The Better Boards Podcast Series

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Chair succession is a pivotal moment for boards. It presents an opportunity to reflect on the organisation's future needs and steer it forward strategically. For this reason, organisations must proceed carefully in their Chair searches, eschewing the obvious in favour of what’s truly needed. 
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner, is joined by Louise Angel. Louise is Senior Managing Director at Teneo and a leading board headhunter, specialising in Chair and Non-Executive Director appointments for UK companies. She works closely with boards on succession planning, board composition and effectiveness, and complex and high-profile chair appointments. 
“Chair succession is one of those moments where you can genuinely change the trajectory of how a board operates.“
To Louise, while companies often refer to Chairs as “running” the board, the reality is much more subtle. Chairs set the tone for the quality of the debates, challenges, and discussions. High-quality conversations lead to higher perceptions of board effectiveness, CEOs feeling better supported, and stakeholders being happier and more engaged. For this reason, when succession comes up, it is a key moment to reflect on what the company needs for its next phase of evolution, and what an effective Chair would need to look like to support and lead that evolution.
“The Chair shouldn’t be choosing their own successor.”
 Ideally, Chair searches begin 18 to 24 months in advance. Louise notes that the conversation around succession planning is less awkward if it is a consistent agenda item. The Senior Independent Director (SID) is best suited to drive the conversation, and the board should also consider the timing of Chair succession with CEO transitions to avoid too much change at once.
"I would always encourage boards to challenge themselves on some of their assumptions. Do you really need someone who has chaired before or who has direct sector experience? Or are you potentially ruling out some very strong candidates by default?”
Louise notes that Chair succession is an inherently conservative process. This leads selection committees to choose people with traditional profiles and lean on prior experience as an easy proxy for suitability. However, by questioning assumptions and expanding the search pool, firms can go beyond the handful of people everyone is chasing to uncover other strong candidates who may be better suited for the firm’s unique needs.
“If you spend the time upfront getting as much clarity as possible on the necessary candidate skillset and profile, you increase your chances of a quick and clean process, which you will only have to run once.”
For Louise, investing extra time at the beginning to clarify must-haves, nice-to-haves, and wish lists reduces the overall length and complexity of the search. Support for the SID, a decision on internal vs. external candidate tracks, and keeping the process moving also improves the search experience. Louise further advises firms to remember that candidates are assessing them as well, so appearing well-organised and aligned during the search is an advantage. 
The three top takeaways from our conversation for effective boards are:
1.      See Chair succession as a real opportunity for strategic development and not just a tick-box process.
2.     Spend time getting the brief right.
3.     Run a process that is both rigorous and thoughtful. The mechanics matter, but so do the human dynamics — and it’s the combination of the two that leads to the best outcomes.

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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].

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Once boards prioritise managing geopolitical risk, how can they successfully move from diagnosing a problem to designing a plan of action?  
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner, is once again joined by Colin Reed, Chief Intelligence Officer at Clock&Cloud, a software startup transforming how large enterprises manage geopolitical risk.  Colin brings his experience as a US intelligence analyst and as the architect of Salesforce’s geopolitical risk management function to the conversation, revealing how boards and leadership teams can translate geopolitical complexity into actionable insights. 
“Building around competencies already in place is a much superior method to contracting for an external problem-solver to come in and do it on your behalf."
Colin recommends starting with an audit. No business is truly at zero when it comes to managing geopolitical risk. Find out which managers and functions are already managing risk at a tactical level and use them as building blocks. 
“This is the biggest failing of the current consulting-based approach to this problem - it assumes that what works for one company will work for another.” 
 Consultants and outside experts can be useful, but they are not always the best for managing geopolitical risks. Instead, Colin recommends bringing multiple functions together – legal, supply chain, procurement, marketing, security – to form a working group that meets quarterly. Share strategic insights, bring in current-events speakers or special-topic experts, and then start gathering knowledge about where risk is manifesting in each area to inform a highly customised, forward-looking view of the company’s true geopolitical risk profile. No outside consultant can replicate this kind of deep company understanding, and it becomes the foundation for meaningful mitigation and a true competitive advantage. 
“Identifying the internal fragility is the best way to focus attention on where global risk might actually break the company. If you don’t approach it this way, you spend all your time chasing the news cycle, which is broad and full of scary things, but only a few of which are probably truly scary to your firm.”
A firm’s unique risk profile is the best insurance against noise and unnecessary expense. Large firms can overspend on mitigation or miss a big risk and still survive. Mid-size and smaller firms don’t have that grace. Focusing on real, specific risks is a more affordable and sustainable model for closing the gap than worrying about everything.
“The institutional muscle needs to be there already and running all the time. If you wait until there are issues, the problems will be outsized compared to if you were able to detect them early.”
At a bare minimum, companies need to care about and prioritise geopolitical risk. A little time spent consistently beats out a crisis reaction, even if only partial solutions can be developed with the available resources. Systems, processes, and open lines of communication help all the time, and are especially valuable to have in place well in advance of a big crisis.
The three top takeaways from our conversation for effective boards are:
1.     Despite the number of people claiming to be experts, nobody has solved geopolitics completely. Experimentation and change will be necessary.
2.    Connect with industry peers to share best practices and learn.
3.    Board members should take an interest in history – there’s a sense we live in unprecedented times, but things have been chaotic before. Everyone benefits from the grounding historical perspectives provide. 

