The Better Boards Podcast Series Dr Sabine Dembkowski

There are many types of differences and diversity, and not all are visible or recognised. But what can be done to build and maintain a truly inclusive and equitable board and organisation?
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards, discusses building inclusive and equitable cultures with Dr Doyin Atewologun, Director of consulting firm Delta Alpha Psi and multi-award winner in recognition of her work on driving evidence-based inclusion in organisations. 
"Different differences have an impact"
Doyin opens by explaining that inclusion is about the degree to which difference is recognised and valued, regardless of the type of difference. She highlights that in some geographical locations and cultures, certain differences matter more than in others, and some differences are visible and some not so visible, such as neurodiversity. She believes there is a need to think intentionally about different identity dimensions. 

She believes individual action is very important, and the key question that everyone in the boardroom should ask is: 'What is your own compelling driving force for seeking equality in the business?' 
"Analyse that assumption that you're sacrificing competency for diversity"
Doyin explains that, in her opinion, there are three different types of work to achieve diversity and inclusion: thinking work, talking work, and doing work. 

She defines thinking work as ongoing alertness to the less visible structures around us and challenging what we are used to hearing or saying. She feels we may not do enough thinking work. She gives the example of the myth that competency is compromised for diversity. Most women, people of colour and other underrepresented groups will say that their experience is the opposite – rather than lowering the bar, people who come from underrepresented groups find that they have to undergo a higher level of scrutiny. By the time underrepresented people are 'on the radar,' they are much more likely to be exceptional, because of the barriers they have had to navigate. 
"Gently, subtly, politically, but sometimes more directly influence behaviours, so that they're much more aligned with your own values of inclusion"
Doyin explains that talking work includes the idea of calling out behaviour, for example, when in a meeting if someone is interrupting or ignoring someone else's ideas. If calling out is a little too direct, calling in is another option. Under no circumstances should anyone see something that goes against what they stand for and wait for someone else's permission to highlight it. 
"The strength of a board is it comprises of different people"
Doyin explains that the third type of work is doing work, which is important to consider within the boardroom itself. It is important for boards to be strong, high-functioning work groups and for board members to trust and challenge one another. The strength of a board is that it contains different people, different roles, and different perspectives. 
The three top takeaways from our conversation are:
1.      Inclusive cultures matter not only in the organisation, but also in the boardroom. The work of diversity in boards should not be just one person's agenda item, but everyone's.
2.     Chairs have a particular role to play, e.g., in helping support the informal induction of new members - especially those who are 'different.' Don't be blind to differences. Be intentional about it.
3.     When you think about diversity as work, remember there are different types of work – thinking work (thinking critically), talking work (calling things out when you see things inappropriate) and doing work.

