Dawn Marriott - Chairing high-growth companies: getting the best from CEOs, investor-directors and NEDs

🎙️ You can listen to the full podcast interview with Dawn Marriot on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.

Dawn Marriott is a partner at HG, a private equity firm, where she Chairs two portfolio companies. A serial PE Chair, Dawn is also a board member at Geomatikk and Aztecs, where she was formerly CEO. Tune in to Dawn’s conversation with Nurole CEO Oliver Cummings to hear her answers to:

• What’s the role of a Scale-Up Board? (2:21)
• As a Chair, do you have a particular methodology to draw value out of board members? (4:23)
• Practically, how do you assess the contributions of each board member? (6:20)
• How do you think about new board members versus external consultants when you need specific functional expertise? (9:38)
• What is the different value of independent and investor directors? (12:28)
• How do you think about chairing versus executive chairing? (19:16)
• Do you have a framework for thinking about where and how you amplify CEO performance to best effect? (21:53)
• How do you figure out where you can add most value to CEOs need? (24:49)
• How do you assess both prospective and incumbent CEOs? (26:39)
• Have you spotted any patterns in CEOs who don’t make the cut? (29:50)
• How do you think about board composition and archetypes? (34:15)
• Do you consider the balance of personality types on your boards? (37:19) And
• ⚡The Lightning Round ⚡(39:21)  

** This manuscript has been generated by AI and contains inaccuracies**

Oliver Cummings: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of enter the boardroom with Neuro, the business podcast that brings the boardroom to you. I'm your host Oliver Cummings, CEO of Neuroll, the board search specialist and market leader bringing science to the art of board hiring. Before we get into the interview, I want to let you know about the Neuroll board community.

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Today's guest, Dawn Marriott, is a partner at HG, Europe's largest investor in software and service businesses. A serial chair of investor backed firms, Dawn is currently executive chair of two of HG's portfolio companies. Geomatic, a tech enabled services champion, and Team. blue, a leading digital enabler for companies and entrepreneurs across Europe.

A board member at [00:02:00] Citation, a leading provider of subscription based HR and employment law, health and safety, and ISO services to SMBs, and AZETS, an international accounting, payroll, advisory, and business services group, where she was previously CEO. Dawn, a huge welcome. And thank you so much for joining us today.

Dawn Marriott: Hello, Oliver. It's such a delight to be here. And yeah, I'm really, really looking forward to this conversation. Dawn, 

Oliver Cummings: I'm really interested, given your background as both an operator and an investor, on how you see the role 

Dawn Marriott: I think if you're running that kind of company, what you want from your board is access to knowledge, access to experience, and access to a network.

And it's the board's responsibility to make sure that they bring all of those things into the room and that they share them in the right way with management, with CEOs, I can think back to some of the early scale ups that I've been involved in, where I've seen some board members not do that. And it's incredibly unhelpful and [00:03:00] incredibly frustrating for the management team, but also for the other board members.

So I think if you're going to show up, if you're going to be part of a board, then you need to be participative, active, and willing to roll your sleeves up in an appropriate way at an appropriate time. 

Oliver Cummings: When you say not do that, what does that mean? 

Dawn Marriott: Well, I think We've probably all experienced board members who turn up for a sandwich and a nice lunch, in my own opinion, you just don't want those people around your board.

And if you find you've got those, then you need to move them out as quickly as possible. So being on a board is not just about turning up. It is genuinely about engaging with the management, engaging with the business, being prepared to share your experience and importantly, share your network. I can think of one example of a company, it's a small startup.

I'm actually formally not on the board, but I would consider myself an advisor to the CEO because I've invested in her company and actually by the end of our first conversation. I'd already identified at least five potential [00:04:00] customers where I thought I could make a relevant introduction for her. And I think as a board member, particularly to an earlier stage business, that's the kind of help that the management teams need is they need introductions, they need access to networks, they need advice and guidance.

So as a board member, You really need to take that responsibility very seriously. Turn up, show up, and be effective. 

Oliver Cummings: Reid Hoffman has a really nice tool that he uses that he calls Board Assists, where effectively he gets the management teams to identify the areas or issues or people they need help with or introductions to, with each of the board members names against them.

them and then gets them to fill it out. And so often if they're trying to hire a new C suite person, they'll see that they've got five different board members who can help them and they'll get all of them to leverage their network. Are there structures or processes you use to ensure that value from the board is being pulled across for the team?

