The Better Boards Podcast Series

Send us a textTheory is one thing, but how can boards effectively implement cyber governance and broader technology oversight in practice? In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, is joined by Susanne Alfs. Susanne is a Non-Executive Director and Senior Technology Executive specialising in cyber governance and board-level technology oversight. Bringing both the NED lens and her executive leadership experience, Susanne helps boards translate complex cyber and technology risks into business trade-offs and investment decisions. Previously, she chaired the Group Board Technology Committee of a bank, strengthening oversight of cyber resilience and technology risk. Now, as the founder of Cyber4Directors, Susanne advises boards and senior leadership teams on strengthening cyber resilience, improving board reporting, and shaping effective technology and business dialogue. “I find in too many boards, there is an unspoken hesitation. Some directors worry they are not technology savvy enough to challenge the technology team, and that hesitation can quietly shift the dynamic in the boardroom.“Susanne realises boards are very human. Members hesitate to ask certain questions or push conversations because they worry about their technical knowledge, which compromises meaningful business impact and risk discussions. What helps? Susanne recommends that boards approach technology with the same rigor as finance or strategy discussions. Don’t let insecurities block conversations or let the tech group overwhelm the board with acronyms. Keep the focus on business impacts and risk assessment to steer discussions and shape priorities.“The first point is to work as a team.”Technology oversight and governance must be a team effort. Just as finance audits aren’t left to one person, boards shouldn’t delegate cyber or technology responsibility to a single individual.In practice, this can mean sharing questions with technology teams ahead of meetings, explaining or banning acronyms, and encouraging IT teams to collaborate more closely with business leaders to support meaningful board discussions.Susanne emphasises that effective teamwork depends on clear communication and a shared language, rooted in cyber governance or project delivery terms. She also recommends using corporate secretaries as gatekeepers for board packs, ensuring technical material is simplified for effective discussion.“No board should ask for the cyber security team or the technology team to keep them safe, or the organisation safe, because no one is safe and you can't avoid incidents.”When Susanne hears a board asking for total safety, she recognises that this simple language communicates unrealistic expectations. She also recommends breaking down technology projects into shorter sprints. This sprint approach helps the board avoid preventable deviations and reduces the overwhelm of technology project management. The three top takeaways:1.    Work as a team. No board should have just one person focused in this area. 2.   Establish a common language, from cyber governance language or project execution frameworks, so that the board and executives can communicate clearly in a shared language.3.   Get external assurance if you are not comfortable with the practicesCome Join The Better Boards Community We’d love to get to know you! If you’d like to become part of the Better Boards community, discover our unique approach, and explore ways to work with us or share your ideas on The Better Boards Podcast series, drop us a line at [email protected].

Send us a textCome Join The Better Boards Community We’d love to get to know you! If you’d like to become part of the Better Boards community, discover our unique approach, and explore ways to work with us or share your ideas on The Better Boards Podcast series, drop us a line at [email protected].

Send us a textFamily businesses represent a significant majority of the European, Asian and US landscape. Yet so much that we focus on in business, governance, and search is designed for corporates.In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards, is joined by Andreas von Specht. Andreas von Specht is a family shareholder and NED of Berenberg Bank, Europe’s second-oldest private bank, and shareholder of Bergos Bank in Zurich. He founded AvS Advisors in 2011 to advise privately held clients on succession and family governance. Previously, he built a career in Consumer Goods and was a long-time partner at Egon Zehnder in Germany and France.“30 years ago, it was very much based on a ‘nose factor’ kind of selection, and it has become a really well thought-through search process.“Andreas' upbringing in a family business gives him special insight into the culture, thought patterns, and habits of family businesses. He can draw a line from pre-Internet ‘nose factor’ talent searches to the current professionalised systems. While the unique nuances of strong family shareholder groups and cultural fit factors are the trump card, competency testing, benchmarking, and sophisticated evaluations are now in play.“There is one competency that is a little bit difficult to describe, which I would call a special ability to operate in a family business.” Succeeding in a family business environment is possible, even if one comes from the corporate world. Andreas believes it requires high emotional intelligence (EQ) and a moderate ego.Successful candidates must be able to bring family members along on the business journey while preserving relationships. Humility, a sense of humour, and adaptability must overlay real business acumen and competency, as families will ask if the executive or board candidate brings particularly valuable or missing skills to the business.“Results and values move together, so performance sits alongside legacy and family expectations.”Within a family business, governance always has more layers, with owners, the board, a family council, and the next generation all in the mix. Leaders must agree on what short-term and long-term really mean for the business, and the same goes for change initiatives. He recommends a clear change contract at the beginning to avoid misunderstandings.“It takes two to tango… we are in the midst of a fierce war for talent, and that must be taken into consideration.”For families, there is a ‘search before the search’ to select a search partner that understands their needs and the family culture. Trust is critical. It is also critical to have clear expectations and alignments of what they're really looking for and what good looks like.Families must also remember it takes two. Quality, independent candidates for executive roles and board positions will have choices. Families just can’t pick the best candidate to serve at their leisure. Instead, there is a certain degree of selling required to get to know each other and build trust. The three top takeaways from our conversation are:1.     Fit and clarity regarding the role and requirements must come first.2.    Cultural fit often decides the outcome. 3.    Come Join The Better Boards Community We’d love to get to know you! If you’d like to become part of the Better Boards community, discover our unique approach, and explore ways to work with us or share your ideas on The Better Boards Podcast series, drop us a line at [email protected].