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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].

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Many boards treat geopolitics as background noise, leaving their companies exposed to unnecessary risk. Smart boards take a different approach, closing the gap and treating geopolitical risk with the same rigour as financial, cyber, and regulatory risks.
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner, is joined by Colin Reed. Colin is the Chief Intelligence Officer of Clock&Cloud, a software start-up transforming how large enterprises manage geopolitical risk.  Previously, Colin built Salesforce’s first-ever geopolitical risk management function, and before that, he was a senior intelligence analyst with the U.S. government. 
“Most of the business leaders we have today have had their entire careers in an unusual period of history.“
As Colin looks across history, he notes that the post-Cold War period was an unusually stable business climate. This led boards and C-suites to treat geopolitics as something governments must manage rather than their own business priority. However, as history reverts to its tumultuous norms, corporations must step back into taking an active approach to geopolitical risks.
“There’s nothing unavoidable about geopolitical risk. It very often telegraphs its approach.” 
Colin feels boards needn’t be surprised by geopolitical risk. Thanks to modern systems, it is easier than ever to model how risks can impact operations and the bottom line. Boards have learned to map and mitigate financial and cyber risks. They can learn to do the same with geopolitics, especially now that the tools exist to model even very complex situations quantitatively.
“To me, geopolitics is akin to the weather. It never goes away, and try as you might, you’ll eventually have to go outside in it.”
The best practices right now for closing the geopolitical risk gap are to stop treating geopolitics as ‘Act of God’ surprises and instead build a robust risk management framework around it. While there are many nuances to geopolitics, there are not so many that they can’t be mapped and modelled with the latest tools. Ideally, this is handled at the strategy level and should be forward-looking rather than backwards-looking or reactive. 
“I don’t think it’s sufficient to rely on a single board member, or an external advisor, to manage this problem, because doing so builds a single point of failure into the system.”
Colin feels that boards of large companies do best when they internalise the understanding that everyone must be aware of the need to track and manage geopolitical risk. This is especially true for European boards. Identifying a C-suite-level champion for geopolitical risk to build alignment across operations and identify gaps, and then investing strategically in solutions, is a cost-effective approach to building resilience. 
The three top takeaways from our conversation for effective boards are:
1.     Geopolitics can be understood and managed, and the expertise to do so already exists if you know where to look inside and outside your organisation. 
2.    Proactive engagement on geopolitics isn’t new. What’s happening now is a return to historical norms. 
3.    Quantitative metrics and modelling systems are about to revolutionise this field. 

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].