 Corporate mishaps and failures have resulted in boards and governance receiving increased public interest. Despite considerable attention, confusion over what governance is, the role of the board, and how governance might be practiced has resulted in more questions than answers. So, what do boards need to do if they are to become more effective?
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards, discusses the essence of good governance with Dr Peter Crow. Peter holds a doctorate in corporate governance and strategy, has served on the boards of private and family-owned companies and has an extensive international record advising board.
"We're working in an environment where we're what we're trying to achieve is a little bit camouflaged"
Peter starts by acknowledging that boards have a multitude of pressing issues. In addition to these issues are stakeholder and activist expectations and compliance demands. So the environment outside the boardroom is extremely dynamic and board work becomes more and more challenging.
"The hurdles are many"
Peter explains that he is regularly asked three questions that have not changed significantly in over 15 years. These are: what is corporate governance, how should it be practiced, and what is the role of the board? The first hurdle is understanding the job, as there are often multiple different understandings of the role of a given board. The second hurdle is the statistic that one in six directors understands the business of the business. Worse, he relates that only about one in 20 boards have a single united view as to the overall purpose of the company. 
"One size fits all, or "best practice" is deeply flawed"
Peter jokes that things would be fine if boards were made up of something other than people. He describes the problem that the board does not run the company; that is the job of the Chief Executive, and the executive team's job. The board's job is to make decisions and then ask the Chief Executive and their team to implement them. While he recognises some universal principles, he believes "best practice" is deeply flawed and should be replaced with "best fit."
"I wish that some of these corporate governance codes would be shortened greatly"
Peter relates that when a problem arises, the lawyers or regulators become involved, and the reaction is to design more regulations or add to the code. The goal is to help boards do their job properly, yet counterproductively, this focuses boards more on complying with the regulations and codes, leaving them with less time to do the rest of their job (which is value creation).  
"If  a board is to have a positive impact in a sustained way three things are necessary"
Peter describes the balance between value protection, compliance, and value creation. Peter says that if the board is to have any impact on the future performance of the business in a sustainable way, then three things are necessary. Firstly, strategic competence. The second factor is activity and engagement. The third factor is behaviour. Peter believes that this is like a multiplication equation. If any of these elements are missing, the likelihood of the board adding value can drop to zero.  
The three top takeaways from our conversation are:
1.      Governance is an activity, not a legal framework or structure, although the laws and regulations are important because they define the boundaries. However, they are not governance themselves. It's about steering and guiding the organisation.
2.     Boards can make a difference.
3.     Effectiveness is a function of what directors bring, what boards do, and how directors act and interact.

Healthcare in the U.K. is state-funded and led by way of a political manifest. The issues of governance in the National Health Service are complicated, and it is a 'wicked challenge.'   The hierarchical structure, multi-layered bureaucracy, and under-investment in the health system are coupled with crippled capital restrictions and a mountain of workforce issues. 
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards, discusses the challenges of boards in the NHS and healthcare with Nabil Jamshed. Nabil is recognised for his outstanding governance work in the largest Trust in the National Health Service in the U.K.  He is Head of Corporate Governance at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust for the Integrated Specialist Medicine Clinical Group. 
"A wicked problem doesn't equate to a wicked answer"
Nabil explains that health care as a service provided to customers, clients, and patients has grown significantly in complexity over the years. Governance within that is what he describes as a really wicked problem, and he thinks solving this is the biggest challenge in the health sector.  
"If you don't take a holistic approach, and take everybody with you on the journey, the governance in the traditional way will fail"
Nabil explains there are many different approaches to governance, and there is still an absolute need for the mechanical aspect of governance - meeting the minimum compliance regime, standards to ensure a safe environment, producing a high-quality product, etc. However, governance also needs both a vision and strategy.  He feels this is where traditional models fail because they do not emphasise the softer aspects of governance sufficiently and focus too much on compliance. 
"When you have your non-executives involved versus your executives, they have two different lenses"
Nabil relates that executives tend to focus on operational delivery. In contrast, the Non-Executives focus on the assurance that everything is happening as it should happen, with no loopholes, and that this does not expose the organisation to significant risk. In his Trust, they modelled the governance structure on assurance committees and fixated on those capitals. Every committee led on one, two, or a combination of capitals, with responsibility against that. 
"Any single report that comes to the board is aligned to those six capitals"
All information produced for board packs is now aligned to the six capitals, as is any single report. He is proud of the Triple-A model that has been introduced. Within each report, the three A questions are
1.       What do we want the committee or the board to be Alerted to?
2.     What do we want to provide the board and the committee Assurance with?
3.      What Actions are we taking to address going forward?
Every single report that comes to the board covers those three elements. But he notes the real change is in the discussions held at committees in local feeder groups, which is an absolute bottom-up approach. 
The three top takeaways from our conversation are:
1.      Have a clear-cut, long-term strategy; stick to it regardless of changes and believe in the process it will deliver.
2.     Build agility in governance and link it to your strategy and the risks you identify through that process, not getting hung up on one compliance only.
3.     Complex problems do not mean a complex solution. They mean a simple solution. But that simple solution doesn't mean the complexities are avoided - you understand and address them and build your governance to simplify those complexities.