Send us a textPrivate equity, private debt – private markets are absolutely the flavour of the day. Yet, despite the headlines and eye-catching numbers, very little discussion is taking place about governance in this context. In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner, is joined by Dr Eelco Fiole. He has more than 30 years of international finance experience, including two decades as Non-Executive Director, CFO, and CEO in alternative investments with teams in Zurich, London, New York, and Singapore. He also holds more than eight advanced degrees and is a true polymath with special expertise in investment governance.“Private market investing comes with a lot of issues.“Eelco reports that over the next five years, private markets are expected to double to $30 trillion USD. Private investors now invest alongside traditional institutions. Yet serious issues remain, including complex structures, valuation challenges, opacity, layers of leverage, and enormous asymmetries of information. “Governance is work, and when that work is being done, trust also develops.”To Eelco, governance is a key factor in creating trust for LPs and GPs. Both must contribute to building a solid governance framework. For LPs, remember that greed is not a strategy. Instead, use governance structures as a filtering tool to address issues of valuation, transparency, and conflicts of interest. For GPs, good governance helps attract capital. Eelco noticed that the smartest GPs use well-structured governance agreements to differentiate themselves, back up big promises, and showcase how they plan to protect investors. “It’s all about incentives.“In Eelco’s experience, many trust-based issues can be resolved by examining the incentives at play. Who is getting paid, when are they being paid, and how are those payments structured? Following the money and understanding who benefits in various scenarios is key to effective governance. On a practical level, this means building desired behaviours into the documentation. “Every investment is situational.“Eelco feels every investment has its own unique characteristics. As a result, “off the shelf” legal documents may not be sufficient. Custom-crafted or heavily adapted documents that cover the legal and economic variations of the investment, investment team, and market are key. The same is true for individuals who want a seat at the table. Private markets are highly specialised and nuanced. Only individuals who can add value in specific ways will be welcomed. “If I cannot have proper representation of the interest, then I'm not going to do it.” Eelco sees many cases where things go wrong, where highly concentrated investors are excluded, or where LP committees have no power. He is not calling for regulators to step in, but for boards to thoughtfully use governance structures to create checks and balances.The three top takeaways from our conversation for effective boards are:1.     Governance is work.2.    For GPs, understand the mechanics of trust and its role in attracting capital. 3.    Standard legal documentation is not enough. You must build in your own situationally appropriate models into the agreements.Come Join The Better Boards Community We’d love to get to know you! If you’d like to become part of the Better Boards community, discover our unique approach, and explore ways to work with us or share your ideas on The Better Boards Podcast series, drop us a line at [email protected].

Send us a textThe breadth, depth, and frequency of risks have increased tremendously. Serving on risk committees is particularly challenging at present, making it important to take a fresh look at the risks, risk mitigation, regulatory scrutiny, and stakeholder complexities the risk committee must balance. In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner, is joined by Terri Duhon. Terri is an award-winning educator and TEDx speaker. She went from earning a master's degree at MIT to becoming a derivatives trader on Wall Street, and then an entrepreneur and author. Terri serves as a board member at Morgan Stanley, Wise, and Rathbone Brothers. She is also a guest lecturer at the LSE and Oxford University, where she's an Associate Fellow for the Saïd Business School. “I split the world between financial risks and non-financial risks.”Terri sees the risk committee as working for the Board, even as the Board ultimately retains ownership of strategy and risk management. Within that work, she distinguishes between financial and non-financial risks.Financial risks are a comfortable space for her, thanks to her background in trading and the cutting-edge approach to viewing risk she learned at JPMorgan. Yet non-financial risks – operational, cyber, regulatory, change, and so on – are an increasing part of the work in regulated fields. The non-financial risks are harder to quantify and require significant thought and engagement across different business lines to work through.“As a chair, I say, ‘What are the big things I have to focus on today? ’”Every company will have a big, long list of risks. For Terri, the real value of the risk committee is to narrow the focus to the big three or five things. As Terri notes, on the risk committee, you don’t have infinite time or infinite resources. In four to five hours a quarter, what are the most critical topics and challenges? Pushing for thoughtful consideration and risk weighing is a big part of how the risk committee supports and works for the Board. “We can either skim 1000 pages, or we can really think about 50 pages.”Terri knows Boards face mountains of information. Quality discussions come down to ruthlessness around focus. Boards skimming tons of material are less valuable than Boards focused on the company's most significant challenges. “We challenge the robustness of the process, as opposed to challenging the decision itself or challenging the output.”To Terri, quality in a risk committee means probing the processes and robustness of the discussions and decisions. Offering this challenge helps drive deeper discussion and prepares CROs for good conversations with regulators about how they are challenged by their risk partners. Plus, having Boards explain the rationale for decisions provides more space for high-quality deliberation on action plans, risk ratings, and accountability, so that all key stakeholders fully support final choices.  The three top takeaways from our conversation for more effective boards are:1.       The job of Board members is to challenge and oversee, asking for thoughtfulness on papers and accountability on actions.2.     It is essential to manage the energy in risk meetings to ensure the most critical items are covered first.3.     While the risk committee tCome Join The Better Boards Community We’d love to get to know you! If you’d like to become part of the Better Boards community, discover our unique approach, and explore ways to work with us or share your ideas on The Better Boards Podcast series, drop us a line at [email protected].