How to Ensure Your Board is Fit-For-Purpose in 2025
About
This Webinar
Join us for this interactive webinar, where you’ll uncover how to ensure your board is fit-for-purpose in 2025. Meet a seasoned governance expert who has helped hundreds of boards improve their performance and effectiveness.
It’s going to be an interactive session where your thoughts and opinions will help shape the discussion.
Your first task? Complete this short 4-minute survey before the webinar. Your responses will be combined with others, and the collective results will be shared during the webinar.
Then, ten days after the webinar, you’ll receive a comprehensive report with the findings from the survey and content from the session.
Key Takeaways
Board Composition & Leadership Excellence
- Refresh Composition & Skills: Boards must regularly refresh composition to ensure the right skills and experience for current and future strategic needs.
- Future Leadership Planning: Deliberately plan for future CEO and board skills (3-5 years) to ensure you remain fitness for purpose.
- Critical Role of the Chair: The right chair is crucial for board effectiveness; other members must support them, and director issues must be addressed promptly.
- Embrace Diverse Representation: Ensure appropriate diversity beyond gender (ethnicity, education, background, age, tenure) as homogeneous boards often underperform.
- Transparent Director Selection & Succession: Involve the board in a thorough, open-minded search. Implement robust succession plans for chair, key committee roles, and specific skills.
Strategic Focus & Effectiveness
- Be Strategic and Leave a Legacy: Boards should focus on being strategic, adding value, and planning a lasting legacy via a “pre-mortem”.
- Align on Strategic Priorities: Align on the 3-4 biggest strategic priorities (“big rocks”) impacting the organization; misalignment is common.
- Maximize Discussion Time: Treat board time as “gold” by maximizing discussion, debate, and questioning over presentations.
- Distinguish Board vs. Management: Crucially differentiate board and management roles to avoid micromanagement, a balance managed by the chair and CEO.
- Committees Support Board Work: Committees exist to support the board. Reconstitute or close those not serving this purpose. Also consider limited-term committees.
Governance Practices & Dynamics
- Set High Tone & Culture: The board, CEO, and chair must model the organization’s purpose, vision, and values, setting a high bar for director performance and rigor.
- Promptly Address Director Issues: Identify and resolve director issues (e.g., poor behaviour, lack of contribution) quickly before they become entrenched.
- Embrace “Negative Capability”: Effective boards understand sitting with uncertainty and contemplating decisions, avoiding hasty reactions.
- Invest in Relationships: Deliberately invest time to foster trust and rapport among board members, especially for diverse groups.
- Focus on Data, Not Drama: Base discussions on data and facts, keeping polarized or ideological views out of the boardroom.
Ongoing Evolution & Accountability
- Provide Clear Direction: The board must ensure clear, consistent direction to management, avoiding mixed messages.
- Effective Information & Meeting Management: Boards need analytical, relevant, concise, forward-looking information, plus adequate time for strategic reflection.
- Prioritize Talent & Succession: Adopt a long-term approach to talent management, identifying key successors, including potential CEO replacements.
- Continuous Improvement: Board effectiveness is an ongoing, iterative process requiring continuous improvement and adaptation.
- Director Due Diligence: Individuals considering joining a board should perform thorough due diligence, including speaking with former directors, to assess the board’s true effectiveness.
This Speaker
Nicholas (Nick) Barnett has over 35 years of experience as a governance expert, director, business leader, and consultant. He is the Executive Chair of Board Benchmarking, Insync and Pro Purpose. He was previously Chair of Ansvar Insurance, First Samuel, and Ambit Group. He has served as a director of Mission Australia and Stillwell Motor Group. Previously a partner at KPMG Australia, he is also a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (FAICD).
Nick has conducted more than 250 board reviews ranging from Bank of Queensland, Snowy Hydro and World Vision to National Golf Club. He has also authored three books and numerous reports and articles on governance, leadership, culture and board effectiveness.
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