We invite executives seeking their first public company board to gain advice from veteran directors, followed by 1-on-1 discussions.
The peer-driven format of these sessions encourages active dialogue among participants. Don’t miss the opportunity to engage with director peers in a private, off-the-record setting to share challenges and solutions. No PowerPoint presentations! Participants help develop the discussion outline to ensure the most relevant conversation with actionable takeaways to improve your board committee’s effectiveness in the year ahead. Select from the following concurrent session based on your board role and interests:
For qualified executives not yet on a board, participate in the concurrent
Prospective Directors Board Resume Workshop
You’re up against 22,500 other qualified board candidates. So, it’s important that your communication documents (Resume, Bio, Cover Letter, LinkedIn Profile), look every bit as good as you are. This session will take you through the simple points to make this happen and review the essential elements of leveraging LinkedIn. You’ll have the opportunity to finetune your cover letter and board bio and share it with other participants for feedback.
Best-in-class boards, like best-in-class sports teams all have a fundamental set of core competencies in common. The same qualities that make all-pro players make all-pro directors. What can boards learn from successful pro teams about organizational resiliency and competitive advantage? We’ll sit down with 3 veteran NFL players to look at the parallels of championship teams and the leadership lessons we can all take from the field to the boardroom.
In 2023, 550 U.S. companies were publicly subjected to activist demands, an 8% rise over the previous year and nearly 70% more than the 326 targeted a decade earlier. But you don’t have to think of it only as a risk. Learning to think like an activist can also help you tap into ideas to bring about value-creating strategic change and stronger business models. Most activists tend to follow a predefined process to identify and engage target companies. We’ll explore three main components of the activist playbook—linking performance failures to organizational weaknesses, developing a plan of action, and creating a narrative in support of change—to help your board fend off a potential activist campaign.
What could be more vital to a company’s long-term health than identifying and cultivating its future leaders, in particular your future CEO? CEO succession is not simply a decision, but rather a system that accounts for a range of future scenarios. How can your board make sure your CEO and CHRO are implementing a quality system that addresses different “what if” scenarios thatconsider known forces affecting the future of your business, and then identifying corresponding profiles of successful candidates? And—because no leader is ever 100% ready for the CEO role—how is your board working with your CEO and CHRO to address the most critical development needs? We’ll review critical inputs, including objective, multi-faceted assessment data, benchmarks and personal characteristics like growth orientation and coachability, that your board should be discussing on a regular basis to give your succession planning a competitive edge.
For the past 18 months, we’ve heard about generative AI’s potential to revolutionize business operations, enhance consumer wellbeing and foster unparalleled societal benefits. And we know that unlocking these advantages hinges on our ability to adeptly manage and mitigate associated risks—data integrity, data privacy, data bias, to name a few. We’ll explore how companies can take a balanced approach to offense and defense when thinking about the strategic integration of AI in business decision-making to help your board navigate this new era responsibly.
Join executives from diverse industries and functional backgrounds, with varying personalities to analyze a problem and think through the lessons learned from recent boardroom crises and conflicts.
If continuous cost growth is the new normal, driven by technology, soaring government spending, rising employee healthcare costs and global disorder, then boards must work with their management teams to develop 5-year growth strategies that can withstand economic frictions. Productivity initiatives, new product launches, and pricing strategies to maintain margins all require a rethink. We’ll arm you with smart plays for your board to work with management to unlock your company’s full profit potential.
It’s one thing to use quantitative measures to identify high-performing independent board members, but it’s quite another to figure out what qualities lead to those superior results. What metrics can be teased out as qualifications or predictors that put the most effective board members atop thousands of peers? It’s not random, and it is repeatable: They’re doing something different that is producing markedly better results.
We’ll sit down with one of America’s top 10 value-creating directors for candid advice and invaluable on handling boardroom disagreements, steering through setbacks, fundamental principles of communication, staying informed, and be willing to color outside the lines. You’ll leave inspired and ready to raise your game in the boardroom.
