The Fish Rots From The Head: The Crisis in our Boardrooms: Developing the Crucial Skills of the Competent Director

by Bob Garratt

at the start of the 21st century science was seen increasingly as becoming a victim of politically correct thinking, especially about global warming. In 2009, the uproar over the data emanating from the University of East Anglia, and the researchers’ seeming unwillingness to share or even store some of the data that had been collected, exacerbated public criticism of science. A broad condemnation of science based on this specific case is nonsense, but it is typical of the way the public, backed by an often hysterical media, no longer trust the previously accepted notion of the inherent goodness of science. This is a concern as it destabilizes many of the current assumptions on which we have organized our world. And there is worse to come, especially in economics. My concern is how directors and executives keep abreast of such debates in their horizon scanning.