Why Your Board Portal Won't Solve Information Asymmetry

In the classic Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant, three blind men come upon an elephant for the first time. Each person feels a different part of the animal and comes to a different conclusion about what it is. The one touching its trunk thinks it is a snake, while the one touching the tail believes it is a rope, and the one touching the leg asks if it is a tree trunk. Only you and I understand the truth — because we have all the information and can see the whole picture.

This story is the essence of information asymmetry, with each individual actor knowing just part of the story, allowing none of them to see the whole picture. All too often this ancient tale repeats itself in the modern boardroom, where the elephant is information and under-informed board directors are left feeling blind because of bad technology and practices.

Why Board Books & Board Portals Fall Short

The traditional board book creates information asymmetry at every turn. It is a static master document that is bulky, out of date the day it is printed, and impossible to reference while traveling. Board directors know only what is on the page, not the circumstances behind it and not the living context of how that information is evolving and interacting with the rest of the company. Where we need an information and communication hub, we get a static document attempting to represent a dynamic set of information. The board book is inherently unsuited to solving for information asymmetry, especially in the modern business environment.

Even board portals, while well-intentioned, solve just part of the problem. Yes, they can house more information in one place, but they fail to imagine how board directors and committees actually work together. Board directors are still stuck behind the 8 ball of information asymmetry.

What if board directors have questions? What about updates, memos, and important contextual information that is best delivered as it happens, not as part of a quarterly or annual information dump? How would a board portal designed to create electronic copies of the same old static quarterly information to answer those questions?

By simply replicating the board book in digital form, board portals leave tons of potential on the table and perpetuate the shortcomings of information asymmetry in the boardroom.

Moving Beyond Information Asymmetry

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Smarter technology holds the key to solving for information asymmetry.

Our work is centered around providing an “un-board portal” that is designed for how board directors actually work. A board intelligence and management platform, not a fancier version of the board book. A single secure hub for all information and communication needed to make fully informed decisions. 

Our information asymmetry busting features include:

• A “smart library” that houses all relevant institutional knowledge, allowing directors to truly understand the company; what it does, how it does it, and the numbers that show it. 

• Providing not just the information for the upcoming meeting, but context for that information, i.e. relevant historical, competitive or previously communicated information. 

• Allowing information to be stored simultaneously in various folders; i.e. by subject and by date, making everything easy to reference regardless of how you search for it.

• Streamlining easy access to regularly referenced material, from directories and governance documents to annual plans and financials.

• Providing dashboards and balanced scorecards to keep everyone focused on the same things.

• Ensuring secure access to meetings & conversations you may have missed, meaning you can keep up without the constraints of time and geography.

It is possible for everyone on the board to see the entire elephant. We simply need to make sure everyone has access to the whole picture so they can make better, fully-informed decisions.

Interested in how Cloud Concinnity® can make a difference for your board? Get in touch.

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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. 

Why Better Technology Creates Better Corporate Culture, Starting With Boards, C-Suites & Investors

Peter Drucker famously told us that culture eats strategy for breakfast. And study after study tells us he’s on to something. Happy teams and a strong company culture mean higher performance across the board. Being named a Best Place to Work is associated with a .75% stock jump. A classic Harvard Business School study found that a performance-enhancing company culture correlates with 4x higher annual revenue growth. The list goes on.

We also know that leadership teams — the board, c-suite, investors, and managers -- set that tone. Company culture flows from the attitudes, priorities, and decisions of its leaders. 

With the digital transformation of work and business culture firmly upon us, what role does software play in corporate culture? Is it just a tool with no role beyond its business function? Or is it so deeply part of how we do our work that it is embedded inside what it takes to build a high performance corporate culture? 

We think smarter technology is essential to great corporate culture. Here’s why:

Agile Means Together, not Rogue.

Agile is a buzzword these days, but it’s often misunderstood. It does not mean people should go out on their own, acting fast and trying new things to see what happens. Agile work for a team actually requires a high level of coordination & commitment to a common cause. This requires an elegant balance of staying in touch and having enough room to breathe and get things done. Think Seal Team 6 or acrobats on a tightrope, not armies storming a castle’s front gates screaming with swords raised. 