Dawn Marriott: Yeah, well, [00:05:00] probably a similar methodology to the one that you've just described. You generally, when you join a board, you might not expect to get given a set of objectives. Now for me when I'm chairing a board actually I like to give my board members objectives because I think hey, whilst they're not in an executive role where they've got clear accountability or responsibilities, they've got a responsibility to the board.

So being very clear with a board member what it is that you expect. So the best way to do that is by having some objectives. I don't necessarily feel that you need to put it into a very formalized process, but by being very clear with board members what you expect from them and what you want from them.

And also, and I suspect we'll come on to talk about this, but doing an evaluation as well of the performance of the individuals on a board, but also of the whole effectiveness of the board. So, I definitely use methodologies and processes around those two things to hold the individuals to account, to make sure they are showing up and being effective, but also to make sure that the board as a [00:06:00] whole, when it comes together, is also acting collaboratively and effectively with individual objectives.

delivered but also the collective sense of responsibility coming through. So I think having some structure and methodology around that kind of planning is, it's really helpful and important and if board members don't like it then maybe they're not in the right place. I'm 

Oliver Cummings: a big fan of the WHO, the GH Smart WHO methodology and using the scorecards.

We used to use it a lot. So for, as an investor with executive teams, I see fewer boards using that for their sort of board assessment. And I think it's absolutely wrong. I think they should be using. I'm really interested to hear what are your scorecards? It sounds like that's what you're creating. What are those objectives for a board member look like?

Can you go through some of the practical detail for someone listening to this? Who's thinking, well, what on earth does that look like for a board member? 

Dawn Marriott: Context is everything, like every situation you deal with at work. So it depends on the individual situation. But you mentioned in, in your sort of the run ups, the question, something about [00:07:00] people and contacts.

So I would expect to see in every board member, sort of, this is what you're here for, some quite specific actions around if we're hiring other senior people to join an organization, I would want access to the networks and I'd want clear introductions. So that would probably be quite spelled out in any kind of school code.

I would also expect to be covering things like references. And that's a real bugbear of mine. So I think so many people, we're always hiring people. We always want the best people. Everybody's very thorough within the processes that they use these days to hire people. But I also see most people falling down when it comes to referencing.

And quite honestly, that's probably one of the most valuable parts of any hiring process. And I don't just mean send an email out and say, can you confirm the dates that this person worked here? A proper structured conversation with at least five to 10 people about what a particular candidate is like.

And I think specifically in a school sheet for objectives for board members, [00:08:00] I would want that kind of help and support and input. So again, it's very much about accessing their networks. So who do they know? And then how do they know them? And what did they think of them? So I would probably in every board members set of objectives, have something about that networks and people recruiting, hiring.

And then I think you need to look at the areas of individual specialisms. So on one particular board that I run, I had a gap around the board of technical knowledge. So specifically when, and the company was very technical, so it was quite ironic how all the board members had been made up of different people for different reasons.

And there are a lot of investors on the board, but nobody that actually comes through the ranks with technical skills. And I think to best help the CEO. In meetings and also with running the company, we needed to hire a Ned that had kind of lived experience that was technical. So in that particular instance, the person that we hired, it was a chap, he got, he'd got some very clear objectives from me [00:09:00] and put into a scorecard format where it was very clear what I wanted him.

To do with the board, which was to help the board members understand the technology's decisions better, to help the board understand the technology risks a lot better, and to be the closest person on the board to the CEO in relation to technical matters. So I think it's things like that. I don't think this is anything that hasn't been invented before, but it is a case of having real clarity upfront with any board member, what you want from them, what you expect from them, write it down and then measure against it.

In the same way that you would with any other executive in a company that you're running. 

Oliver Cummings: Can we take that example of technology? Cause I've heard different views expressed on that. As some people say, if you've got a deep tech business, then you probably do want someone with technology on the board.

Whereas if tech is just a part of the business, then. It's probably worth bringing that in on more of a consultancy basis. And actually often if it's really deep and sophisticated tech, it's moving so [00:10:00] quickly that anyone at the board level is, may well be out of date by the time that they, they come in.

So how do you think about that? When do you have someone on the board for a sort of functional expertise like technology versus when do you bring it in on a consultancy basis? 

