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Boardroom Leadership in Operational Excellence: Strategies That Drive Sustainable Performance.
- Directors' Institute
- Jul 29
- 9 min read
Something’s quietly changing in the boardrooms of India’s most ambitious companies. Not long ago, operational excellence was a line item—something for the COO to worry about while the board focused on strategy, compliance, and quarterly numbers. But that old separation? It’s fading fast.
Take a manufacturing giant out of western India. Profitable. Globally respected. But over the past year, its edge started to slip—not because of poor products or unhappy customers, but because the back-end machinery of the business just couldn’t keep up. Decisions stalled. Data lived in silos. Suppliers struggled with delayed inputs. Eventually, the board had to step in—not just with oversight, but with action. They brought in fresh dashboards. Hired independent experts. Asked new kinds of questions.
And they’re not alone.
Across banking, pharma, logistics, and renewables, boards are waking up to a shared truth: you
can’t deliver sustainable results if your operations aren’t resilient, agile, and deeply aligned with strategy. It's not just about doing more with less anymore. It's about doing the right things, in the right way, every single time.
Operational excellence today is about trust. About real-time visibility. About knowing that your teams, your systems, and your supply chains won’t crumble when the next crisis hits—be it geopolitical, digital, or climate-related.
And most of all, it’s about leadership. Not from the factory floor alone, but from the top of the table—the boardroom.
This blog explores why that leadership shift matters, especially here in India and Asia. Why operational excellence is no longer a buzzword. And how boards can lead the charge—not just to improve performance, but to build companies that endure.
What Operational Excellence Really Means in 2025—And Why Boards Must Care
Once upon a time, operational excellence simply meant efficiency. Fewer errors, faster turnarounds, tighter budgets. It was the realm of plant managers and Six Sigma black belts. Boards, frankly, didn’t spend much time there.
But that lens feels outdated in 2025.
Today, operational excellence is about something far deeper: building an enterprise that can perform predictably, sustainably, and responsibly in an unpredictable world. It’s not just about cutting costs. It’s about ensuring business continuity, enabling faster pivots, and delivering value across every stakeholder touchpoint—from customers and employees to regulators and communities.
And crucially, it’s now a board-level concern.
Why the shift?
Because the world has changed—and continues to. Companies face multiple, overlapping challenges:
Geopolitical instability disrupting supply chains overnight
Climate change impacting energy, water, and logistics costs
Digital acceleration creating both new opportunities and new risks
Rising stakeholder scrutiny, with investors asking tough questions about not just profits, but how they’re made
In this context, the “how” behind company performance can no longer be left to middle management. It needs boardroom visibility. Operational blind spots today can become tomorrow’s reputational crises—or worse, existential threats.
Consider the case of a major Indian pharma company that faced regulatory heat due to quality lapses in a remote facility. The board had assumed compliance systems were in place. They weren’t. The fallout? Millions in penalties, a PR nightmare, and an investor exodus. A closer, more engaged board could’ve asked the right questions earlier.
Or take the contrasting example of a logistics startup in Bengaluru that scaled smoothly during COVID disruptions. Why? Because the board had insisted—early on—on scenario planning, real-time analytics, and digitised warehousing. Operational excellence was seen as a strategic asset, not a backend burden.
Why it matters more in India (and Asia)
Emerging markets bring added complexity. Think infrastructure gaps, regulatory diversity, multilingual workforces, and varied tech adoption. For Indian companies aiming to go global—or even stay resilient locally—operational excellence isn’t just nice to have. It’s a survival strategy.
Boards here have a unique role: they must balance ambition with risk, speed with stability, growth with governance. That balancing act demands a fresh understanding of operations—one rooted not in control, but in curiosity and clarity.
The Board’s New Role: From Oversight to Operational Insight
There was a time when the boardroom was a few steps removed from the hum of daily operations. Directors discussed strategy, reviewed reports, approved budgets—and left the how to the management team. It was neat, structured, and well… a little distant.
That distance doesn’t work anymore.