Software like Slack, Dropbox, and Google Suite are designed to keep teams on the same page, aligned on next steps, and moving together in rhythm. Cloud Concinnity® is tailored to empower leadership to set the team direction, like a Seal Team Leader or the Circus ringmaster, with extra care around enhanced communication to emphasize security, process automation to curb busywork, and outcome measurement to track progress.

Systems Empower Free Thinking, not Hamper it.

Creative thinkers often buck at the idea of systems, spreadsheets, and measurement — and that makes sense. When wrongfully applied, systems can feel like a cage when they are really an untying of the ropes. Better technology doesn’t add busywork or increase repetitive tasks: it automates them to make room for creative thinking. 

When systems are running in the background, leaders can focus on what matters — strategy, performance and risk. Cloud Concinnity® does this by focusing on outcomes, automating the activities required to achieve them and providing a single secure hub for all necessary content, communications and intelligence.

Teams use Tools, not the Other Way Around.

When a team is small, staying on the same page is not hard. Four or five people talk enough to keep tabs on what each other is doing, and prompt each other to stay on task and aligned on things like timelines and quality. But once success and growth add people to the team, suddenly there are expectations, skill-levels, and understanding of the business are at all different levels. Tools need to evolve, change, and be added, and leadership styles need to change to keep up, as Julie Zhou points out in HBR. 

This is exactly why we shifted from consulting with leadership teams to building software for them. We know that the better an organization is at using software, the better that software can perform — and we went a step further, building industry best practices into the DNA of ours. That way when you use the tool you are guaranteed to be working at a high level. We think that’s smart, and it makes companies smarter, too!

Great Team Dynamics Are Critical to Success, not Just “Nice to Have.” 

Team dynamics are tough, whether it’s a team of two or a team of ten. In fact, data shows that 60% of new ventures fail due to problems with the team. It’s clear that growth depends on good team dynamics, and good team dynamics depends on all the gears of collaboration working together like a symphony.

Strong Technology Enables a Soft Touch, not Just to-do Lists.

We’re all busy and getting busier, with alerts and messages coming from all sides. And all too often when we do have some free time we use it to take on more tasks and get more done. At some point, it catches up to us. As HBR points out, managers and teams alike struggle with burnout. 

The solutions? Things like gratitude, compassion, and modeling self-care. While many leaders will “pooh-pooh” this as too touchy-feely for the corporate world, everyone from Deloitte to Harvard is telling us that these soft skills are the secret to success.

Technology that keeps us connected around tasks can also keep us connected around the gratitude, compassion, and self-care ideas we need to support ourselves when we’re not working as well. 

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Interested in how Cloud Concinnity® can make a difference for your team? Get in touch.

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5 Ways Focusing on Concinnity Makes Governance Sing

I served as the in-house counsel for a global pharmaceutical company that went through a rapid string of mergers during its growth process. Teams from different countries with staff speaking different languages were expected to adapt to working together, and fast. You can imagine the management challenges, ego clashes, and outright confusion as thousands of executives felt each other out and jockeyed for position. To say that different cultures had to come together would be an understatement.

In the midst of this, the company leadership brought the senior management together and sat us in the center of a great hall, encircled by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Wow. As the orchestra played, we all experienced what it physically feels like to hear and feel hundreds of strong, independent instruments come together as one harmonious whole. It was a literal experience of “concinnity.”

Concinnity is an elegant word that applies to great music and great corporate management alike, defined as “the skillful and harmonious arrangement or coming together of different parts of something.”

The experience of hearing all those sounds come together as one was powerful. 

The Lesson of the Conductor’s Baton

But even more powerful was the lesson of the conductor’s baton. 

Watching his baton, I saw that it was always a few seconds ahead of the orchestra. The conductor was showing everyone where they needed to go next, anticipating not just the music, but also how to guide each musician to do their individual part in a way that sounded right together as a whole. Yes, there was the sheet music that spoke to each of them personally — and then there was the baton that spoke to the group as a harmonious whole.