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Beyond listed corporations, there is a vibrant world of start-ups, scale-ups, and organisations at the pre-IPO stage. What does it take to add value to these Boards, and how does the work differ from that of a listed organisation? Most importantly, how can working with these companies shape a Board portfolio career?
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner, is joined by Susanne Chishti, Chair of FINTECH Circle, Europe’s first Investor Network focused on fintech investments. Susanne is an experienced Non-Executive Director, best-selling author, and in 2024, was named as one of the Top 100 Women in Fintech. She is also a former CNBC fintech commentator and a guest lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Warwick Business School.
“At every single stage, customer and investor expectations increase“
Susanne sees the role of Board members shifting as companies move through different stages. Initially, in the start-up stage, Board members add value by providing practical help to entrepreneurs, demonstrating a strong governance model, opening doors and developing a strong go-to-market strategy. Then, at the scale-up stage, Board members work closely with VCs and investors and add value by showing there’s a strong governance model in place and that invested funds will be well looked after. When a firm prepares to go public, the role changes again, and Board members add value by helping the firm prepare for public scrutiny and public governance structures.
“It is not easy for somebody who has managed 10,000 people in a large bank to come into a startup with 10 people and add value without killing the innovation, fast movement, and agility of a start-up"
For Susanne, it is vital that Board members have an awareness of the scale-up cycles and where their company is in the cycle. This helps inform Board members about what value they can bring. Ideally, Board members maintain flexibility and an openness to learning what’s needed in the moment. She acknowledges this requires listening, humbleness, and savvy observation of the environment.
“Lots of large private companies have not yet gone public, but they are more successful, you could argue, than large, listed companies.“
Susanne notes the private market is fairly new and expanding rapidly. Joining the right start-up at the right stage can offer a chance to experience a similar or greater level of challenge, opportunity, and success than at a listed firm. 
“In order to be inside the funnel which headhunters use, it's important to understand who the right headhunters“
To get a Board seat takes intentional networking and relationship building. For networking, Susanne recommends FINTECH Circle and FinTech conferences. 
The three top takeaways from our conversation for effective boards are:
1.     FinTech and technology sectors offer great opportunities for Board members to add value, even without a pre-existing tech background.
2.    Getting a Board seat requires an intentional plan to network and build headhunter relationships. 
3.    Look at this opportunity as a potential long-term enrichment of your life and an enjoyable extension of your career path.  and best-selling author, and in 2024 was named 

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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].

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In capital-intensive, brand-driven organisations, strategic ambition must be matched by disciplined governance. Effective governance links capital allocation to technology strategy, culture development, and measurable KPIs, so that speed and ambition balance with long-term enterprise value creation.
In this podcast, Dr. Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of better Boards, is joined once again by Marco Mattiacci, a global executive with 25+ years of leadership across the luxury, automotive sector - Aston Martin Lagonda and Ferrari, Formula 1, and media. He has operated at the CEO and Board–Executive levels in capital-intensive, high-visibility environments, partnering directly with shareholders, sovereign investors, and rights-holders across the USA, Europe, China, and Japan.
“It is important that you don't have very general or first-level KPIs. You need to go into the details“
The most meaningful KPIs for Boards to monitor, in Marco’s opinion, are very richly detailed KPIs that directly tie to the progress and success of the CapEx project. It does require extra work from the Board to delve deeply into the details and have a strong grasp of the data. However, it also helps with every Board meeting and progress check, enabling the Board to understand what’s behind each KPI and what the changes mean in terms of progress against the roadmap.
 “At the same time, you need to make sure you deliver clarity and simplicity, not tsunami the Board with a massive amount of data“
To Marco, ambiguity is the worst enemy in business. Massive amounts of data create ambiguity and overwhelm. Setting up KPIs aligned with your roadmaps in each area – talent, culture, and technology – and doing the early work to ensure alignment before launching the project pays off for Boards down the line. Incoming data can be filtered for key facts and used to create meaningful yet simple dashboards.
 Marco recommends that the Executive Committee provide perhaps five pages to support the discussion of the dashboard and KPIs. No Board packs with 1000s of pages or mountains of unfiltered data. Summarising key qualitative and quantitative elements into shorter documents builds on the early work of aligning stakeholders and setting clear gates, while allowing time for meaningful discussions in meetings on project health, needed changes, and risk monitoring. 
 “The key element is to be competent“
Large capital projects attract scrutiny, and there can be tension in providing constructive challenge while preserving momentum. Yet, for Marco, anger is always outside the scope of work. Ego, anger, and frustration add nothing, and for the three to four hours of a meeting, operating as a team with an eye on results leads to the best outcomes.
The three top takeaways from our conversation for effective boards are:
 1.     Understand the KPIs and definition of success. Use simple, intuitive dashboards and scorecards to monitor progress against your KPIs and goals.
2.    Keep ego out of the Boardroom and Executive Committee.
3.    The first enemy to fight is ambiguity. 

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].