Dawn Marriott: All of the companies that I am engaged with are all technical or tech services businesses. So in the world that I live in, I would always want a technical person on my board.

I'm not sure that I would describe any technology as moving so fast that no one could keep up with it because you would argue that the, the executive teams need to keep up with it. So I would, if it's that technical, you would. Definitely want some technical people on your board to help interpret if nothing else, because at the end of the day, the board isn't there to drive the innovation per se, that's the job of the executives, but they're there to support, encourage, or challenge.

So having somebody technically competent enough do that, at least on a, on a, a par with the management team is probably very [00:11:00] important. When it comes to looking at other functional skills, I tend not to bring consultants into boards, if I'm completely honest, I'm not sure that I subscribe to that because they end up invariably telling what you, telling you what you knew anyway.

But I think it's more important that when you're building a board, that you build a board with diverse people with diverse skills and most functional areas. will be covered by somebody around the board table. And if they're not, you probably haven't built the boards that's diverse enough. I operate in the world of private equity for the most part.

So many of the boards that I chair or I'm on, I've got lots of investors on them. And quite clearly those people bring quite a unique set of skills. But they're not operationally experienced. So when I'm building a private equity backed board, I'm always very careful that I've got sufficient balance of NEDs around the board that I've got a breadth of experience from running companies, from learning the hard way by things having gone wrong from when they've run companies, but generally within those people, you'll [00:12:00] always find that they've got a fairly good degree of functional experience in most areas of a company.

Okay. But tech is the one that I pull out separately, and maybe it's because I'm surrounded by tech people and tech companies. But yeah, I think you definitely want diverse people around your board from a broad set of experiences. And that's how you bring the expertise into the boardroom versus my own view of, I don't really want consultants in a boardroom.

Oliver Cummings: Follow up on that investor director versus independent director dynamics. That's really interesting to me, especially having come from an investment background myself and being that investor director and now in the operator role. My experience is there are things that I know and feel now that I probably could have rationalized before, but I just feel them differently now.

And as a result, my focus Would be different in the past probably spent, and I like to think of myself as reasonably high on EQ, but I probably spent more time on numbers. Whereas now I spend a lot more time on people than I know if I got the people, right, the numbers [00:13:00] will follow. Investor directors are obviously seeing a lot of different things across businesses and the patterns repeating.

What is it for you that you get from those independent directors? That you can't get from investor directors? 'cause it sounds like your, I would say most sophisticated end of bringing in those independent directors. But for those who don't, there are a lot of private equity funds who just rely on their investor directors and I don't think they see what value they would get from those independent directors are curious to hear how you think about that.

Dawn Marriott: I think what you get from the independent directors are what I call scars and stripes. And I use that phrase a lot because they've got the scars on their back, the stripes on their arms from having done it. They've learned the hard way, or they've succeeded the fast way. But I think the fact that those independent NEDs have typically lived through running their own companies, they've just got the scars.

Relatable experience that you can draw upon that helps you avoid mistakes that someone else has already made, or it helps you go faster. I [00:14:00] think often they can be a bit braver because they'll probably trust their instincts and gut feel. Whereas I think the investor directors tend to want to rely more on factual Theories, that sounds odd, factual theories.

But what I mean by that is we've got a spreadsheet, we've run the numbers and in the numbers it can work. And I think there is a huge place in boardrooms for that style of thinking. It's not that I don't think it's valuable at all, but I think the best boards are ones that have got investor directors with analytical thinking, feeling, experience, and usually very data driven.

But combined with the scars and stripes brigade of people that have been there, seen it and done it. So I think there's a big difference that you get between these two different types of board members. But the best boards that I've ever seen is when you have the blend of both of them. 

Oliver Cummings: So I fully agree with that.

And that's my experience as well. I guess the thing I sometimes have a difficulty with is explaining [00:15:00] to investor directors why that's the case. And it's a little bit, I remember Arsene Wenger once. saying he was a great football manager, was never a great footballer. And he said, does a jockey need to have been a horse to be a great horse?

And so why is it that, that lived those stars and stripes, scars and stripes takes you into a different level. It's, I find it really difficult to explain what, what it is. 

Dawn Marriott: Yeah, actually, maybe I can try giving an example. In a company that I chair today, we're doing a lot of platform integrations from, we've done lots of M& A, so we're now trying to reduce down the number of technical platforms that we have that deliver services to the customers.