After that experience, I thought, how can we bake this experience into board work? How can we craft a subtle baton that guides the powerful independent players who make up every good leadership team? 

Imagine my delight, years later, at meeting my co-founder Nancy Falls and building Cloud Concinnity with our team. With the world changing at an ever-increasing rate, the only way to stay ahead of the puck is with good software. We simply can’t do it all alone — and good leaders know this.

Concinnity Makes Governance Sing

What I love about concinnity is this: 

1. The Harmonious Whole: Concinnity means a relentless focus on the harmonious whole, not on personal ego and fighting for credit. Success is in the coming together of the parts and competition with the outside world, not within the team.

2. Commitment to Best Practices: So many boardrooms and executives teams lean on “how we’ve always done things.” In the rapidly changing environment of today, that’s not good enough. Concinnity is inherently about a commitment to updating “how we do things” to align with current best practices.

3. Conversation as Default: Concinnity requires communication — early and often. Instead of keeping things to ourselves and sticking our heads in the sand for whatever reason, conversation and transparency become the default, helping everyone move through challenges much more quickly and as a team.

4. Clarity of Roles & Responsibilities: When everyone is clear on their personal starting point and the starting points of the team and company, everything moves forward in a synchronized fashion. And when the gears of governance are in sync, articulating and aligning with the greater mission becomes second nature, not guesswork. 

5. Give Leadership a Gentle Baton: Concinnity necessarily puts the baton the gentle hand of the leadership instead leaving those leaders scrambling to play catch up all the time. Governance can sing, and the music is beautiful.

We know that there are unprecedented levels of pressure on everyone in the boardroom and at the executive level. The old playbooks are crumbling and a new model is emerging. 

Streamlined access to information, efficient processes & engagement, and transparent outcome measurement are table stakes for playing the game of the future. Building the best practices for concinnity into the software itself is a master move. 

The sound of the orchestra is there for anyone to hear. Creating concinnity can make governance sing. The question is: will you listen to the lesson of the conductor’s baton?

Interested in how Cloud Concinnity can make a different for your team? Get in touch with us and we'll tell you how.

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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. To learn more about how Cloud Concinnity can help your board sing, visit https://www.theconcinnitycompany.com.

Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to the Concinnity newsletter today. 

5 Ways Smarter Technology Empowers Diversity in Corporate Governance

As we move toward a more visionary corporate governance and embrace emerging best practices in the industry, we see old playbooks and outdated thinking fall away one conference room at a time. A key element of this shift is inclusion and diversity in the boardroom and C-suite. For some, the shift toward inclusion and diversity is well-underway and the advantages are self-evident. For others, this nascent change is just getting started.

At every stage, we believe that intelligent technology can be end-to-end scaffolding for inclusion and board diversity in visionary corporate governance. In fact, the belief that smart technology is uniquely positioned to support the shift toward greater diversity in corporate leadership is one of the bedrock reasons our founders came together after decades of sitting in boardrooms and C-suites ourselves. A board portal alone is not enough. Cloud Concinnity® is the kind of smart technology that supports visionary leadership teams from end-to-end for building diverse intelligence into their boardroom and C-suite processes and dialogue. 

This is what smarter technology delivers:

1. Everyone Hits the Ground Running

Think back to when you started on your first board. Did anyone fully explain what your role as a board member was and what management would be doing? Or did you get a partial explanation and then… silence. Until, of course, you were expected to deliver value at that first board meeting. When any new person joins the board, they need to get up to speed before they can contribute. That’s just one way that having a diverse board is about more than having token women and minority professionals at the table. It’s about opening the room to a dialogue that actively recruits and incorporates a diversity of opinion and intelligence by getting everyone on the same page from day one.

Intelligent technology is built on the assumption that institutional knowledge needs to be passed on, and that passing it on is not the highest and best use of leadership’s time. Technology that lays out and reinforces roles & responsibilities of each board member starting on day one means far less confusion.  And when roles are changed, clarifying conversations of the changes being documented and shared promotes continued clarity.

