The Digital Board’s Composition Inquiries (II)

Digital transformation is in every forward-thinking company’s agenda; innovation is the light every organization is pursuing, and digitization becomes the new normal of business expansion. All of these brings the significant opportunities and responsibilities for the new breed of digital BoDs, because the board in a high-level directorship position plays a crucial role in strategy oversight, business advising, and monitoring, as well as setting key digital tones in leadership development and talent management. Here are a set of the digital board’s composition inquiries.
What personal traits are important in digital directors and how will these contribute to the overall performance of the digital board? While there are many components of leadership, one of the most important ones is the ability to adapt, model and influence change. Leadership is all about change management and also the ability to take initiative (change leadership). While the board’s directorship role also includes advising and mentoring. Asking insightful and pertinent questions are critical for governing changes so the directors would have to be able to quickly assess any numbers and facts they are given, against applicable benchmarks and detect relevant hints for further questioning or confirmation. BoDs are also in the unique position to practice out-of-the-box-thinking, bring the broader perspective and complement the management’s possible “tunnel vision.” Hence, BoDs should have the breadth of knowledge to bring up complementary skills and cognitive capabilities with an outlier’ view, and the "T-shaped" expertise to provide an in-depth understanding of the varying topics in the boardroom. Here are set of leadership quality and personal traits which can improve directorship effectiveness and leadership influence. Inquisitiveness - ask insightful questions about strategy, leadership, and outcomes. Holistic Thinking -the ability to see the big picture.Decisiveness - ability to make unbiased decisions.Mentorship - willingness to act as a coach and advisor to the executiveVisioning and communication - ability to convey the vision and articulate the fresh viewpointCreativity - practice “out-of-the-box” thinking to close blind spotsIndependent-mindednessProblem-solving capability - measurable contributions in areas of optimal problem-solving
How will new board members be assessed to determine digital “fit” with the desired boardroom culture? The best fit for the board depends on the board’s current makeup and culture, as well as which gap needs to be filled. Choosing someone based on only one criterion may limit the board, the digital fit starts with mind fit. Generally speaking, the digital fitting BoD is about mental toughness, with fitting minds and fresh eyes. BoDs and top leadership teams make a significant influence on shaping the digital mindset, it requires that you move from mindset to mind flow, from fixed mind to growth mind.Digital is the age of innovation. No longer are boards sitting in a room and just voting on various policies, to focus on compliance only, Entrepreneurialism or intrapreneurialism is a constructive emotion that inspires to develop the culture of creativity in the boardroom and organization. In addition, the composition of boards should reflect approximately the profile of the company' stakeholders: Shareholders, employees, customers, and suppliers. An inclusive board is composed of the digital fitting BoDs who are the independent thinker, unbiased communicator, wise advisor, flexible facilitator and global leader these days in order to build the desired high-performance culture and creative atmosphere.
Generally, what tends to be the biggest gaps and “blind spots” to close in achieving the board maturity? Due to the “VUCA” digital new normal, 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. There are many blind spots clouding the vision and there are numerous roadblocks and hidden pitfalls on the way. Every decision requires a different way of thinking.Hence, it is critical for digital BoDs to practice multifaceted thinking (critical thinking, independent thinking, strategic thinking, and innovative thinking, etc.) skills to improve decision effectiveness and avoid group thinking. With fasting growing information and emergent digital technologies, the board should become more IT friendly and digital savvy. Hence, they should identify the new director candidates with leadership potential, sound judgment, unique insight, and extensive experience for bridging multiple gaps and close varying blindspots, in order to improve boardroom effectiveness.
While directors bring many competencies to the table, they should keep learning agile and digital fluency, with the adaptation of the increasing speed of changes and exponential growth of information. Digital BoDs understand what's required and how as a high-level basis of going digital mean to the business, so they can make a significant impact on accelerating digital transformation with a step-wise approach and the steadfast speed.


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