Operational risks aren’t creeping in through side doors anymore—they’re kicking down the front one. A delay in a key supplier shipment. A compliance miss buried deep in a regional office. A cyberattack that no one saw coming. The board’s traditional toolkit—policy reviews, quarterly check-ins, high-level dashboards—just doesn’t cut it when the pressure’s this real-time.
And so, many boards are evolving. Not out of choice, but necessity.
At a large Indian logistics company, a new director recently asked during a board meeting—not about EBITDA—but about driver fatigue levels during peak seasons. That one question opened up an entire operational blind spot the management hadn’t flagged. Similarly, a renewable energy firm in South India now invites its digital transformation lead to every board meeting. Not for show. But because board members want to see how AI and data are shaping on-ground efficiency.
This is the new language of governance. Not just approving plans, but staying curious about execution. Boards are visiting plants, speaking directly to regional heads, asking for scenario simulations, and demanding real-time alerts when key processes falter. They’re blending strategic oversight with operational empathy.
What’s emerging is a different kind of boardroom energy. Less ivory tower, more war room. Less post-mortem, more pattern-spotting. It’s not about taking control—it’s about staying close enough to steer when it counts.
Rethinking “Excellence”: It’s Not Just About Being Efficient Anymore
Let’s be honest—operational excellence used to sound a bit… mechanical. Charts on lean processes, audits on waste reduction, maybe a whiteboard session with terms like “throughput” and “cycle time” flying around. It all felt very technical. Very factory floor.
But that version of excellence is quietly ageing out.
The world we’re in now? It’s messy. Unpredictable. It throws curveballs faster than quarterly reviews can catch. Floods in Chennai disrupt supply chains. A single compliance miss in Vietnam leads to global recalls. Your server crashes, and suddenly your brand is trending—for all the wrong reasons.
In 2025, operational excellence is no longer just about how “fast” or “cheap” you can deliver. It’s about how wisely and reliably you can do it—especially when everything around you is changing.
Boards are catching on.
They’re no longer asking, “How many units did we ship?” but “How future-proof is our sourcing strategy?” They want to know: If a port shuts down tomorrow, what’s our plan B? How secure is our data flow between departments? Are our plant workers digitally literate—and digitally safe?
And here’s what’s beautiful—there’s a quiet values shift happening. Boards are starting to see that true operational excellence also looks like:
A logistics firm giving warehouse staff real-time dashboards so they’re not always “reacting” to delays.
A mid-size steel company switching to green hydrogen—not because it’s trendy, but because it future-proofs energy risk.
A bank making its mobile app work better for senior citizens, because speed means nothing if accessibility is missing.
These don’t always show up on glossy PowerPoints. But they’re the stories that matter.
Excellence today is as much about resilience as it is about results. As much about trust as it is about tech. It’s about asking: Can we keep doing what we do—well, ethically, and consistently—even when the world gets noisy?
That’s the new bar.
And the boardroom? It’s not just watching. It’s helping raise that bar—deliberately, strategically, and with more heart than ever before.
From Oversight to Insight: How Boards Can Lead the Ops Conversation
Here’s a little secret about boardrooms: for years, many treated operations like plumbing. Necessary, but someone else’s job. The CEO and the leadership team handled the flow—board members just wanted to know, “Is it working?”
But in 2025, that mindset is cracking.
The best boards—the ones truly driving long-term value—aren’t just peeking at dashboards during quarterly reviews. They’re leaning in. Asking uncomfortable questions. Connecting the dots between factory floors and boardroom decisions. Because they know: when operations stumble, strategy stumbles with it.
So what are these forward-thinking boards doing differently?
Let’s break it down:
1. Putting Ops on the Agenda—Not Just the Audit Sheet
It starts with airtime. Boards are carving out real time—not just ten rushed minutes—to dive into operational performance. But this isn’t about fire-fighting. It’s about understanding systems, interdependencies, and risks before they turn into crises.
Boards now routinely ask:
How digitally integrated are we across our plants or branches?
What’s our weakest link in the supply chain today—and what if it breaks tomorrow?
How often are front-line workers looped into our innovation feedback?