2. Your Team Has Conversational Superpowers

The reality of modern work is that boards and leadership teams work remotely, while traveling and at asynchronous times. It can be a challenge to ensure that everyone’s opinion is included whenever it can be of value, especially during periods of innovation. The solution? An integrated technology that proactively draws diverse intelligence by pulling in everyone’s opinion and perspective when crafting strategy and guidance.

We built in the ability to have better asynchronous conversations by making sure that everyone has access to the most up to date information at all times. This creates a culture of elevated engagement by gaining input from the various perspectives. It also drives a culture of transparency in decision making that empowers leadership.

Emphasizing the need for other perspectives that are not our own when setting and re-evaluating strategy means diverse thinking becomes part of the DNA of everything you do. If this isn’t how your board operates today, this technology will meet you where you are.  It will introduce workflows that evaluate the perspectives now needed in the boardroom and gently drives the process towards supplying what has been missing. If this is already the habit in your organization, technology will make it easier. 

And imagine sitting down at your next board meeting with a strong habit of getting everyone involved in the conversation — online or off, that’s a conversational superpower.

3. You Always Remember The Right Questions

One of the biggest advantages that an inclusive and diverse board membership offers is intelligence by way of multi-faceted perspectives, and that means asking more of the right questions, every time. We believe in tweaking the “checklist manifesto”  thinking making sure we are always asking 360 degrees of questions. The result?  A diversity of opinion, perspective and voice becomes and remains a priority, no matter what the topic. 

When technology does the busywork, leadership has the freedom to think deeply. Time at your in-person meetings is preserved to really dig in to the diversity of opinion always waiting to make a team better.

4. Everyone Gets to Be More Human

Software exists to take work off of human shoulders. Instead of drowning in minutiae we need time and space to use our brains. A tool like Cloud Concinnity automates information-gathering checklists, keeps track of complicated timelines, and embeds best practices into every workflow so that it’s literally impossible to fall behind the curve.

Within Cloud Concinnity are workflows that ensure the board team is in sync with the best ideas in the industry. Coordinating hundreds of pieces of information to evaluate the state of the organization’s culture? SOX compliance? There’s a built-in workflow for oversight of that. Keeping current and past board information and notes in one place? There’s a built-in information workflow for that. Creating a forward-thinking and diverse board? There’s a board composition workflow for that. Indeed, technology can be a process-driver for change that gives us wings.

5. You Get to the Future First

Change can be overwhelming or empowering depending on how it is planned for and managed. As consultants, we spent much of our time coaching companies on updating their processes to take advantage of best practices. With Cloud Concinnity, we update the technology in line with best practices as they emerge so that our users are always in the lead.

This means staying out in front of changes in compliance, engagement, and self-measurement before you even know that those changes are happening. And that means making a commitment to diverse thinking that supports a truly visionary board and form of corporate governance. You don’t have to decide on each change — you just have to decide that you want to stay on top of best practices. We bake it into your experience so you are always out in front.

We are building this kind of powerful, robust future right now into the code of Cloud Concinnity, and we are already seeing teams make meaningful changes. Teams will use this kind of smart technology to bring greater diversity to the boardroom and empower more diverse voices and opinions as these new leadership teams come together. The future needs a visionary way to support and empower diversity in our leadership and corporate governance, and the way to make that future happen is coming into focus right now.

Interested in how Cloud Concinnity can support diversity on your team? Get in touch with us and we'll tell you how.

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The Concinnity Company™ provides boards and c-suites with technology and best practices. Cloud Concinnity® is the world’s first integrated board intelligence and management platform. To learn more about how Cloud Concinnity can help you get in front of digital transformation, visit https://www.theconcinnitycompany.com.

Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to the Concinnity newsletter today. 

5 Tactics for Getting in Front of the Digital Transformation

The digital transformation is happening. We see it everywhere we look — from the smartphone always in our pockets to the suite of software tools on our laptops. 

A recent Forrester study shows that business leaders are all over the map on what a digital transformation means. 56% of firms say they are transforming, while 21% say they are done. 22% say they are only now investigating or not transforming at all! As one respondent puts it…

“It’s a war between old-school technophobe leaders and the technology innovation that represents a completely different way of doing business.”

