5 things boards can do to re-energise engagement with social issues | Nurole Board Community insights

Seeing eye to eye  

Staring into a relative stranger's eyes for 90 seconds isn’t within my comfort zone. But that’s where I found myself recently, exchanging experiences with twenty-five scale-up CEOs, on a remote Greek island. 

Just when I thought I’d hit maximum discomfort, our smiling moderator, guided by the latest neuro-science research, chimed in, “Now whisper in their ear all the things you most admire in them.”

Then she invited us to hug each other.

The context may sound like the masochistic lovechild of a silicon valley HR department, Bhagwan Rajneesh and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. But it worked wonders, even on a straight-laced former investor like me. 

For the price of a few moments’ discomfort, the whole group surfed an intoxicating wave of Oxytocin and Serotonin to feel more connected, more open to brainstorming problems and opportunities, more disposed to helping each other and ultimately more able to deliver value as CEOs when we returned to our businesses. 

I had all this in mind when I logged in to host our inaugural Nurole Board Community fireside chat - social: the “S” in ESG, featuring board members Esohe Denise Odaro, James Cole, Nina Spencer and Rory Campbell.

What are the biggest challenges boards face on social issues?  

Fatigue is at the heart of the social challenge. Boards and their organisations are having to deal with too many issues at once, a phenomenon one guest described as the “polycrisis”. As a result, they are losing energy, and social issues are slipping down agendas into far away appendices - or “the too-hard basket” in the words of former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi.  

Boards cannot rely on the executive team. Executives are required to spend most of their time thinking a year ahead at most, with many honed in on the next quarter’s results. Hubspot Co-Founder Brian Halligan captured the CEO’s short-term predicament nicely, “if you [the CEO] give your investor the line that you’re ‘focused on the future and not to worry too much about this quarter’s numbers,’ prepare for them to vomit on your sneakers.” Boards, on the other hand, are not so tied to the short-term. In fact, they have a responsibility to take a step back and help their executive leaders lengthen their horizons. 

5 things boards can do to re-energise engagement with social issues    

Ensure executive leaders have painted a tangible picture of the future. Change can either be energising or draining, depending on how it’s framed. When leaders clearly set out what the future will look like, they foster passion, and passion is one of the most sustainable forms of energy we have. As NZ rugby performance coach Owen Eastwood put it on the Nurole podcast, “It’s incredibly motivating - if you as a leader paint a picture of ‘this is the place we want to go to, this will be an amazing place where we will thrive,’ then you can literally measure it with dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin levels surging.”

Beware false purpose. There has been some pushback against purpose - a sentiment embodied by investor Terry Smith’s question, “Why does mayonnaise need purpose?”. But Smith targets a superficial idea of purpose. As one of our guests put it, “If Hellman’s was saying they were here to liberate the taste buds of the world, without self-awareness, then understandably people would think it’s ludicrous.”

Keep everyone grounded. To avoid such grandiosity, it can be helpful to distinguish between existential and practical purposes. For starters, it’s important to benchmark purpose against competitors and set tangible and credible goals to measure your progress. Most businesses are started with a purpose. Initially, that may be to make money. But over time, as the company achieves this purpose, it may begin to feel responsibility to a larger group of stakeholders, at which point it’s important re-evaluate that purpose to embrace them.

Hire NEDs with the time and energy to do their job. As one of our guests reflected, “Nowadays, the highest form of commitment, even love, is time.” At Nurole, we sometimes see clients privilege experience over capacity. Tempting as that prioritisation is, board members simply cannot add value if they don’t have time to do basic things like reading the board papers. Time and commitment take on yet more value when it comes to social topics, because they are often relatively low down on the agenda. And it takes more energy to focus on something which will end up in the appendix, versus going through the profit and loss statement. 

Create board space for leaders to ask questions without knowing the answer. Given the novelty of social issues, boards also need to create spaces to learn. We’ve taught executives (and by extension non-executives) to equate success with confidence and failure with vulnerability. Then we hit them with a barrage of complex issues they aren’t used to: climate change, inclusion and so on. And we expect them to have robust opinions and solutions. That is not a recipe for thoughtful, strategic responses. Instead, we need to create space and time in which board members and senior executives can learn more about these issues: space in which they can ask questions without judgement, and time to develop thoughtful responses based on research and a better understanding of how they feel personally.    

Hug an NED (when they’re ready) 

These five ways to galvanise boards and organisations to re-engage with social issues point to a more open, personal and human way of going about business, which circles back to my time on the island. 

When one of my fellow scale-up CEOs returned, they met a taxi driver at the airport. The unsuspecting driver stepped out of the car to open the door, and buoyed by the sense of common humanity created during our trip, the CEO wrapped her arms around him in a bear hug. 

The driver didn’t quite share this CEO’s enthusiasm. And the trip back into town wasn’t without its awkward silences. For all the benefits of having more vulnerability, honesty and connection with our colleagues, the story reminded me it’s important to see this as a process. Professional intimacy is - as the cliché goes - a journey rather than a destination.