Trust is the most potent force underlying the success of every board. When trust is in the room, great things can happen. Yet it can be shattered in an instant, with a devastating impact on the performance and effectiveness of the board and, potentially, ultimately, a company's market cap and reputation. How can boards build and sustain trust in the boardroom and with stakeholders? When it is lost, what can boards do to regain it?
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards discusses trust with Professor Sandra Sucher, Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and an internationally recognized trust researcher. "The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It" is her third book, based on two decades of research on global companies' best practices and the gray areas of business. 
"The board is pivotal in establishing trust"
Sandra starts with her opinion that boards are probably the most important contributor to companies being trusted. In the global environment, trust is a multi-stakeholder issue. 
"I'm more or less willing to take risks depending on whether or not I trust the other people in the room"
Research confirms that trust is built from the inside out. It isn't easy to be trusted by people outside an organisation if the people within it don't trust each other. A boardroom is a small group environment where lots of risk-taking is required, as people need to talk about difficult issues, and the willingness to do this depends on trust.
"The first thing that board members can do is just be clear on what it is that they're good at, what they're there for, and to make sure that they actually can do that really well"
Sandra outlines a formula or framework for the basis on which people trust. Firstly, individuals and organisations trust that the other party is competent, without which there is no reason to trust.  The second basis on which people trust is motive because if we are vulnerable to someone else, they have power, and what is motivating them is very important. Motives are the way that we show whose interest we take into account.   She explains that the third dimension of trust is what she refers to as means, and to be seen as operating fairly and having fair means.   Lastly, she covers impact, judged separately from the first three. This is the real, on-the-ground effect of their actions on us, the net effect of their actions, be they positive and beneficial or negative. Those four dimensions, competence, motives, means, and impact, are ways in which any board member can expect to be judged.
"Do a good root cause analysis and fix the steps that need to be fixed"
Sandra explains that there is much empirical research on recovering from lost trust and outlines the 'apology formula.' The first thing is to acknowledge the harm done and apologise for it. The second thing is to explain what happened, avoiding corporate-style apologies in the passive voice, "mistakes occurred," but in active language - "what we did wrong." Then they can build confidence in your ability to fix things. The third step is to offer a solution. What will you do about it? 
The three top takeaways from our conversation are:
1.      Boards have a central role in helping companies become trusted, and both earn trust over time and recover it if it's lost.
2.     Inside the board, it's essential to be mindful of building trusting relationships. That is hard work, but it pays off enormously in the contentious decisions that boards must make.
3.     When facing a big decision, board members should question, 'in this decision, will this cause us to earn or to lose trust, and with whom?'

It sounds all so easy – you create a board and expect that this group will be able to add tremendous value. However, serving board members and observers as part of a board evaluation know that high-quality dialogue is not a given. 
In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards, discusses improving boardroom dialogue with David Clutterbuck, who has been involved with boards and governance for over 30 years. David is Visiting Professor at three universities and the author/co-author of 75 books. 
"The board's role is not to do all this stuff!"
David starts by explaining that there are many "big issues" at present, but often some boards try to solve all these problems themselves. This is not the board's role. Rather, they should ensure that all these issues are identified and processes put in place to manage them, and then monitor the quality of these. 
"Boards which are not very effective are still thinking in linear ways"
David explains that in times of crisis, the line between executives and non-executives becomes blurred. For him, one of the key qualities of a board is to be able to rise above the complexity and help the executive steer through it. His research into post-COVID leadership showed a capability deficit in boards compared to current needs in an ever-changing world. The need is not for linear thinking in terms of cause and effect, but one of system thinking. 
"Organisations suffer from what we call organisational arthritis"
David outlines how systemic thinking involves identifying the many layers of an issue. This is increasingly important at the board level, where you have the internal systems and all the external ones, such as politics and economics. All these issues create a complex environment that is constantly evolving, and the board needs to be able to work within that complexity. 
"Organisational climate is a big part of that organisational agility that prevents organisational arthritis"
David describes an increasing emphasis on values and ethics and recommends that at least once a quarter, a board regularly considers whether the organisation is living up to its values. You can create an agile climate in an organisation in many ways, but having a strong sense of ethicality makes it more likely there will be strong psychological safety in the organisation. 
"We're using the most valuable time of the meeting for rubbish"
David relates that in studies of good boardroom practice in the 1990s, the typical board agenda started with up to 45 minutes of apologies for absence, minutes of the last meeting, matters arising and much which could have been done by email beforehand. He points out that the first part of the meeting is when brains are most productive before people start getting tired. 
"What are the criteria by which we're judging this decision?"
David believes that how decisions are made is important. Voting is commonplace, but this tends to mean people go along with the majority and suppress contrary views.   He explains that a much better way to decide is to determine the criteria by which the decision is judged. 
The three top takeaways from our conversation are:
1.      Don't get too involved in running the business. Recognise your role as a director, not an executive.
2.     Think about why the board is there, which will help structure and prioritise discussion topics. Regularly, question whether the things you're doing are creating value for the medium and long term or only the near future and profitability.
3.     Be the ethical conscience of the business, and do not forget the much bigger purpose. 

