Senior board members offer advice to their younger selves
"In those first 90 days, it's critical to absorb as much as you can. We have a great old Irish proverb, and it means a good start is half the work. You don't get those first 90 days over again. I went and visited as many stores as I could just to get to see all the different varieties we had and the people running them … that first 90 days is listening and understanding and learning before forming any viewpoints." Karen Morton, NED at daa plc, Ep.176 (11:05)
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"I probably would've spent more time on balance sheets and annual reports and really understanding and getting a much stronger handle on the shape of a business and its finances and its overall construct, more on the numbers and the formal presentation of those numbers. I probably should have done a bit more work on that in my last two or three years as a corporate exec." Tom Toumazis MBE, SID at PRS for Music, Ep.186 (33:03)
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"Towards the end of the meeting I said, 'Forgive the naivety of this question, but who's speaking for the audience? … 'Ah, Ilse, the audience is not in this room. The audience is outside.' Note to self. Over the next two, three months, as part of my induction, I had two three-hour sessions with the audience teams to try to really understand what Frontier knows about its games." Ilse Howling, Chair of Frontier Developments, Ep.187 (25:45)
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"If you are new to a board, find a favourite NED that you feel you can be quite vulnerable with and go, 'Look, I'm struggling. I really want to say this in this way.' Use them as a sparring partner and they'll say, 'Well, why don't you think about it this way or this way?' People shouldn't feel you are this lonely creature that turns up once a month to sit with a room of strangers." Amanda Mackenzie OBE, NED at Lloyds Banking Group, Ep.155 (29:22)
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"You can't be a non-exec just by attending board meetings and committee meetings. You have to have some data points in the organisation. So you've got to get into the organisation and talk to people. There's no harm in talking to the security guards as you go in and out to get a perspective from one, two or three of them." Mark Winlow, Chair of Redwood Bank, Ep.149 (15:22)
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"When you start questioning the data because you're not getting the information, your natural instinct is to go, 'Give me more data' … and then you become intrusive. So that's why I spend so much time with the execs when I join a board, on looking at the board pack." Anne de Kerckhove, Chair of Eagle Eye Solutions, Ep.73 (06:22)
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"When I started as a board member, I had more of my operational lens on, and now I tend to think much more about governance. I ask about the what and the why rather than the how, really figuring out how I can support the CEO rather than do the job for them." Maria Molland, Executive in Residence at Frazier Healthcare Partners, Ep.161 (36:46)
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"With experience, you know the limitations of what you can add. It's right to ask questions, but you probably don't have all the answers. The CEO is on top of the detail and will always know more about the business than you will know. So you just accept there are limitations to what you can do, but they shouldn't stop you from asking questions." Nick Jenkins, founder of Moonpig, Ep.95 (43:50)
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Episode 174 – Sir John Kingman: Why boards need more misfits - lessons from the financial crisis – Listen
Episode 162 – Neil Johnson OBE: From battlefield to boardroom: chairing lessons on people, power and responsibility – Listen
Episode 159 – Sir Ian Cheshire: How to be a high-impact board member (2/2) – Listen
Episode 99 – Sara Weller CBE: Building a plural career across the private and public sectors, representing customers and disability in the boardroom – Listen
Episode 61 – Cathy Turner: Building a plural board career: how to network effectively, develop expertise spikes, overcome uncertainty and position yourself as a candidate – Listen