It’s here and it is real — and there will be winners and losers. Those companies with the willingness and foresight to believe in the digital transformation and figure out how to act on it will remain standing. Those who put their heads in the sand and fail to see the ongoing change that is our new reality will fall away like tumbleweed.

Here are 5 key tactics to start your team’s conversations about the digital transformation:

1. PLUG IN YOUR LEADERSHIP

Is your leadership plugged in? Are they plugged in to each other? The leadership of the company and of each department has to be using the same things and be willing and ready to make it happen all the time. Get buy-in first, then shift. 

Again, Forrester’s survey tells us that 45% of companies haven’t made SaaS investments yet. That is a shocking number when you think about how much time, money, and attention is saved when software takes work off of your plate.  When leadership is free to focus on forward-thinking strategy, companies will move ahead faster and leave resistant companies in the dust.

We are passionate about the board management part of that shift, building board intelligence beyond the board portal and baking best practices into the software itself. And our own leadership has ramped up our collaboration game as well, incorporating tools like Slack and Dropbox to streamline our days.

2. PUT CHANGE IN YOUR VEINS

One of the biggest barriers to understanding the role of technology in our collective business future is coming to terms with the idea that the transformation is ongoing. It is not something we implement and then walk away from — it is something we incorporate into everything we do. While IT and marketing departments are often out in front, smart technology can and will transform every department of a company. 

MIT’s Technology review tells us, with blunt truth: There’s no such thing as a “tech person” in the age of AI: We need to stop perpetuating the false dichotomy between technology and the humanities.

We love this quote and it speaks to all of us. We now live in a culture of transformation, at the office and at home, and technology is a big part of what is driving that transformation. 

So what does that mean when you think about your business? It means realizing that buying new tech is not the end, it’s the beginning. For new technology to be the culture change it can be, we have to train and adjust and reinforce. Making room for ongoing training is important, and making sure everyone on the team is fluent in the use of the new tech is critical to turning the wheels of productivity.

3. HACK YOUR CYBER RISK

Can you believe that only 31% of companies are worried about cyber-security? That means that 2/3 of us have a gigantic blind spot just waiting to let in a brutal slap in the face. Big companies like Target and Marriott know all too well how damaging a data breach can be to their reputation and business, not to mention the raw expense of cleaning one up.

Rashan Dixon has a great set of tips to get everyone at your business involved (not just the tech-savvy people), and this list gives you four steps you can take to get started with cyber-security. If you are at square one and really just want to get a ballpark gauge on what you should be thinking about, try Forrester’s quiz based on their Zero Trust model.

4. GIVE TRANSFORMATION A VOICE

Someone needs to own the idea of digital transformation at your company — and it’s not the IT department. Owning this idea Futurum’s 2018 Transformation Index reports that 40% of companies have a transformation team in place. That’s a great approach that brings in multiple perspectives. At the same time, every digital transformation starts at the top, with most people looking to the CEO and Boardroom to lead the way on this kind of transformation. A bold way forward is truly the only path that leads to the future.

When executive and boardroom leadership lead with vision and a team with their feet on the ground are researching and advocating for the best tactical SaaS and related changes, you can be sure that your company has the vision and action to stay on offense when it comes to the transformation.

5. LET THE EXPERTS KEEP YOU SHARP

Because digital transformation is an ongoing reality, keeping up with news, changes, and perspectives is critical. Aside from go-to digital publications like Fast Company and Forbes, here are a few of the sources we’ve come to trust:

• Wall Street Journal: The classic delivers with its dedicated digital section. 

• Forrester: It’s hard to beat a company focused on trends with a knack for sharing on-point insights. Relevant studies and articles appear at irregular intervals, but when they come they are fantastic.

• Harvard Business Review: Every week there is something in here that makes us think deeply about how the world of business in changing.

• MIT Technology Review: We love the deep dives that carry the attitude and rigor of their academic underpinning.

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The Concinnity Company™ provides boards and c-suites with technology and best practices. Cloud Concinnity® is the world’s first integrated board intelligence and management platform.

