It's not only investors who are watching for double standards on Black Lives Matter - your staff are too.

To add to these thought-provoking articles from the Financial Times ('Investors watch for double standards on Black Lives Matter'): If you're in the C-suite, it's worth remembering that it's not only investors who are watching - your staff are too.

And they're not only scrutinising your stance on social issues, but on the entire ESG stack - environmental, social and governance factors.

In my world (media + academia) there is lots of work to be done in every area. But probably the most difficult to *talk* about is not the social concerns (diversity in the newsroom and the classroom is widely discussed, if often poorly enacted). And it's not environmental issues ( 'green' is the new black). The elephant in the (virtual) meeting rooms is definitely corporate governance - from executive compensation to say-on-pay to transparency on executive conduct.

Why so?

Traditional command-control management, perhaps. Naive trust, possibly. Fatigue, probably. But there might be something more: the precarity of employment in the media and, increasingly, academia that frequently cowers workers from confronting managers in fear of losing their livelihoods.

If that's even partially true, then we all have to be doubly vigilant going forward not to let anxieties about the global pandemic recession, or the welcome #BLM debates and increased environmental concerns distract us from scrutinising how our organisations - whether private or public sector - are governed.

For whatever else Covid-19 is teaching us, this much is already evident: competent, creative, communicative, conscientious, caring, transparent - and accountable - leadership matters. And staff *really* are an organisation's greatest assets.

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