governance is about relationships. It concerns the relationships of the people involved with an organisation, both between each other and with the organisation itself, and the ways that the expectations of these relationships are understood and met.

Governance enables authority to be exercised appropriately and for the people who exercise it to be held to account. Good governance is about the effective way decisions are made and power is exercised within an organisation. It concerns itself with the board’s activities and culture, and the board’s relationship with the organisation’s management and stakeholders. Ultimately, good governance is the framework that ensures the organisation can meet its mission.

Good governance

Governance Institute defines it in these terms:

Governance encompasses the system by which an organisation is controlled and operates, and the mechanisms by which it, and its people, are held to account. Ethics, risk management, compliance and administration are all elements of governance.

What is governance?

The OECD defines it in these terms:

Corporate governance involves a set of relationships between a company’s management, its board, its shareholders and other stakeholders. Corporate governance also provides the structure through which the objectives of the company are set, and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance are determined.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

The Australian Stock Exchange Corporate Governance Council defines it in these terms:

Corporate governance is ‘the framework of rules, relationships, systems and processes within and by which authority is exercised and controlled in corporations’. It encompasses the mechanisms by which companies, and those in control, are held to account.

ASX Corporate Governance Council

Yes, and … it may look and feel very different from refreshed perspective.

Often when we see an “and” we think additive as in more skills, more topics, more work. Here we are exploring alternative perspectives. 

“Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.”

~ Larry Niven

“Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.”

~ Bruce Lee

“The illiterate of the future are not those who can’t read or write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

~ Alvin Toffler

The Boards I work with enjoy and appreciate this shift. Following are two examples of questions you can find useful with Board colleagues:

1. An ‘If’ question:

If the Board are not creating space to attain wisdom, can the aspiring Bright Sparks or the Bold Executive Leaders?

"To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, subtract things every day."

~ Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (4th Century BC)

This is useful for individual and collective Board contemplation.

Us-two know the schedules of our Bright and Bold. They are driving challenging agendas at work and home. To say “they have a lot on” is typically a massive understatement.

When Us-two reflect, we acknowledge that many Board colleagues come from this path of relentless activity, many currently have Board roles on top of relentless activity of an Executive role, many currently have multiple Board roles matching their previous Executive schedules. How strong is the Practice of creating space in our own life? How strong is the Practice of creating space on the shared Board agenda? How strong is the Practice of creating space that is a synergy for Bold Executive dynamic?

2. How do you view and describe the organisations you govern?

Which paradigm of organisations do you have?

Which view serves the strategic environment you are currently governing?

Using this table as a Board shared reference document, what do you discover?

Source: How 8 Organizational Metaphors Impact Leadership

Please click here for a full size PDF for reading and sharing with teams.

Further reading:

Organizational Transformation Is an Emotional Journey

How 8 Organizational Metaphors Impact Leadership

What boards must consider entering a new strategic cycle following a previous underperforming transformation

The discipline of rose pruning and your strategic view

To renew and become the better version, we will be letting go of good things.

If Elevating Change and Transformation Leadership is important to you, I invite you to:

• Subscribe to the weekly LinkedIn newsletter to receive further articles you can utilise in your work.
• Connect here on LinkedIn where we can continue to share and learn together. 
• Join me at upcoming events of the Australian Transformation & Turnaround Association, Association Change Management Professionals, International Association of Facilitators, GovernWith, and SAP Enterprise Architecture.
• Make a time to talk through my Calendly link. I make slots available each month where we can discuss your situation and relevant insights to your progress.

Bernie

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Are you a Bright Spark, bright with a spark for today and the future, seeking reconnection with what matters and the capability to lead with intention without being limited by your past, even if the world around you is constantly disrupting?

Are you a Bold Executive Leader seeking shifts in yourself and your organisation’s outcomes without compromising relationships, self-care, and meaning in work, even if the conundrums are mounting and deep down you doubt this is possible across your team?

 Are you a Board Director seeking to maintain or achieve industry leadership through periods of disruption, without disrupting shareholder confidence or Executive commitment, even if others in your industry say it is not possible?

Where do you need to elevate and integrate?

Bernie is known for building capability and confidence in leaders who need to transform organisations that are continually reshaping to survive and thrive.

His career began in whole of enterprise and cross-organisation shifts, followed by 10 years in Business Transformation Diagnostics, Training, and Mentoring across Australia and SE Asia. He currently works with leaders who are focused on accelerated development and re-imagination of industry value systems. He loves working with the Bright, the Bold and the Board to successfully transition to the next phase, creating a positive ripple effect.

In 2020 Bernie authored Traction: Building Change-fit Leadership Teams.

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Contact Bernie via LinkedIn or Email or Phone: + 61 421 915 608

Or check out his website at BernieKelly.com

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