Now, when the investor directors look at that, they look at it through the lens of the spreadsheet that says, if we integrate the platforms quicker, we'll reduce costs faster, and we can then cross sell more products more easily. So let's do it really, really fast. The independent experienced directors around this particular issue will be saying, how can [00:16:00] we change the wheels on the plane when it's in flight?

So how do we basically drive platform integration where we've currently got customers live on an outgoing platform? It's not impossible to do. Of course it isn't, but there is risk associated with it. And what in this particular situation, the independent Ned on this board is completely understood the risk associated with doing this and is approaching it in a much more planned, pragmatic, Structured risk managed way versus the investor directors that are just saying, just go faster without really understanding the complexity of the ask.

And actually doing it at the speed that they would want could do damage to customers, damage therefore to reputation and end up costing a lot more anyway. And particularly if you lose customers. So I think that's a good example of, it's something, it's a complex problem that the business has to solve.

They come to the board. To discuss that and what they want is a good, [00:17:00] challenging, but balanced conversation of people that are trying to push it faster because it makes commercial sense, but very much balanced against people that have been there, seen it, done it, lending their experience of don't go too fast, but don't go too slow, just go at the right pace.

So I think that's just one little example, but I see that in so many different situations. Where you've got the investor directors that will take a very theoretical approach to something versus the, um, the scars and stripes brigade that will take a much more experiential. And usually the answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

And so I go back to the fact that what you want in these kinds of discussions is you want both sides of the equation to get the best possible answer. 

Oliver Cummings: That's really powerful and I guess my takeaway from that is there is just no substitute for the experience and experience of the complexity of a lived experience.

I suppose in some ways there's probably a parallel there with investors. One of my observations was always investors who had been through a couple of cycles before who had seen [00:18:00] businesses go through a restructuring where it hadn't worked out had a very different approach. to new investments. And they knew that the work started when they invested, not when they got the deal done.

And even though the other investors could rationalize it, there was something fundamentally different about just having had that experience. So you've really brought that to life. 

Dawn Marriott: I think as well, my experience of working with professional investors is they like repeatable patterns. Whereas I think the Scars and Stripes Brigade are much more fluid.

They'll react in two situations, given different sets of contexts. And again, as you say, if you've had a particular experience, it doesn't mean it's going to be the same the next time over, whereas I think, I'm not, and actually that sounds like I'm being a bit disparaging to the investor directors, but it's just been my experience that they like repeatability.

So when things are very different in the same, what might appear at the outset to be the same situation, then yeah. Yeah. You probably need to make sure you've got some scars and stripes brigades around you as well. 

Oliver Cummings: I like that. So more, maybe they're [00:19:00] solving challenges through pattern recognition versus those from the scars and stripes brigade are used to approaching things from a first principles mindset, and so you see each problem on its own merits.

Dawn Marriott: Exactly that. You said it so much better than I did. Thank you. 

Oliver Cummings: No, well you just made that so clear. I'm really interested to talk a bit about your experience as a chair. What's really interesting to me is you've had experience both as an executive and a non executive chair. And I'm really interested to hear how you think about the differences.

We run these mastermind groups for chairs where we bring them together with the team. A group of six of them, and they each take it in turns then through a structured process that we lead to share challenges they're wrestling with. And then the group peer coach them through that challenge. And one of the challenges that came up recently was someone wrestling with, should they be a, should they remain as a non executive chair or should they step in as an executive chair?

And it wasn't one I'd really come across before. So really interested to hear how you think about the difference between those two roles [00:20:00] and how you decide when, which is most appropriate. 

Dawn Marriott: So I'm never very big on job titles, if I'm completely honest, never have been and probably never will be. And I think it's more private equity that tends to use this term executive chair.

And I think what they mean in that context is somebody that's a bit more hands on. So rather than perhaps a traditional chair that might be showing what showing up one to two days a month, an executive chair is probably more active in the business on a weekly basis. And therefore, by the nature of the additional time commitment, they're more engaged in activities alongside the CEO to support.

So I think that's probably what is meant by the definition, certainly from my experience. But in all the businesses that I've chaired, I think I probably waver between the two, depending on what, what is needed at the time. And I think to be a chair, the most important job that you're there to do, there's a whole bunch of things, but.

