Today’s leaders understand that the world is moving at a rocket pace and that day-to-day business world is much more chaotic today than it was even just five years ago. The rapid digital transformation, shifts in corporate culture, and a tumultuous political landscape all mean that leaders must be awake, aware, and ready to act at a moment’s notice.
We call that agile leadership: operating as a proactive, adaptive leader in a changing world.
Agile leadership requires agile tools. While we see some of these kinds of tools maturing (think Dropbox, G-Suite, or Zoom), we also see that boards of directors are too often stuck with yesterday’s tools, like bulky board books and clunky board portals.
We are focused on how Cloud Concinnity® can power agile leadership. Here are three examples.
ACCESS: Making Fully Informed Decisions
Harvard Business School recently outlined the importance of making fully informed decisions, using Netflix’s forward-thinking model of board communication as an example. The crux is finding a way for board directors to have access to all of the information they need, and the ability to talk to key people within the company to ask follow up questions or do further research. Surprisingly, this kind of access to information is not the norm for boards at too many companies, where information is siloed into the board book or left out-of-context in reports that don’t tell the whole story. This is why we prioritize access to both documents and people in Cloud Concinnity®. Fully informed decisions are the natural extension of the overall recognition that data-driven decision-making is the best way to improve & grow. Data-driven does not mean just numbers — it means context and intelligent analysis of as much information as possible. Gut instincts or deferring to the highest paid person in the room are not good enough anymore.
For the board to be as effective as it needs to be, we believe board members need to be able to access current documentation & information, past materials for context, and be easily able to get in touch with anyone at the company who can offer depth or perspective on any particular piece of data. Our smart library of documents is specifically designed to make all relevant information and context simple to find, and we prioritize access to each other and the company experts to make sure that when you have questions you can find answers. Only then can board directors arrive at a board meeting ready to make fully informed decisions.
PROCESS: Streamlining Communication & Management
We make processes seamless so agile leadership can thrive. Cloud Concinnity® guides boards through their often complex responsibilities, offering streamlined workflows so that boards stay effortlessly compliant and have more time to focus on important things, like strategy, performance and managing risk. Today, Cloud Concinnity® members have the option of subscribing to over 40 workflows containing over 400 tasks for the management of key board activities from Annual Meeting Management and Internal Audit Oversight to Role Clarity & Culture Management. And because board responsibilities are ever-evolving, so are Cloud Concinnity workflows.
These workflows save time, anxiety and risk for everyone involved. Designed by subject matter experts, these workflows push out tasks and alerts as needed to directors and management, giving the hours and hours general counsels, board chairs and committee chairs currently spend designing and managing board processes. Building best practices means continual improvement is built into board work, and having all key activities, dates and reports automated means teams know they won't forget things or be late -- everyone will be on top of what needs to happen.
We support secure, documented and ongoing communication so that agile leadership is a habit and the team is practiced in making decisions and communicating — that way process is a foundation that supports agile work whenever it is needed.
OUTCOMES: Empowering Meaningful Measurement
Measuring company performance is the ultimate bottom line, so shouldn’t a board tool have a way to understand company performance at a glance? We think so, and we couldn’t understand why other board tools seem to not offer this. For us, understanding board performance starts with understanding company performance because agile leadership requires up-to-date, 24/7 measurement. The Cloud Concinnity® company dashboard does just that — any board director can get an accurate understanding of company performance anytime from anywhere. It’s a foundation for making agile decisions that make sense.
The next level of measurement for agile leaders is self-measurement. This has long been a challenge (and sometimes a sore spot) for boards, and something that often gets politely ignored or delegated to an outside expert. In either case, the board is passing on what can be a powerful opportunity for growth. Transparency, accountability, and self-measurement can be a powerful source of ongoing information if peer evaluation is built into the process of governing. To facilitate this, Cloud Concinnity® allows board directors to evaluate each other and the overall outcomes using the same software they use to do their work, creating an elegant board scorecard that quantifies progress toward self-defined board goals and easy access to peer review options. This balanced board scorecard reinforces leadership team engagement and means that every director can get an understanding of where the company and the board itself stands in relationship to the overall goals all in one place. We see it as a revolutionary approach to building a responsive & robust leadership team.
For agile leadership to work, leaders need agile tools, and it’s our passion to create a board intelligence & management platform that is as agile as the modern board needs to be.
Interested in how Cloud Concinnity can make a difference for your board? Get in touch.
The Concinnity Company™ provides boards and c-suites with elegant technology and best practices. Cloud Concinnity® is the world’s first integrated board intelligence and management platform.
Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to the Concinnity newsletter today.