You've probably sat through some version of this. The CEO succession item gets a solid forty minutes. Names on a slide, a "ready now" column, an emergency plan somebody clearly worked hard on. Fine. Good, even. Then someone at the far end (it's always the quiet one) asks what happens if the chair goes next quarter. Nobody says anything for a second. The chair makes a joke. Next item. I find that pause more revealing than any survey. Boards aren't careless about chair successi

Introduction Here's the honest truth: most companies today don't have a governance rules problem. They have a governance engagement problem. Indian boardrooms have changed a lot in the last ten years. Disclosures are clearer, committees are better structured, and the role of independent directors is far more clearly defined than it used to be. On paper, governance looks stronger than ever. But we keep running into the same story. A board that ticked every box on the complianc

Boardrooms in 2026 are not what they were five years ago. The pressure is different. The risks are bigger. The expectations — from investors, regulators, employees and the public — have gone up in ways that most governance frameworks have not yet caught up with. This blog aims to track boardroom trends closely and the signal coming through clearly this year is this: the boards that will create real long-term value are the ones treating governance not as a checkbox activity bu

Executive Summary Here's a number that should stop any director in their tracks. In PwC's 2025 survey of US public company directors, 55% said at least one of their own colleagues should be replaced. That's the first time a majority has admitted it out loud. The problem with board effectiveness today isn't that boards are corrupt or lazy. It's that the whole model they're built on was designed to fight the last war. Traditional governance models were engineered after the big

Ask any director whether they follow geopolitics, and you'll get a confident yes. They read the papers. They've got opinions on tariffs, on Russia, on China, on what Washington will do next. Some of them can talk about it for an hour over dinner. Now ask a different question. When did your board last sit down and practise what the company would actually do if a sanction hit a key customer on a Friday evening? That one usually gets a pause. That pause is what this blog is abou

The E.A. Sween Company, located in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, serves as a compelling example of a private company that has transformed from humble beginnings into a national foodservice powerhouse, producing over 70 million sandwiches annually. If you have ever grabbed a quick bite from a convenience store cooler-a San Luis burrito, a Market Sandwich, or Deli Express-you have tasted one of their products. This family-owned business, founded in the late 1950s when Earl Sween res

Modern companies are moving inside crazy fast worlds where change happens before anyone even understands what is going on. Old-style thinking based only on past actions is not enough anymore. Boards that hold huge responsibility for guiding the whole organisation must now use something like Future-Focused Board Strategy so they can act ready for new shocks, new risks, and new chances. In this write-up, I want to talk about why old ideas fail, how new ideas grow, and what mus

If you are planning to build a high-performance board, you need to understand that its importance cannot be overstated. When it comes to...