The most important thing to do is make sure that the CEO is successful in the execution of [00:21:00] their job. Because if the CEO is successful, it means the business is successful, which means the shareholders are being successful, which means the customers are successful and the employees are successful. So I always try to keep it as simple as possible.

My job is to make sure that the chief executive is, is successful. So sometimes that means. Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC. and not showing up and not asking for constant reports on things because you're taking their time. So for me, the best type of chair is one that knows how to be in the context of the situation.

And whether you call it chair, whether you call it exec, I just don't really think that makes or breaks the difference. Do 

Oliver Cummings: you have a framework for thinking about where and how you Amplify [00:22:00] that CEO performance to the best effect. 

Dawn Marriott: I probably don't formally have it as a framework and that's just probably says more about me and my style.

I tend to not be as structured as that, but there are areas that I would look to ensure that the CEO is, you know, I, I could just, if I may give another example, I won't name anybody, spare anybody's blushes, but one business that I took over where the CEO was just, was an internal promotion, so he was just coming into his new role as I was taking over as chair.

And he'd worked in the business for quite a long time. So he knew the customers, he knew the product. He was very popular internally. People really liked him. He was a very good leader, but actually where he really had an area to improve was what his presence was in the external market. He was pretty unknown.

He was quite a low key guy, doesn't really like promoting himself, but in [00:23:00] terms of the growth of the business and the way we were going to be positioning For future investment, he absolutely needed to develop his personal profile outside of the business. And that was quite obvious to me going in. So that, that would be a one particular example where I then worked with him over a period of about 18 months on helping him understand, first of all, why that was important, then helping him do it, then also getting him some external help to make him build his confidence in doing it.

And when I look at him now, he's on platforms. evangelizing about the market and he's quoted in trade press on the subject. He's extremely active on LinkedIn and many other social platforms. So he's really done a good job of kind of fixing that sort of weakness that he had. So that's just one example that I would look at.

So there might be other CEOs that I've worked with where maybe they're very technically strong or they're very good on product or very good on go to market, but maybe they've been less good on their people skills. So [00:24:00] again, I would say informally, I probably do have a scorecard that I would break down, but I just probably don't call it that.

But in that situation, I'm thinking about another chief exec, even bringing in an HR person to work alongside him in this particular company. HR had only been about admin, which was quite shocking because it was quite a large company. So helping the CEO understand the benefit of having a great HR person next to him and also helping him understand.

Stand, but to have a great business, you need to have great people. And to have great people, you really need to look after them. I, I definitely would work with either a new CEO or if I'm new into a chair role, I would work very much with a CEO to look at where I felt they had areas and opportunities to grow further.

And then I would over index on my support for those areas. 

Oliver Cummings: So if I could persuade you to come be chair of New Role and you were sitting down before the sort of first sort of meeting and thinking what are the 10 areas I want to focus [00:25:00] on to discuss with Oli to figure out where I can add, what would be on that list?

Dawn Marriott: So first of all, I'd need to get to know you and that would be one of my most important things. So I would get to know you personally. I'd then be asking about where have you been successful in the past? Where have you struggled in the past? Tell me about your most spectacular fails. How did you deal with them?

What people did you have around you? I'd ask a lot of questions about their team and a lot about succession planning of that team. I'd ask a lot about the financials of the business and again, not in all cases, but I can think of one really great CEO that I worked with where their blind spot was actually the numbers.

So that was okay because as long as they had a fantastic CFO alongside them, they were brilliant at everything else. So that was okay, but it was important to know that. So I would almost be, if you can imagine a list of all the functional areas of a business, Okay. They would be my go to top 10 alongside all the personal successes, failures, experiences, and so on that I would go [00:26:00] through just to try and explore areas where I've, where I could see gaps.

And I'd often ask people, and I do ask people a lot of questions about what, where have they driven innovation? Cause often that question seems to throw a lot of people. So at some it doesn't, but more often than not, it does. So again, I'm not ever looking to catch CEOs out because my job is to be in the background and make them look fantastic and make them successful.

But in order to be able to do that in the best possible way, you really need to understand as much as you can about them as an individual, about their style, their behaviors, the strengths, the weaknesses, and their experiences and aspirations. So I'd ask a lot of questions about that. 

Oliver Cummings: One of the most common topics that gets discussed in our chair masterminds is that question of when do I back the CEO versus when do I make the tough call to let them go?

