Modern corporate boards play significant roles in guiding businesses toward the right direction and achieve expected business results. Due to the “VUCA” characteristics -Complexity, Uncertainty, Ambiguity and Velocity of the Digital Era, the directorship in any organization must have agility to adapt to changes, and build abilities to advise, inspire and motivate a group of people toward accomplishing shared visions and goals.
The main purpose of the book “Digitizing Boardrooms -The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Board” is to
The purpose of the book “Digital Boardroom: 100 Q&As “is to share 100 insightful questions for rejuvenating the boardroom to get digital ready. It is important for boards to make invaluable inquiries and take proactive approaches for leading digital transformation seamlessly.
The board directors as the digital overseers today need to understand things and circumstance in a holistic way, deal with opposing views, cultures, constraints, and competitions, in order to steer the business in the right direction.
A digital board not only oversees strategy but also influences the process as well. The board represents the ownership and they really cannot do a good job if they don't have the knowledge to challenge and set the broad strategic goals.
No longer are boards sitting in a room and just voting on various policies. It is one of the requirements of the Board members to participate, or even lead, in constantly suggesting areas of innovation.
The board directors as senior directorial roles have both privilege and responsibility to “talk the walk,” make the good policies or set digital principles to drive changes and lead digital paradigm shift.
The foremost thing for BoD is to realize that IT is strategic; and as such, it should be a distinct part of the business strategy. An IT-friendly board should change the perspective to understand the power of information and the potential of technology.
There is no doubt that the board only fulfills its role to shareholders and the management team when it is focused on performance. To some degree, conformance is inherent within the value-driven performance.
Corporate boards today are no longer just the controller to ensure business compliance, they should have a clear business vision to predict emerging trends in the business, technology or industry.
The “best in class” board think differently and lead innovatively. The important issue is how the board accommodates diverse opinions and how they assess them and converge the diverse thought into wise decisions.
Digital board should learn how to “balance” well. "Yin and Yang" balance also needs to be considered in the boardroom in regards to making sound strategic decisions that deliver the real sustainable competitive advantage for an organization
The board has to pay more attention to the culture, which will "eat the strategy" otherwise. The company needs to determine its direction, and then assure that the culture supports the strategy. The board as a top-level leadership team should set the tune to build a culture of learning and innovation.
The board needs diversity, or even more crucially, cognitive difference, to provide a perspective that goes beyond the gaps in board discussion, to embrace the diversity of worldview with the cognitive difference - crucial to avoiding groupthink.
At the board level, directorship effectiveness is based on strategy oversight, performance monitoring, and policy making. Often framing the right problems is critical to building the digital board reputation as the insightful “problem-definer.”
Decision style is part of Board culture, a truly decisive board is democratic, cogitative, and proactive, bring diversified viewpoints, but with the capability to make collective and wise decisions that get supported by all.
While Mindset is critical to being an effective director is sometimes overlooked. The mindful BoDs are usually good listeners: They act like a sponge and absorb information, ask lots of questions, and make wise decisions.
The board as a whole needs to both have an overview and does a credible drill down, exercises supervisory power via a well set of ‘hard’ numbers and comprehensive understanding , to improve leadership effectiveness and maturity.
The best fit for the board depends on the Boards current makeup and culture and which "gap" needs to be filled. A fresh eye is anyone willing to challenge the current level of 'group' thinking, and converge the diverse thoughts into wise decisions all BoDs' support.
Harmonization is about the boardroom culture engendered by board leaders. It’s about leadership from the top which sets the tone and governs board room behavior. A board can be harmonized through leadership humility, insightful business understanding, trustful culture, and learning agility
An objective Board is important to practice effective corporate governance.
Focus on asking the right questions than just socializing. Respect of colleagues and listen to differing opinions. if you are pressured by the relationship then objectivity goes out the window.