Advisor Insights: Real Business, Real People Advisory Board Centre

As a vivid advocate and advisor for digital healthcare, Werner Böing is a leader that personifies attributes and experiences to create successful technology and data-enabled new business models. A thirty-plus year background across multiple industries has seen Werner be involved in all stages and facets of business, from an automotive think-tank (his first foray into the advisory world), to serving as an executive and board member for global market leaders in FMCG, biotech, and medtech. Werner's passion for people has encouraged him to use his experience and network through his advisory practice Evisory to support startups and boards co-shaping the digital future in healthcare and beyond.

In this Advisor Insights interview with Advisory Board Centre’s General Manager of Engagement Penny Ellenger, Werner encourages the notion of being self-aware and self-critical to enable continual development and understand your "funnel of relevance" - that is, what people should be seeking your expertise for - and nurture it from the start.

Anouk De Blieck is a highly experienced senior leader and advisor with over 30 years of experience in the technology, payments, and banking sectors, having worked with companies such as Citibank, ANZ, Visa, and SoftServe. With a passion for radical change management, advancing women in business, and improving the global HR community's ability to innovate, Anouk now manages a board portfolio career and believes that companies need access to external collective wisdom to navigate the volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) global environment successfully. In her Advisor Insights interview, Anouk discusses the challenges organisations face in the VUCA environment and how advisory boards can help them navigate uncertainties and complexities.

Paul Davies is an experienced advisory professional with a background in financial services. He recently worked with a construction company looking to expand into South Australia, implementing a process to evaluate the company's goals and utilising best practice frameworks to identify the ideal criteria for advisory board experts so that appointing was straightforward. The process helped to give the company more confidence in decision-making and that their board was going to be successful. In this Advisor Insights episode, Paul emphasises the importance of going through a structured process with companies when setting up an advisory board, even if they already have a defined set of goals.

With an eclectic professional portfolio of more than twenty-five years working across multiple dimensions of sport from grassroots to elite, Richard McInnes has held numerous roles within professional sports, and since 2019 has been CEO of Water Polo Australia.

As the pandemic started to unfold in 2020, Richard and many other national sporting CEOs were grappling with situations that had never previously been encountered on such a scale, and not knowing how long it would last. Joining fellow industry leaders to form a support group, the set-up evolved quickly to be formal, with Richard becoming Chair in mid-2020. Two years on, what is now a peer advisory board aptly named 'The National Sports Collective', the group meets monthly and has become incredibly diverse with members from thirty national sports, including disabilities and all abilities.

In this Advisor Insights interview, Richard discusses how the board continues to evolve with best practice principles, and the significant role it will play in the future of Australian sport.

London-based customer marketing guru Dean Lindsay is laser-focused on putting customers' stories at the forefront of an organisation's loyalty, retention, and growth strategies - and with great success. Having first forayed into customer service twelve years ago, Dean's passion for listening to the customer to ensure a business is on the right path has evolved from creating loyalty campaigns to leading organisations' complete marketing strategies.

In this Advisor Insights interview with Advisory Board Centre’s Founder and CEO, Louise Broekman, Dean discusses how his enthusiasm to stay on the pulse of improving business performance has seen customer advisory boards become a crucial element to his profession. With several boards under his belt now for various organisations, Dean has mastered how to maintain the independence of members and a fit-for-purpose focus, which is akin to our own best practice methodology.

Working in the aged care sector as an executive for more than twenty-five years, Cynthia Payne founded Anchor Excellence in 2018 to fulfil her aspiration to give back and create a legacy of improved capability and outcomes for businesses. In four short years, her business has become a national provider of professional services, supporting leaders at governing, executive and management levels. With the 2021 completion of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality & Safety and the subsequent reform agenda, Anchor Excellence has gained particular notoriety in compliance.

In this Advisor Insights interview with Advisory Board Centre’s Director of Talent, Brendan Logue, Cynthia discusses the shifting (and very welcome) change within the aged care sector, and how her long-term experience with advisory boards has empowered her and her business to be a pillar of support for the journey of positive transformation ahead.