And it really dropped home for me recently and with another podcast guest, Roger Martin, who was saying the best CEOs don't need a board because they'll do a great job. Anyway, the [00:27:00] marginal impact of the board is nothing. And the worst CEOs. Don't need a board because they'll pull the wool over the board's eyes.

Anyway, what that sort of really revealed for me was that actually the board's most important role is to get the right CEO. And obviously the chair plays a critical role in that. So really curious to hear what's your process and how frequently are you assessing CEO suitability? And especially, I guess, with the high growth companies you're working with, that must be particularly pertinent because the role and requirements of it are changing.

Dawn Marriott: So that is a brilliant question and it's the most important job of chairing the board is to make sure not just the CEO, but the leadership team. So the senior leaders are the best possible versions that you can have. And for me, that's an ongoing assessment, but it doesn't mean that you're always looking to fire somebody.

And I do believe that people that become CEOs, you, they've got there for a reason. That's an assumption that there's not been a terrible hiring process. Which occasionally there might have been, [00:28:00] but let's assume that somebody has been hired and they're good enough to get the job. I think the chair and the board need to be able to support that person sufficiently to make them successful.

Ultimately, if they can't, then they need to get rid of them and they need to do that pretty fast. But that's where I think the relationship between the chair and the board is key. And the CEO is so important and it needs to be built on trust because if you can see your CEO struggling with something, then as the chair, you want to be able to step in and try and help them be successful and overcome whatever it is they're struggling with.

If every five minutes, the CEO looks like, it looks like the CEO is going to have a challenge and every five minutes you then throw them under the bus. That's not going to help a business. It never helps a business to have super high turnover in the executive area. Equally, you shouldn't tolerate bad leadership and I, and we can maybe come on to talk about that in a moment, but my mantra is always try and help them first.

Do everything that you can, coaching, very clear feedback, very clear expectation [00:29:00] setting, very practical advice on how to overcome whatever issue it is. And if you are firing a CEO, it should never be a shock because if you, if it's a shock to the CEO that you're firing them, then you probably haven't done a very good job as a chair, should be always assessing each other throughout each interaction, relationship, giving constant feedback in the moment.

Feedback is so, so important. And if you're. Growing a company and it's fast growing, the CEO needs to evolve at a fast pace as well. And you need to help them because what got them to where they are today is, is a famous phrase. It's probably not going to get them to where they need to be going forward.

So they're definitely on a journey of change all the time. So if you fired them because they hadn't yet made the change. for a journey they haven't yet gone on, then you're always going to be playing catch up. 

Oliver Cummings: You've been on that journey, I guess, a number of times now. Are you seeing patterns in that enable you to see earlier [00:30:00] when someone's not right and when someone is going to make it?

Dawn Marriott: So, I'm a great believer in that as people in the workplace, many of us are gifted enough to have superpowers. There are loads that I don't have, but the one that I would try to be humble about it, but the one thing that I would pride myself on is that I'm good with people and I'm good at spotting talent and I'm good at helping people be a best version of themselves.

And I hope that's one of the things that many of the Boards that I chair would say about me, that's an area that I over index on. So I'm pretty comfortable calling out really early when someone's not right in my experience or in my view and my intuition, and invariably have that conversation first with the person to talk about it, to talk about why I'm concerned.

Equally, I'm a big believer that I can spot talent early. I'm just thinking back to one business that I was actually the CEO of this particular company, but part of my job was to Turn it around and fix it and then replace [00:31:00] myself as the CEO. And then I would move on to the board. And I remember the day, and I'd been in the CEO job for a couple of years.

Turnaround had been completed successfully. We were in a transition out of that phase. So then it was my time to really focus in on putting the new CEO in. And I remember approaching the other board members to say, the successor is an internal person. It's a guy whose business we'd acquired, but I'll just give you some scale.

So. His business had been acquired with about 30 million of revenue. The total group had revenues of nearly 600 million, and it was international. His business had just been in the UK with 30 million. And when I approached the rest of the board to say, this is the person that I think is my internal successor, I think they thought I was crazy.

But anyway, I'll fast forward. I eventually persuaded him to take the job because I had to do that as well because he was also self doubting because of the scale difference. The board got persuaded. He's now been in that job for nearly three years and he's an absolute rockstar CEO. So I [00:32:00] think, Sometimes as the chair or as the person making the hiring decision, the primary hiring decision, you need to be great with people and you need to be prepared to back yourself and have very strong conviction as to why somebody's right or wrong for the job.

