An Exceptional Board

Corporate Board is one of the most significant top leadership teams and governance bodies in modern businesses. Generally speaking, the corporate boards have a couple of main functions such as strategy oversight, governance practices (monitoring, risk management), advising and coaching (providing advice & support to executives), and resource provision (opening their networks etc.) But how to build an exceptional board that can provide exceptional values to the business, and unleash the full potential of the organization?
Exceptional leadership influence: An exceptional board is composed with exceptional BoDs who present strong digital leadership traits such as critical thinking, creativity, influence, inquisitiveness, ethics, global perspective, and cultural awareness. They practice directorship based on the breadth of business knowledge and in-depth expertise of their domain, to help connect the wider dots and set the tones for the business innovation and digital transformation. They are the masterminds and social influencers for advocating changes and digital transformation. The exceptional BoDs also have the synthetic thinking capabilities and strong innovation skills to deal with situations that they have not dealt with before and possess the confidence and the experience to set the entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial spirit for growth and innovating, to ride the wave of digital transformation.
Exceptional business understanding: As their businesses change shape, size, expansion, and transformations, they need conditioning and improvement. Further, businesses and organizations that find themselves setting new and radically different trajectories are facing a daunting task of navigating largely uncharted territories. Exceptional BoDs knows the business, knows the corporate direction and can even influence that direction and make gains leveraging advanced digital technologies. Hence, exceptional BoDs needs to be an independent thinker, unbiased communicator, wise advisor,  flexible facilitator and global leader these days. In the face of vast areas of unknowns; they can also help assess the organizational digital maturity, even the digital transformation tools platforms, or frameworks which are needed  that addresses both the mechanics of getting the work done and the human factors associated with the major thought paradigm shift that must take place within the organization at all levels in order to transform seamlessly.
Exceptional performance-driver: Besides compliance, boards need to make laser-focused performance driven agenda. At the majority of the time, the board agenda should be focused on the progress toward the goals, targets, schedules., etc. It is responsible for authorizing and monitoring business strategy, develop business policies offering further constraint/guidance to implementation of the strategy, monitor performance and implementation of the strategy, manage risks across all domains of interest. The Board's role, in large part, is to make good decisions that enhance the value creation for the organization. They need to focus on their own performance as well as the performance of the management team, and, that performance is not limited to financial performance, but also to the firm's performance in creating value for employees and customers. Business performance can be affected by numerous factors of which governance is one of them. Ultimately, the board takes the praise or the blame depending largely on their ability to influence the business outcomes.It's not only about now but also about the future and that means an open mindset to change.
Building an exceptional board is challenging. The real BoD’s dilemma is that driving the business forward is extremely difficult, it means looking into an unknown future and attempting to define the landscape with its risks and opportunities. It also means taking control of the softer issues, such as setting policy, executive succession, multidimensional thinking, advising setting risk appetite, etc, but it plays a significant role in running an exceptional digital organization. Follow us at: @Pearl_Zhu