The 7 Governance Myths

I am sometimes asked what I would tell a person considering their first non-executive role today. The honest answer is that I would tell them something different from what I would have told them five years ago, and something different again from what I would have told them ten years ago. The role has changed faster than at any point in my...

When we published the Race Code, the question I was asked most often was 'how do we measure progress?' It is a fair question. Codes that cannot be measured tend to become wallpaper. Three years on, I want to do two things. First, share what I have learned about which organisations have taken the Code seriously, and what their boards did...

Walk into a boardroom for the first time and watch — for the first twenty minutes — only the listening. Not who is speaking. Not the eloquence of the arguments. Not the depth of the papers. Just who is listening to whom, who is interrupting whom, who is checking their phone while someone else is talking. I have started doing this every...

Walk into any well-governed boardroom and you will find compliance. The terms of reference are signed. The conflicts register is up to date. The audit committee has met the prescribed number of times. All of this is good. Compliance is the floor of governance, not the ceiling. What I increasingly notice is how many boards mistake the floor for the...

Whenever I describe my work — eleven countries, hundreds of boards, thousands of organisations influenced — people ask me which culture has it right. Is it the United Kingdom, with its long history of governance codes? The United States, with its activist-investor pressure? The Gulf, with its rapid institutional build-out? It is a fair question, but it is the wrong one. After two decades, I no...

Over the years of training board members across eleven countries, I have come back again and again to the same question: what really separates the directors who add value from those who simply add weight to the room? The Effective Board Member 6 C's framework grew out of that question. It is not a theory; it is a description of...

Within the field of governance, there are several myths or commonly held beliefs which surround what good governance is. These myths can lead to the wrong focus, bad practice or even failure. I would like to share with you my thoughts on what I call the ‘7 Governance Myths’ to lift some of the c...

In this sixth and final article, I will take you through some strategies that could help boards lead their organisations to success.

In recent articles I’ve taken you through four dysfunctional board behaviours, each represented by an animal: the ostrich (denies the problem and does nothing); the wild goose (thinks they know more than they do and is busy but without purpose or strategy); the elephant in the room (ignores the pr...

The book Gray Rhino by Michele Wucker looks at how we should recognise and act on the obvious dangers that we ignore. In the big bad wolf scenario, a board is aware that there is a problem or a challenge to face down, but the action it takes is not proportional to the level of threat.

There are some leaders who ignore what’s under their noses. They are the white elephants. We often talk about people ignoring the ‘elephant in the room’, meaning something that should be impossible to ignore – but we ignore it all the same. This is the theme for this third article in my seri...

The main trait of the red goose board can be summed in the word ‘busy’. Here, there is a lot of activity going on – but it’s the wrong kind of things. People are running around in circles but not actually achieving anything. They are on a wild goose chase.