ICD Event Takeaways: Critical Board Roles in the Face of a Business Failure
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend and co-host a great ICD event: Critical Board Roles in the Midst of a Business Failure. We had some fantastic speakers, and featured Randall Howard, a serial technology entrepreneur and investor focused on growth and change in startups and social ventures.
“As a director, apply your duty of care and due diligence. Engage with challenges, and help develop a Plan B that’s better than the cliff that the company is going to run over.”
Here are some of my top takeaways:
As an investor, you have a strong incentive to make things happen.
As an independent director, your goal: Balance among all of these types of roles and stakeholders of the company, including founding management, investors and independents to get good decisions and stakeholder management.
How do I get involved in one of these companies?
1st: As a director, look for A players that you can work with. The key is to assess the capability and the coachability of the key founders.
2nd: Ask the 2-3 questions you wished you had asked down the road. It’s about finding key elements that are going to matter in fast-moving, hyper-complex environments.
In terms of governance, start slow and improve systems over time, increasing your technological view.
Have a whole stack view of risk: understand the technology from bottom to business strategy, understand the cost of cybersecurity analysis.
The best way to build a risk management framework is to evaluate future scenarios. Key areas are operational: sales, marketing, execution.
Keep a smaller, highly-targeted risk list vs a large, overarching one.