Strong relationships within the organisation (e.g. within the board, with management) are the building blocks of a thriving culture. In this session we look at defining good culture, how to ensure good culture in a boardroom and how to assess team culture and intervene from a board perspective, followed by a case study which highlights the importance of good board culture.

Often there is the view that Boards set the strategy and the management team just need to deliver it. This is a simplistic assessment of the division of roles between board and management and misses the challenge & opportunity that Boards have to lead in strategic discussions, improve outcomes and deepen impact. In this session, we examine typical ways of setting strategy in order to discuss the best points of intervention and leverage for a Board to engage and add value. We will have a guest speaker who will share some case studies on excellent Board interventions and end with practising a number of methodologies of facilitating complex discussions and finding the right questions to ask.

The flipside to strategy is risk, you can't have one without the other. When it comes to risk, the governance challenge is to balance the need to (i) prepare for the worst (ii) be open to the best, (iii) whilst recognising what will happen is unknown and largely out of our control. There are always going to be tensions and trade-offs which is why being calm, curious and creative are central to risk management in governance. Explore best practice risk management and mitigation and interrogate our own personal tendencies in the work of remaining open to the best and accepting what we do not know

As the ultimate responsible body - the reality for board’s is that crises will arise and it is up to you to deal with them. Each context and circumstance is different but there are core principles which apply to navigating a crisis relatively unscathed. Through a series of real-life case studies from practitioners and experts we will learn about what is essential in crisis management.

If you are not a "finance person" (and even if you are) the financial aspect of sitting on boards can often be a bit daunting. Remembering why having oversight of financials is important and having a few tools to understand management accounts is the best place to start. In this session, we will introduce some essentials to fulfilling your obligation as a director and begin to practise being able to read the story behind the numbers.

In purpose led businesses, defining success goes beyond measuring profits to deeper investigation of the purpose of the organisation. In the work of systems change, understanding the context and wider system is an essential place to start to measure and manage its impact. The careful analysis required to develop the right metrics involves thinking about both the poetry and grammar of impact- i.e. the qualitative and quantitative metrics. In this session we talk about impact reporting and the challenge and opportunity of going beyond the tried and test methods of financial metrics.

Applied learning requires the transformation of concepts into action. In the final session, we recap key learnings and practise key tools before sharing the results of our project (Individualised Board Development Plan) and our personal commitment to leadership.