To learn more about how Cloud Concinnity can help you get in front of digital transformation, click here.

Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to the Concinnity newsletter today.

How a CEO Should Deal with Activist Investors

It’s no secret that activist investing is on the rise. Forbes even talks about a “golden age” of activist investing, while the Financial Times points to the next generation as a new wave entering the mainstream. But for CEO’s and management teams, activist investors have been lurking in the shadows since the 1980’s. Whether out for profit, a cause, or both, they are here to stay. 

The question is how can a CEO make sure that they see it coming, and make sure that when it happens they know how to respond? Are there benefits to activist shareholders? Or is it always a form of sinister takeover that every CEO needs to be on guard for at all times?

Here are 5 things every CEO needs to keep in mind when an activist investor (or 10) comes into your orbit:

1. Think Like an Activist

Just like teams need to think like customers to build good products, CEO’s need to take a minute to think like activists. Take note of what issues are hot in the world right now, and especially track the ones that overlap with your customers and products. 

What is taking up space in the columns of newspapers and blogs that investors are reading? What political trends are motivating the news? Let the trends and the media be part of your early warning system. Activist investors will like to be heard, and there’s a good chance their concerns or issues will pop up on your radar in advance — if you’re paying attention.

2. Keep Your Board Close

We talk about this a lot at our office, and it’s one of the core reasons why we started our company. CEOs who have great relationships with their board directors are able to respond with agility, power, and grace in the face of the unexpected. It’s literally why we built Cloud Concinnity®, so that management has a pipeline to build the habit of touching base with their board all the time.

This is especially true with activist investors. When one comes out of nowhere — or even when you see them coming — you want your board of directors informed, on your side, and communicating. That kind of support needs to be cultivated over time and be something you start doing in the good times, not when the crisis has already hit and the game is on.

3. Do they have a point?

Sometimes activist investors have a point, and it’s worth truly listening to what they have to say. For example, the CalSTRS fund is taking an activist position in pushing Apple to add better parental controls to iPhones. BlackRock is creating a new fund to target companies around climate change and wage issues. 

For CEOs, the takeaway is that activist investors can often be speaking for a growing public opinion that otherwise wouldn’t find its way into the boardroom. Ebay is learning from and reacting to activist investors as we speak – and the result is dividend payments and more corporate stock buybacks. Papa John’s has made a “white squire” activist investor their new chairman. When you have a moment, listen. Cultivating wisdom is one of our best practice imperatives – and wisdom comes in all different shapes and sizes. Don’t take an automatically defensive position.

4. It’s Not a battle, it’s a conversation

As activist investing grows more and more common, it also grows more diversified. Not every activist investing group will be as combative as the traditional “corporate raider.” Activist funds will care as much as anyone about stock price and won’t want anything to tank. Some activist investors will want a big change – some just want a seat at the table.

As the Harvard Business Review points out, “A manager who understands that activists really only have power when they have a lever to persuade other shareholders should engage early to learn whether the activists’ concerns resonate with the rest of the shareholder base.” In any case, approaching activist investors from a standpoint of acquiring knowledge and learning from them rather than treating them as an enemy is savvy and easier.

5. Have a Plan in Place

Regardless of how you feel about them, having a plan in place for activist investors is key. First, you need to have a way to monitor investors in your company that you are reviewing regularly. PepsiCo survived and thrived through an activist intrusion largely due to their CEO being ready for it. Our CEO, Nancy Falls, did this with the help of valuable shareholder consultants back in her days of managing investor relations. At a minimum, using a spreadsheet to track publicly available information on investors is a starting point for cultivating this kind of awareness. 

Cultivating a process for shared analysis that all board members look at periodically is something we encourage our clients to do in Cloud Concinnity – being prepared is one of the imperatives we teach as a Concinnity framework best practice. The form is not important – the habit and the practice will save you from that surprise phone call.

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The Concinnity Company™ provides boards and c-suites with technology and best practices. Cloud Concinnity® is the world’s first integrated board intelligence and management platform. To learn more about how Cloud Concinnity can help CEOs get an edge, visit us here.