In this podcast, Dr Sabine Dembkowski, Founder and Managing Partner of Better Boards, discusses with Professor Randall Peterson the role of the board in helping organisations become better at dealing with diversity – moving beyond the presence of diversity to being able to engage diversity to benefit the organisation.  
Randall is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, and his recent work includes a report for the Financial Reporting Council on board diversity. He has been active on the board of UN Women UK. He is currently serving on the Leaders as Change Agents board, an expert panel working through the Government Equalities Office to facilitate positive change in the UK's largest employers. 
"We know something about what goes wrong - There's a parallel track…"
Randall describes the wide range of research he has looked at in depth with over 100 directors and company secretaries, which has given very consistent results. To gain multiple perspectives, usually, two or three people per board are required. 
"Adding diverse voices to the mix is not enough"
Randall explains that although diversity can benefit your business, there is no guarantee that it will unless you embrace it by doing the inclusion work engagement, which is hard to do. Well-managed diversity leads to tangible changes in the culture of how a board operates and interacts (making it more inclusive and collaborative), which has positive effects on the bottom line and corporate value. 
"Stop saying that diversity is going to get you a better outcome"
To be world-class, you have to be diverse because the research shows more diverse groups produce more varied outcomes. The very best groups are highly diverse, but so are the worst ones. Randall outlines some areas where his research was surprising. Firstly, the business case for diversity as traditionally formulated can actually have a strong negative impact. When you diversify and put a spotlight on people who are different, it can feel threatening and diminish performance. Secondly, Randall found that boards that are really good at one type of diversity are typically not great at another. Some boards were really good at gender, but not very good at race and ethnicity, and vice versa. There is now a better understanding that the barriers to entry for different groups are different. 
"Having a growth mindset, focusing on how we can get better outperforms any other culture"
Randall finds that interviewees are often somewhat reluctant to talk about demographic diversity because they don't want to 'get it wrong.' Most care deeply about diversity and should be braver in raising those issues in conversation, in nomination processes, etc. He wants to encourage people to have these conversations, being positive about what can be done, and what can be done better. The research shows very clearly that having a growth mindset, focusing on "how we can get better" outperforms any other culture, in terms of ways of working.
The three top takeaways from our conversation are:
1.      The importance of being willing and able to advocate for diversity, as there are often many more allies around the table than we typically anticipate.
2.     Every single director has a role to play in creating a culture of learning and growth and focusing on 'how do we get better', instead of 'what we do wrong'. Focus on what can be improved.
3.     To identify a diverse set of directors successfully, pause the search and seek out a smaller search firm that specialises in different groups of people, because there are a lot of highly qualified, highly motivated, great potential directors waiting to be found