2. Championing Operational Dashboards That Tell a Story
Forget static spreadsheets. Modern boards are demanding real-time, visual dashboards that track metrics like:
Process resilience
ESG compliance across operations
Turnaround time on customer complaints
Cyber readiness
Because if the board can’t see it, they can’t question it. And if they don’t question it, they can’t lead.
3. Linking Operational KPIs to Strategy—and to Pay
In a listed manufacturing firm in Gujarat, the board recently approved a bold move: tying part of the CXO compensation to operational ESG KPIs. Things like energy intensity per unit, or downtime caused by supply chain errors. It wasn’t about punishment—it was about alignment.
When strategy and operations sit at the same table, everyone rows in the same direction.
4. Learning From the Ground, Not Just the Top
Some boards are even borrowing a page from Japanese governance: sending independent directors to do plant walkabouts—not for PR, but for perspective. Talking to supervisors. Observing production shifts. Listening to real-time frustrations. It grounds board decisions in everyday reality, not just slide decks.
When the Board Steps In: Stories from the Indian Frontline
Operational excellence may sound like a sterile phrase, but on the ground, it’s deeply human. It’s the story of a delivery that almost didn’t happen. A production line saved from disruption. A customer who stayed loyal—not because the ad was good, but because the experience was seamless.And in many Indian companies, these stories are increasingly tied to boardroom actions.
Story #1: The Pharma Board That Spotted a Pattern
A mid-sized pharmaceutical company in Hyderabad was facing a strange issue: no matter how good their R&D pipeline looked, their new drug launches kept getting delayed by 3–4 weeks.
At first, the management attributed it to regulatory bottlenecks. But an independent director on the board—a former COO from the logistics industry—wasn’t convinced. She asked to see not just sales and marketing reports, but production timelines, vendor reports, and warehouse data.
What emerged was a classic bottleneck story: one key supplier of packaging material was overcommitted and consistently missed timelines. The problem wasn’t visible in the top-line reports. But it was silently bleeding efficiency.
The board didn’t just flag it—they helped restructure the company’s vendor governance model, added a digital supplier tracker, and even rethought how production schedules were buffered.
The result? Launch timelines improved. But more importantly, the company became operationally self-aware—it started seeing risk before it became reality.
Story #2: A Renewable Energy Board’s ESG Awakening
In Tamil Nadu, a renewable energy company with wind and solar assets was doing great on paper. Good returns. Clean energy targets met. Investors were happy.
But there was an issue brewing: community protests had begun in one region over dust and noise during turbine installation.
The management thought it would pass. But the ESG committee of the board stepped in and asked a simple but powerful question: “Do we have operational SOPs that integrate community feedback during project execution?”
Turns out, they didn’t. The board worked with the ops team to co-create a “Community First” framework—one that added checkpoints around local engagement, grievance redressal, and post-installation support. It wasn’t just a compliance move. It became a competitive advantage.
Today, that framework is part of every board review—and the company hasn’t faced a protest in 18 months.
Conclusion: The Legacy is in the How
In the rush to scale, to disrupt, to report quarterly wins, it’s easy for leaders to chase outcomes and overlook the engine that drives them. But in 2025, that engine—operational excellence—is finally getting the attention it deserves. And it’s being fine-tuned not just in factory floors or IT corridors, but in boardrooms.
Boards that embrace this shift are asking better questions. Not just “What’s the bottom line?” but “What slowed us down last quarter?”, “Why did our teams firefight again?”, “Where are we fragile, and where can we be bold?”
They are learning that operational excellence isn’t about perfection. It’s about consistency, resilience, and a deep, ongoing commitment to doing things right—even when no one’s watching. It’s about creating companies that don’t just grow fast, but grow well.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s the new definition of legacy leadership—where excellence isn’t an act, but a habit shaped by the board, lived by the teams, and felt by the world. Our Directors’ Institute - World Council of Directors can help you accelerate your board journey by training you on your roles and responsibilities to be carried out efficiently, helping you make a significant contribution to the board and raise corporate governance standards within the organization.
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