Like what you’re reading? Subscribe to the Concinnity newsletter today.

Welcome David Rue as The Concinnity Company's new Chief Revenue Officer

We are thrilled to announce that David Rue is now The Concinnity Company’s Chief Revenue Officer. David is a seasoned financial services and stakeholder communications pioneer who has been helping companies navigate capital markets and stakeholder communications with cutting-edge technology for more than thirty years.

David joins us from Bass, Berry & Sims where he served for almost 10 years in a number of leadership roles, including strategy and the development of technology enabled legal solutions. Prior to joining Bass, Berry & Sims, he spent 20 years with global financial communications firm Bowne & Co. He held various senior sales, management and marketing roles in Nashville, Atlanta and New York, including creating new technology tools to advance efficiencies in communications with corporate stakeholders. In addition, he founded an early XBRL-enabled SEC filing software company and launched a software platform to facilitate required SEC reporting of insider securities transactions.

Nancy Falls, our CEO, summed up our excitement in this way:

“Anyone who knows David will realize what a game changer this appointment is to a company like ours. He specializes in building and introducing new technology solutions to the boardroom and c-suite, a uniquely challenging group to reach. David could not be more perfectly suited to our company as we grow. He has a deep understanding of our customers and their needs and an intense devotion to exceptional service.”

And David said this about our mission and our software platform: 

“I have witnessed first-hand the power of smart technology to dramatically improve the way organizations function and communicate. Cloud Concinnity® is just such a technology; brilliantly designed to navigate ever-increasing challenges in the way boards, management teams, and investors work together and serve their stakeholders.”

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We sat down with David…

to hear even more about how he approaches his work, why he sees now as the perfect time for a tool like Cloud Concinnity®, and what he loves about being part of the Nashville business community.

What do you love about working with leaders in the boardroom & c-suite?

I’ve seen numerous examples of extraordinary success in the leadership of organizations. In those examples the central themes have been strong personal relationships and excellent communication. The opportunity to support and foster success in those relationships through excellence in communication has been the primary source of satisfaction in all the work I’ve done in my career from my days at Bowne to my time at Bass, Berry. Cloud Concinnity® can be a tremendous tool to this end and I can’t wait to share it.

Why do you think now is the right time for a platform like Cloud Concinnity?

The evolution of technology and the continual increase in the demands on c-suite and board members has created an urgent necessity to change the way boards function. Cloud Concinnity® offers the essential elements of access, process, and outcomes, and is distinguished from other solutions in its unique approach to agile and impactful process. There is no other solution like it. 

What are you looking forward to about joining the Concinnity team? 

Undoubtedly the thing I look forward to most is engaging with the exceptionally talented team at The Concinnity Company and working together to serve our customers with brilliant technology, excellent service, and joy. 

What do you love most about living and working in Nashville?

Nashville has always had a strong sense of self. We’ve watched over the years as the city has grown in its unique ways; economically, musically, spiritually, and culturally. The pursuit of excellence in so many facets of the city is palpable and contagious—from hot chicken to country music to technology and healthcare. I think Nashville is the kind of city where, if you look around long enough, you’ll find yourself and you will have enjoyed the search. Also, it still has a little grit to it. Both my cars got stolen last week. 

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Read the official press release about David Rue’s appointment to The Concinnity Company. David was also mentioned in Morningstar, The Nashville Business Journal, and featured in the Nashville Post.

Interested in following David’s journey at The Concinnity Company? Subscribe to our newsletter today!

The Board Book is Dead: How to Escape the Board Book Trap

Not so long ago, serving on a board was an entirely different ball game than it is today.

There were meetings several times a year, with the board book coming in the mail a few days before the meeting. Yes, it was as thick as a brick. But there would be that PowerPoint presentation in the meeting telling you what management needed you to know. The conscientious board member invested time reviewing and making notes on the “brick” and participated in the meetings, but save for the occasional big crisis, there wasn’t much engagement outside of these episodes.

Fast forward to today: the average public company director now spends an average of 30 hours per month on board work. Private equity portfolio companies can demand even more. Similarly, management is spending more and more time preparing for precious board meeting time.