And as I say, I feel gifted. That's probably one of the things that I'm reasonably okay at alongside a backdrop of not being good at many other things. 

Oliver Cummings: What was it that you saw in that CEO? That's a fascinating story. 

Dawn Marriott: So, well, he was a very smart guy. He had a lot, so he had a lot of intellect that would have been required for the job.

He had great market knowledge. He had great fellowship from everybody that ever worked with him. He was completely curious and restless all the time about work, always trying to make it better. And he was a fantastic communicator. So I mean, all of the skills required and actually extremely ambitious. So, you know, it was not motivated by money, but motivated by doing a really great [00:33:00] job.

And actually he was also fantastic with other people as well. So that's why people followed him. And that was fun. Both employees and customers, you know, so he generally was a great all round guy. And I thought with the right help and coaching, he could easily scale himself. And in that situation, I was proved to be right.

Luckily for me. 

Oliver Cummings: Doesn't sound like there was any luck involved there. What are the red flags for you at the other end of the spectrum, which are kind of killers? 

Dawn Marriott: Often red flags for me are people with massive egos. That think that being a CEO is about making all the decisions. Red flags are when CEOs want to be the only voice in the room when they dominate too much.

When they don't listen very much. Yeah. And when they want to self promote, they're all red flags for people that I think don't make long term sustainable CEOs for businesses that attract great talent and long term customers. They can have a place in short term, but I think the kind of businesses that I want to [00:34:00] be involved in are sustainable businesses that can grow over time and that value customers and employees.

And shareholders and usually people with those sort of red flag characteristics that I just mentioned, they don't normally have those shared agendas. 

Oliver Cummings: You touched earlier on the importance of having that diversity around your board table. We talk a lot about archetypes. One of the archetypes I think is always really critical on a board is what I'd call a CEO whisperer.

So someone who's been a CEO before and can relate to the sort of the loneliness of the CEO role. And I have been on boards where There wasn't that, and I don't think it worked as a result. What are the archetypes that you're looking for? And what does your typical board size look for in terms of allowing the archetypes?

And my sense is there's a, again, this shows my remarkable lack of cultural knowledge. I'm always using football analogies, but in football, there's this trend towards having Claire's play multiple roles. And I think there's a sort of similar [00:35:00] thing we're starting to see in boards now, where they've actually got to fulfill multiple archetypes and you've got this jigsaw you're putting together.

We're really curious to hear how you think about that composition and what those archetypes are. 

Dawn Marriott: I've got a few that I always look to have around my board if I go through the category. So, yeah, so I'm always looking for somebody that's highly analytical and somebody that's extremely numerate. They spot mistakes in board packs.

They forward project where things are going to head. So that's an essential skill that you want around a board. Somebody that's brilliant with the numbers, not just reporting them, but actually gaining insights. What are the numbers actually telling you? And importantly, what's it telling you about the future?

Analytical, very important. I also look for somebody that's a constant innovator. So somebody that's always pushing forward, no matter how good the idea is, they always seem to ask the question, and what else, but what's next? Or what could we, or what if? Always looking for someone that's the constant driver forward, rather than a reflector.

[00:36:00] I love to have somebody on all the boards that I'm on that is very customer centric or client centric. Always, it's so important to bring that voice of the customer into the room. And I always look for somebody to have that as their kind of core. And again, it goes back to some of the objectives I would probably.

Be drawing these things in to the objectives of the individuals that I've got on the board as well. But a voice of the customer in the room and the other side of that is the voice of the employees. So how is this going to affect our people? What are our people going to think? How do we drive innovation?

How do we do more for our people? How do we expect more from our people? I think, I love your description of the CEO whisperer, and I would sometimes, That's me in the boards that I'm in as the chair, but just as myself. And again, because having been there, seen it and done it and run companies, generally speaking, I would consider myself to be a CEO whisperer.

And again, on the basis as well of always wanting them to be successful. So I'm doing everything I can in the background, outside of the meetings to set them up for [00:37:00] success. During the meetings and for their job. So I think there's probably those five categories. Your CCEO whisperer, I'll take that one.

And then my four of the analytical, the innovator, the people employee, and the customer voice in the room. There's probably others as well, but they're the ones that immediately come to mind as being pretty critical. 

