Tools for Being an Effective Director: How I Manage All Aspects of a Full Life

Introduction

Over the past three years, my life has changed significantly. For starters, I transitioned from an executive operating role at a technology company to serving as a corporate board director at three public technology companies. This move wasn’t about building a second career path; it was a pivot to a portfolio career that provides greater flexibility so I can better serve my “other” roles as a new wife, stepmother, and new mom.

What I never imagined was how enriching and rewarding this foray into board world would be. Like many fellow directors, I love the diversity of the work, the range and variety of issues and opportunities my companies encounter based on age and stage, and the large number of people with whom I now interact.

However, what accompanied this pivot is a very different personal work environment. Unlike my former life, I find myself without an office, team, or the infrastructure that accompanies life as an executive. At first, I confess to finding the change a bit jarring and overwhelming. How exactly could I manage and distribute my time to have the highest impact?

The answer clearly required some proactive effort to recreate that support system in a virtual way. I began my research with the hypothesis that, to perform as the most effective director possible, I needed to focus on two areas: optimizing my personal productivity and devising a method to stay as current and relevant as possible.

Personal Productivity

My philosophy about productivity is rather simple: the one thing we all have in common is 168 hours in the week. Each and every one of those hours is an investable asset with a high opportunity cost. It’s shocking for many newcomers to the “non-operational” world how quickly you can fill all the hours in your day. Somehow, you’re just as busy, and you can’t help but wonder how you ever managed to do it all!

 In an effort to judiciously select where my 168 hours are distributed, I adopted a strategy of “automating and outsourcing” as much of my life as possible and scoured the web for resources, tools, and apps that could help. If there’s “an app for that,” I wanted to know about it.

With the premise that my phone’s home screen is the most valuable real estate for managing my life, I looked at every productivity solution imaginable with my analysis focused on my office workflow.

Having experimented with dozens of services and apps, I discovered Newton for email, which integrates beautifully with Todoist (my favorite list app) and Evernote (my outsourced memory and repository for practically everything). I now couldn’t get through my day without Newton. When I’m immersed in “deep work”, I use an app called “Focus” to block out every distracting website and application for a defined period of time.

 The final fundamental pillar of my effective office is my virtual Executive Assistant. Not only does Debi practically run my household, I consider her to be a major part of my brand and professional image. Lots of services offer admin assistance, but I use Belay. They did a great job understanding my needs and selecting someone who knows my industry, uses the same tools and can handle the chaos that comes with a family of eight!

Stay Current and Relevant

While there’s a lot of discussion around board refreshment, recruiting, and diversity for injecting “cognitive diversity” into businesses, the way in which it’s initiated today is often through age and term limits. However, in a rapidly changing world, an arguably more effective consideration is “relevance limits.” How does a board ensure that their skill sets and experiences are relevant not only today but also for the future?

 In my mind, you simply cannot be relevant unless you’re current. Alvin Toffler once said, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” It’s incumbent upon each of us to continue to learn and utilize up-to-date data from multiple sources rather than simply rely on our management team as the primary source.

I put a lot of effort into gathering a range of in-depth information about each of my companies and the industries in which they operate. This research includes everything from sophisticated Google alerts to judiciously selecting subscriptions to board newsletters. For example, NACD scores highly as a quality-assured source, and their app is an invaluable tool for staying up-to-date on breaking boardroom news, corporate governance issues, and committee-specific insights. Since content is easily filtered by topics of interest, you can quickly ascertain big changes that might affect your industry or the people you know.

I’ve also committed to continuously educating myself about new trends, particularly in the technology sector. For topics such as Blockchain or AI, a myriad of ways exist to access top-quality content, but one of my favorites is to enroll in MOOCs (massive open online courses). Many leading universities—including Harvard, MIT, and Stanford, to name a few—now offer these online programs so you can achieve an in-depth level of understanding and keep your mind sharp in the process.

Your most strategic asset

Perhaps the most effective way to remain truly current is through your network, which represents your most valuable and strategic asset in today’s digital age. I work hard to actively maintain my network and invest considerable time in cultivating, contributing, and leveraging it.

The secret weapon to my success is an app called Accompany, to which I’m completely addicted. The founder and CEO, Amy Chang, is herself a director at Cisco and Procter & Gamble and has become a good friend simply because, after discovering this app, I had to find out who was behind its creation. I’m not alone as a super-user: Chuck Robbins, CEO of Cisco, was such a fan of Accompany (and the incredible founding team), that Cisco acquired the company last month for $270M.

Accompany offers the largest database of decision makers in the world and delivers an AI-driven goldmine of information about people and companies. Through its integration with my calendar, Accompany detects the people I’m meeting with and serves up all the current, relevant information about them on a shiny platter. It’s the single best source of real-time, comprehensive, and personalized news available, delivered right into the palm of my hand.

I’ve also set up my “watchlists” to include every company where I’m a board director, all of their main competitors, my fellow management and board members, and leading thought leaders in each industry. As I’m enjoying my morning coffee, I can read the latest news articles that reference them and their tweets. With a tap, I can access a deeper profile that shows overlaps within my network, their bios, and our email history.

As a New Year’s resolution, I decided to contact at least one person who shows up in my Accompany feed each morning. I can’t begin to tell you how powerful it’s been to congratulate a CEO who raised a new round or a fellow director who joined a new board, not to mention sending a relevant FYI to one of my CEOs about a headline referencing a competitor. I even engaged in a great exchange with a colleague about activism, having seen his name mentioned in a Harvard Law School blog on the topic.

Don’t escape. Embrace.

The various tools and techniques I’ve uncovered have become tremendous assets for improving my performance as a director. My “email a day” resolution has been so energizing that it’s now a non-negotiable habit and, I might add, has a 100% response rate!

The truth is, we can’t escape the pace of change or the pervasive role of technology in our lives. However, we can leverage it to enable and empower us to be more informed, better organized, and highly effective. After all, who knows what can grow out of a constant swirl of new thoughts, information, and ideas or what serendipitous connections might be made.

By embracing the tools that work for each of us, we minimize the chaos and maximize the true purpose of technology: to make us our most productive selves.

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Anita Sands is a full-time professional company director, who serves on the boards of Symantec Corp., ServiceNow, Pure Storage and ThoughtWorks. She speaks regularly on the topics of Digital Disruption, Innovation, Board-related issues, and diversity. She is a member of the digital advisory board at Box, DocuSign and Thrive Global and has traveled to all seven continents. Anita and her husband, John, have six children and split their time between San Francisco, NYC, and Dublin. All comments personal. This article was first published in the NACD Director's Magazine (June 2018 edition).