Electrical | Telecommunications | Leadership | FTTx SME | Project Planning & People Management
This morning, Albert Musyoka led The Men's Book Breakfast ~ The MBB T292 in a very engaging and fruitful discussion of "How Boards Work by Dr. Dambisa Moyo", focusing on Chapter 4: Five Critical Issues No Board Should Ignore. Some highlights on the conversation are listed below. The book, and the team, acknowledged that the boards are tasked with ensuring perpetuity of the organizations, not just CEO succession plans, to this end, they need to plan and mitigate against many things, some highlighted in the book are as below: 1. The Risk of a More Siloed and Protectionist World 🔹De-globalization is real, with each country/region/block looking out for itself, this is increasing work complexity (different regulations) and heightening production and labour costs 🔹While total deglobalization may be a long shot, how do organization minimize cross country interdependence? Is it sustainable? 🔹What is the impact of unforeseen global pandemics on products, services, and workforce, and hence operations, profitability, and sustainability if a business? 2. Sea change in investment landscape 🔹Businesses exist to satisfy their shareholders (and communities they operate in) 🔹It is the role of the board to pay attention to all investors and care for their interests. 🔹How do you address the passive investors and activist investors? What role do geopolitics play on investments? 3. New Technological Developments 🔹The rise of AI, ML, Remote Working, Cryptocurrency etc is unavoidable, how are boards preparing for the disruption that comes with the advancement in stock trading, investor management, workflow management etc? 🔹Boards need to evaluate and mitigate the data privacy and ethical issues that arise with technological adoptions. 4. Global War For Talent. 🔹Arguably, newer generations are less educated, yet mostly more skilled, especially in newer technologies. 🔹How do boards fight to get the top talent, whether locally or internationally, in a fast moving, competitive, globalized world? 5. Short-termism 🔹CEO and board member terms are becoming shorter over the years. Is it enough time to solidify long-term goals for the company? 🔹How do boards prepare for black swans, low probability, high impact events and mitigate early. 🔹Most boards engaged in succession planning, not focusing on the long term impact of quick succession changes within the organizations. Take-aways in the book so far: 1. The African context is not coming out very well, but the global outlook is well done, very insightful. 2. We need to be flexible and knowledgeable, ready to learn, relearn and unlearn to remain sustainable. Not only in the boardrooms, but also in our personal space, family setup, and as a country/ government. Laban Bore Jeremiah Muturi DARWIN OMBOGA Francis Amani Charo MBA ( Ongoing) ,Economist, CPA (K) Peter Kamau and of course the team lead Nicholas Mbugua (MSc,CPA,CAMS,ACCPA) We look forward to the next and final session for the book. 🥂
DARWIN OMBOGA
7mo
All I can say , my eyes have been opened immensely on global Board dimensions
Philip Kiilu CPA
7mo
Well done Albert Musyoka 👏 👏 👏
Wow, very Insightful!!
Enterprise Risk Management || Business Continuity and resilience|| AMLCFT || Compliance
7moWow! Very insightful. I should get my hands on this book