Oliver Cummings: Really interesting. I think I heard while researching this podcast, you talking about that on the insights methodology, you are a creative yellow, and when I listened to the way you've articulated.

Those actually, it sounds like you've got a cool blue, the logician, you've got the sort of a green organizer. You've got a red sort of decision demanding decision maker. Is that something, is that a conscious thought process that you're overlaying into that? Or how do you think about the sort of personalities?

Dawn Marriott: I am an absolute fan of insights profiling a, cause I think it's simple to use. I think the quality of an accuracy of the outcomes that it gives you are very real. So I always try to do insights on my boards [00:38:00] and for new board members, we'll get them to do insights profiling as part of the hiring process.

One board I remember joining, so I was joining as the chair. They'd never done anything like a board evaluation and they'd certainly never done anything like insights as a group. Didn't even consider themselves to be a team. So it was an extremely, it was a fun experience to go through with this set of people.

But when we got the results through, everybody around the board was blue and red. Hardly any green, hardly any yellow, and actually it wasn't diverse in any way. And I don't want to make this about gender, but there were no females on the board. There was no ethnic diversity. There wasn't really any social economic background diversity, but more importantly, there was no behavioral diversity.

So needless to say, we did a lot of changes to that board. And I, if I think about the performance of the company as a result of Maybe that change, the company is now a lot more successful. It's growing faster. It's acquiring more business. It's got higher NPS with its customers and it's got higher ENPS.[00:39:00] 

Now it wasn't just because we changed the board members, but it was because the way we changed the way we supported the executives. As a result of changing the people on the board. So for me, the board member profiles are so important and the diversity of those profiles is just enormously important. If you want to have a successful board.

Oliver Cummings: Don, what a great way to end time has flown by, which means it's time for the lightning round, where I say a short statement and ask you for a quick response, if you're ready. Okay. First up, best book every board member should read and why? 

Dawn Marriott: No one book because everybody's different, but I do love The CEO Next Door because it just has great practical advice and I think everyone can learn from that book.

Oliver Cummings: Ordering behaviour that irritates you most? 

Dawn Marriott: People being late and people reading emails during a board meeting. 

Oliver Cummings: Most valuable board ritual? 

Dawn Marriott: Summarising the decisions and the actions at the end of the meeting. 

Oliver Cummings: Favourite quote? 

Dawn Marriott: Christopher Robin to Pooh Bear. Always remember you're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

Oliver Cummings: Most significant [00:40:00] professional insight? 

Dawn Marriott: Get diverse people around you and create an environment where they can all be heard. 

Oliver Cummings: Worst professional advice you ever received? 

Dawn Marriott: Use your feminine charm. 

Oliver Cummings: What have you changed your mind on about boards over time? 

Dawn Marriott: I thought that size didn't matter. But it turns out it does when it comes to how many board members you have.

Oliver Cummings: When was the last time you got a significant judgment call wrong in the boardroom, and what did you learn? 

Dawn Marriott: So it was after a series B fundraise with some new investors coming in, and I allowed too many of the board to have a seat, or too many of those investors to have a seat at the board, so I didn't listen to my own advice.

Yeah, keep your board tight. You don't need loads of people on it. 

Oliver Cummings: How are you better today as a board member than when you started? 

Dawn Marriott: I think I've got better at summarising discussions rather than diving into them head first. 

Oliver Cummings: Finally, three things that our listeners should take away from this podcast if they take nothing else.

Dawn Marriott: Appoint the right chair for you. And specifically what you need help with. Build fantastic trust with the chair and the other board members. And my third would be use board meetings to [00:41:00] drive the business forward. Board meeting is not there for you to report numbers and details. 

Oliver Cummings: Dawn, that has been absolutely amazing.

HG have an amazing reputation and I can see why they are very lucky to have you helping them. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and wisdom. 

Dawn Marriott: It's been a blast. Thank you very much, Oliver. You're too kind. Thank you. 

Oliver Cummings: If you found this conversation interesting and would like to be involved in similar discussions, join the New Role board community.

Community membership gives you access to 24 hour discussion threads on boardroom challenges and opportunities like those we've been discussing, smart online networking events, one to one career sessions with our headhunters, third party board roles, mastermind groups, and Q& As with senior board members.

Head to community. newrole. com to find out more.

🎙️ You can listen to the full podcast interview with Dawn Marriott on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube.