The pandemic years have shown us that enterprise boards are lousy when it comes to predicting the future. How can boards get the insights to spot future troubles? Most board members we spoke to are frustrated, and are at a loss on what to do about it.

Reading beyond the board material and what’s archived on your board portals will be definitely a first step forward in this direction. Scan the environment for industry insights globally in addition to looking for inflection points. An inflection point is a time period when an enterprise must respond to disruptive change in the business environment or face destruction.

Here’s some homework: Go through past board material of several years. Was there anything in late 2019 that even hinted of a pandemic? What projections were there on trends for supply chain or production that warned of potential shortages, bottlenecks, and delays?

For all board directors, the past couple of years have brought a decade’s worth of change. Covid, lockdowns, social turmoil, Ukraine war, shortages, inflation — all of these have hammered board chairs to no end. How are board leaders adapting?

The most immediate challenge for board leaders has been remote meetings, and all the changes they
imposed. This move has been relatively seamless, though. But there are caveats putting new demands on remote board chairs — facilitating the side/cloakroom discussions among various members that grease the wheels of governance; and judging when directors are
burning out on video time.

It is certainly a strain looking at a screen through a long meeting. As veteran industrialist Anand Mahindra puts it, there is a Zoom coma setting in. There was also the other challenge of hybrid board meeting, which was tougher on the chair.

Lack of certainty

One certainty of board leadership lately has been the lack of certainty. Chairs have grown familiar at convening meetings with irregular schedules and off hours to deal with the latest talent, logistical or market crisis. Company needs change daily, board members are spread out in different time zones, and the CEO may require board approvals at an hour’s notice.

Board leaders have been forced to move beyond the conventional comforting days of ticking off a standard agenda every few months to convening quick mini-meetings for putting out fires. This demands much more time and mind space on the part of staff and the board chair. But the upside is that the chair and the CEO are cutting fat and boilerplate items from agendas to target immediate needs and action requirements.

Recent turmoil has sped the trends towards more board work being handled at the committee level. Chairs responded by becoming less agenda-driven and more like orchestra leaders, coordinating the various tasks that audit, compensation, nomination, governance, and other committees must do with smooth hands-offs and approvals.

Delegation of work

The chair must also delegate more, and more effectively, to make this work. Aside from added paper and data shuffling demanded of the corporate secretary’s office, the committee chairs will now find their own leadership tasks much increased. Also, this requires the board chair to assure that talent is in place and ready to fill in when the chair and committee heads aren’t available in the moment.

Board chairs are far more visible now. Shareholder activism has grown more pointed, with the chairs of mid-caps in particular on the front lines. Remember how Infosys years ago recruited a shareholder activist asking uncomfortable questions as their HR director? Stakeholder concerns, employee issues, and ESG matters have exploded since 2020, and all of these voices now demand more dialogue with board leadership. Board chairs have to be ready for their close up, and have good, solid rationale for the company’s, and therefore, the board’s actions.

Finally, today’s board leader still must be able to move beyond all of these immediate headaches to keep the board and the CEO focused on the big issues that were always the board’s mandate. Purposefully build in time and attention for strategic planning, talent succession issues, and risk management and oversight.

Muneer is co-founder of the non-profit Medici Institute, and Ralph is global board advisor, coach and publisher