Episode 2: The Modern Director

The experience that earns a director a seat at the boardroom table may no longer be enough to keep them relevant once they get there.

Boards have traditionally been built around experience. Former CEOs and senior executives bring decades of commercial judgement into an environment centred on strategy, financial performance, risk and holding management accountable.

Those foundations remain. But the organisation underneath the board is changing considerably faster.

For Sophie Haslem – Board Chair and Non-Executive Director – the difference is already evident in the work that directors are being asked to undertake.

“Boards have much more complex work plans and activities that they have to work through, and a lot more heavy lifting goes on in the committees to be able to deal with all of the additional obligations, but also the pace of change,” Haslem observed.

Today, technology sits across that expanded remit rather than alongside it.

“You need to understand how technology affects your strategy, or what your technology strategy does to your overall strategy,” Haslem added. “The board practices have to shift for that.”

The role has changed. The question is whether the board has changed sufficiently with it?

To watch the full episode of The Modern Director – click here.

The role has changed… but has the board?

The first episode of Board Matters – Cyber Risk is Business Risk – established one consequence of this shift through cyber security: directors don’t need to become CISOs, but they can no longer separate cyber risk from their wider accountability for the organisation.

The same principle applies much more broadly to the modern director.

For Ivan Ng – Senior Accredited Director and Group CTO at City Developments Limited – boards are now recognising technology as a strategic imperative but knowledge around the boardroom remains “asymmetrical”.

This distinction is important. Directors shouldn’t necessarily respond by attempting to become technologists.

“They tend to worry too much about the technology expertise,” Ng outlined. “I think the management actually has that.”

Instead, the questions belong closer to the business.

“What does this technology mean for the customer?” Ng asked. “How does it affect our business growth? What does it mean to be resilient?”

According to Natalie Que – Senior Data, Digital and AI Expert – speed is another pressure point. Technologies that previously evolved over years are now changing within dramatically shorter cycles.

“Things move with such lightning speed that new technologies come monthly, sometimes even weekly,” Que added.

That pace creates a challenge for governance structures traditionally built around periodic meetings, board papers and management updates.

“Governance truly needs to iterate as fast as the market moves,” Que continued.

For Que, this creates “a big gap between what the boards traditionally know and why they are there versus what we expect them to do and the potential that they can unlock.”

Closing that gap doesn’t require directors to know everything, however. It requires them to remain sufficiently close to change to understand what questions they should be asking.

The capability gap – skills, fluency and credibility

Ng describes that requirement as digital fluency – cited as an “important” attribute alongside a willingness to ask questions without needing to sound “like the smartest guy in the room”.

That willingness matters.

“It is quite normal not to understand everything,” Ng said. “Just ask questions.”

The comparison with financial governance is useful. Directors aren’t expected to be accountants simply because they exercise judgement over financial performance and controls. Technology increasingly requires the same mindset: enough fluency to interrogate the implications without pretending to possess management-level expertise.

Haslem believes directors no longer have the option of removing themselves from those conversations.

“You can no longer sit there as a director and say, ‘this isn’t my area of expertise’, because it’s so fundamental to the organisation,” she said.

The requirement extends well beyond technology. Directors need to understand enough about strategy, financials, regulation, health and safety, risk, stakeholders and emerging technologies to exercise judgement across the organisation.

“I think it’s becoming much more of a profession, rather than something you sort of go to after being at the end of your career,” Haslem expanded. “You have to always be refreshing and learning. Always, always, always.”

In assessing the regional landscape, Keith Sng – Field CTO across Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) at Veeam – sees the same capability requirement through the lens of visibility and accountability.

“The whole organisation runs on data,” he advised.

Yet boards can struggle to establish where critical data resides, how it is being used and who ultimately owns it. For Sng, that becomes particularly consequential as organisations increase their use of AI.

“If you cannot, or you don’t even know those, from a data point perspective, you can’t govern that AI output, because you don’t know your data inputs,” Sng said.

The problem quickly becomes one of governance rather than technology.

“If you don’t know, you are protecting things that you can’t see and you’re just governing things that you can’t describe,” Sng continued. “If you can’t even own what you see, then what are you going to do with it?”

From oversight to impact… governing in real time

Greater fluency doesn’t mean blurring the distinction between directors and executives, however. For Ng, that separation remains important but the nature of oversight is evolving towards active stewardship.

“It’s not just oversight anymore and it’s not ticking five boxes,” he said. “It is active stewardship.”

That demands a different type of judgement.

“Board directors need to be able to make decisions even when things are very uncertain and changing all the time,” Ng added.

Que similarly argues for movement from “being a passive to a more active as well as more adaptive board” – the concept of contextual speed is central to that change.

“What’s happening in the front line may not necessarily be translated to something that the board member knows and hears,” she said.

The challenge is shortening that distance.

“How can we shorten the path of what the frontline sees, so that the board member, through their experience, can also help understand the gaps as well as the opportunities that lie with that front end?” Que asked.

Contextual speed also applies to the relationship between directors and executives.

“Management is very competent,” Que noted.

“The board is always there to support. How may we drive the contextual speed so that there’s shared space, as well as shared context, for them to take advantage of that opportunity?”

Sng brings the same argument back to accountability. Because having a CISO, Chief Data Officer and cyber policies in place does not automatically mean an organisation is resilient.

“Having all these people or processes there, that doesn’t mean that your company or organisation is being resilient,” he cautioned.

Instead, directors need the visibility to determine whether those structures work when tested.

That leads to Sng’s advice for boards: “ask harder questions” and “insist on visibility before accountability”.

It is also where the first two episodes of Board Matters connect.

Episode one – Cyber Risk is Business Risk – established that resilience must be demonstrated rather than assumed. While episode two – The Modern Director – outlines that executives must now possess enough fluency and organisational visibility to make that judgement.

Ng believes curiosity remains one of the simplest ways of maintaining that relevance.

“Stay curious and be engaged,” he said.

That means looking beyond the organisation itself to understand competition, workforce pressures and the different forms of disruption occurring simultaneously.

“The impacts are not in silos,” Ng added. “They’re all impacted at the same time.”

Directors also need to remain approachable enough for leadership to raise problems rather than allowing the boardroom itself to create distance.

“Having that curiosity gives that edge in terms of learning,” Ng said, while engagement allows directors to receive “very rapid feedback.”

The modern director never stops becoming one

The distinction between management and governance remains fundamental. As Haslem put it, “the separation between governance and management is sacred.”

But separation shouldn’t mean detachment.

“To be a modern governor, you need to be really broad in your capabilities and understanding of the entire organisation,” Haslem advised. “Whereas, if you are an executive, you can be very focused on a particular skill set area.”

That breadth changes what directors must bring to the role.

For Que, it is “contextual speed.” For Ng, directors should “stay curious and be engaged.” For Sng, the challenge is to ask harder questions while demanding sufficient visibility to make accountability meaningful.

Haslem brings those requirements together through continuous learning.

“If you want to be a modern director, you can’t just sit on your laurels of being successful in your executive career,” she summarised. “You just have to keep learning and learning, because everything is changing.”

Experience still matters.

But for the modern director, experience increasingly needs to be matched by the willingness to keep building on it.

To watch the full episode of The Modern Director – click here.

Board Matters – in partnership with Moxie Insights and Veeam – hosts the most forward-thinking directors, chairs and executive leaders to unpack the strategies shaping today’s boardroom.