Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Three “C” Practices in Digital Boardroom

A highly committed corporate board and top executive teams need to be able to both talk the walk and walk the talk all the way, for setting good policies and exemplify digital leadership.

Digital transformation represents a break with the past, having a high level of impact and complexity. It takes visionary leadership to drive changes and steer the corporate ship navigating through uncharted water and blurred territories in the right direction. The importance of the corporate board’s responsibility for overseeing strategy, monitoring performance and setting business tone has become much clear at today’s business dynamic with velocity and uncertainty. The BoDs need to become the mastermind behind digital transformation and change agent to advocate digitalization. Here are three “C” practices in the digital boardroom.


Communication: Business is never simple, it has the multitude of complexity today with digital “VUCA” reality. Thus, boards need to step up communication quality between themselves and management, as well as between business management and its investors., etc. Language influences perception, and perceptions impact decision effectiveness. Because miscommunication or “lost in translation” is the key issue to lead mistrust and stifle innovation. Quality communication at the board level can harmonize business relationships and improve governance effectiveness, to ensure the good alignment of strategic goals, business investment, cultural evolution, performance management throughout the organization.  Quality boardroom communication ensures that information is concise and update in enabling decision-making and goal tracking. Quality boardroom communication also ensures that the organization can deliver the strategic goals as it can communicate timely to make the proper adjustment to evolve emergent events and adapt to ever-changing circumstances. "

Change: Change is the new normal, and the speed of change is increasing, without well-preparation, major changes in an organization’s ecosystem can have unforeseen consequences that negatively impact the company’s productivity and performance. Change cannot be just another thing that needs to be accomplished. It has to be woven into communication, process, and action of the organization, with the guideline from top leadership and policy setting via the board directorship. The board of directors plays a critical role in setting policies and principles for changes and digital transformation. Top business executives and corporate boards need to cultivate changeability at a much greater pace if they are truly interested in strategy and long-term sustainable business growth, and profits. Companies should establish on-going avenues to information which will regularly feed BoDs understanding about trends and potential innovation for their businesses. A change agent board has the advantage of pulling enough resources and pushing the business model of technology, trustworthiness, prepare and launch change, innovation, and mastering with digital fluency to make profound leadership influence.


Commitment: Corporate boards also play an important role in strategy oversight, performance monitoring, and policy setting. Effective business oversight and governance practices require a strong commitment to being knowledgeable, independent and forward-thinking. The effective board with strong commitment brings together tremendous skills and experience mix that there are bound to be board members whose ideas could feed into new business innovation.  Building a high-effective digital board with strong commitment requires critical thinking, requiring asking good questions, complementing each other’s strength and balance of multiple perceptions, to avoid group thinking or extreme thinking. A highly committed corporate board and top executive teams need to be able to both talk the walk and walk the talk all the way, for setting good policies and exemplify digital leadership.


Digital boards today can provide the direction as vision, mission, strategy, as well as leadership skills like delegation, decision-making, and monitoring. By practicing these three “C”s -Communication, Change, and Commitment in the boardroom, corporate boards would do enough homework in strategy oversight, culture change, capital investment or management review, and build a solid reputation as progressive digital leaders.




0 comments:

Post a Comment