Board strategy and renewal
Build the board your next chapter needs
Your organisation is moving.
Perhaps your funding model is changing. Your ambitions have grown. New opportunities are opening. Your founding directors are preparing to leave. Or the decisions coming towards the board require capabilities you haven’t needed before.
That is the time to ask:
- What does our board need to be able to do next?
- What capabilities will those decisions require?
- Who could bring perspectives we don’t currently have around the table?
- Where will we find them?
- What expertise belongs on the board, and what could we access through advisers or advisory committees?
- Who should be part of shaping the next chapter?
These are the conversations I help boards work through.
Design around where you are going
Start with the organisation’s future.
What are you trying to achieve over the next three to five years?
What decisions will the board need to make?
What opportunities do you want to be ready to pursue?
What risks will you need to understand?
Then look around the table.
Map the capabilities you already have. Identify what you will need next. Bring in perspectives that expand the board’s thinking. Search in places and networks that introduce people you would not otherwise meet.
Now you have the basis for board renewal.
Build the room
Sometimes the people who will help shape the organisation’s future are not yet directors.
Bring prospective directors, specialist advisers and other relevant expertise into a structured conversation about what comes next.
Give them the information they need.
Give them meaningful questions to explore.
Give the current board an opportunity to see how people contribute before appointments are made.
Give prospective directors an opportunity to understand the organisation before deciding whether they want to join it.
Build the organisation
Use that broader capability to work through the significant questions.
- Where are we going?
- What are we going to invest in?
- What will success look like?
- What capabilities will get us there?
- What governance structure will support it?
The answers create the foundation for the next board.
Build the board
Now turn those decisions into action.
Define the capabilities required.
Search beyond familiar networks.
Create a strong field of prospective directors.
Use a transparent selection process.
Bring together people whose capabilities and perspectives complement one another.
Build succession into the process so renewal becomes part of how the board operates.
Bring in expertise where it adds value
A board does not need every capability permanently sitting around its table.
Advisory committees and specialist advisers can give boards access to deep expertise when they need it.
The question becomes:
What capability do we need to govern?
What expertise do we need access to?
That distinction can create a more focused board while substantially expanding the expertise available to it.
How I work with boards
I advise boards navigating change, helping them identify the decisions ahead, the capabilities they need around the table and the people and perspectives that need to be part of the conversation.
Depending on where you are in the process, that can include:
- Board capability mapping
- Strategy and future direction
- Succession and renewal planning
- Designing director search and selection processes
- Reaching beyond existing networks
- Stakeholder and participant engagement
- Workshop design and facilitation
- Advisory committee design
- Theory of Change
- Bringing specialist governance expertise into the process when required.
Who needs to be around your table next?
You probably already know where your organisation wants to go.
The next question is whether you have the right combination of people, capabilities and perspectives to get it there.
That is where we start.