What happened?

ENTER: CHAOS

External factors arose which drastically changed the governance landscape. These forces have created a major challenge to the episodic nature of engagement in most boards.

Think: the financial crisis, digital transformation, healthcare consumerism, the MeToo movement, cyber risk, trade policy, GDPR, activist investors—these issues can rock the foundations of companies. And each has either cropped up or changed significantly in the past decade, to create an even more rapid rate of change. Boards are no longer just managing risk internally, they’re now forced to deal with tidal waves of change entirely outside the organization’s control.

We’ve seen companies that were unable to weather the storm: American Apparel with its CEO crisis, the Theranos and Wells Fargo fraud scandals, and Sears’ inability to adapt to shifts in its industry.

External chaos is the new normal in today’s business environment, creating unprecedented and risky levels of pressure on boards, c-suites, and investors.

How do boards adapt to what today’s crises and pace of change require of them?

DYNAMIC ENGAGEMENT

Constant external flux demands that today’s board be agile, engaging dynamically with their work.

“Dynamic” is defined as “characterized by energy or effective action.” Ineffective energy and action are swirling around every organization, requiring agility from boards to keep pace with the change.

Critically, to engage dynamically does not require that a board involve itself in the company’s day to day operations. A board’s primary function is still to provide governance and guidance over the organization’s strategy, risk, and performance. But for most organizations, external forces can now create or necessitate dramatic changes in strategy, risk, and performance nearly overnight.

Today’s boards now function in two key realities:

The Board Book Is Dead

No individual element of board work highlights the contrast between static and dynamic engagement better than a board book. No one would hold out a shred of hope for a company operating from a 600 page manual produced and reviewed once per quarter. So why do we expect boards to use one as the primary source of information on the company?

Dynamic engagement requires that necessary and relevant information is pushed to the board on a continual basis, and delivered in media directors are able to effectively consume. Printed manuals and in-person PowerPoint presentations aren’t agile means of disseminating critical information. Effective boards are creatively adapting the content, timelines, and methods used to share and digest information.

Engagement Is Multi-Threaded & Always On

Traditional board/management team dynamics revolve around quarterly/monthly board meetings, with the CEO and other execs taking questions and processing feedback—a process and cadence that certainly no one involved has ever thought to be optimal. Business environments simply change too quickly and frequently in today’s world for this to be effective.

Dynamic engagement means that as the board is made aware of information, they engage with the organization appropriately and respectfully without overstepping boundaries. Perhaps that engagement simply involves making an introduction, or providing feedback on strategy, but speed and agility are absolutely critical in order for the organization to move as quickly as  needed in order to remain competitive, or even better, grow. Board members often possess vast amounts of relevant information and knowledge, and quickly capitalizing on that asset is one of the biggest competitive advantages in many industries today.

HOW TO GET STARTED

The truth is that top-notch directors have always engaged dynamically, and top-notch boards have never relied on the board book alone. But the chaos of the business environment today makes agility a necessary survival skill for every board, not just a luxury of the upper echelon.

It’s critical that management facilitates a single, secure hub for this communication and information-sharing to take place. An effectively engaged board utilizing insecure communication poses just as big of a risk to an organization as boards who aren’t engaged at all.

That's why we built Cloud Concinnity. Request a demo with our team today and let us show you how we can help your board and management team engage dynamically and become more agile.

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The Evolving Role of the General Counsel

Today’s Evolving General Counsel Role, the Board, & Corporate Culture 

Today’s General Counsel role evolves at the same accelerated rate of change as the companies it serves. It has expanded from what we think of as the traditional role—of being the legal risk manager,  supplier of legal services—to include being an advocate for an ethical and inclusive company culture. One very revealing fact is that organizations with an ethical and inclusive corporate culture can reliably demonstrate two other factors: the GC is vocal within the organization about important cultural and legal issues and has a good relationship with her/his board. 

We can see an evolution of business culture articulated by institutional investors. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink’s 2018 letter to CEOs of the companies in which Blackrock invests was a powerful wake up call for boards to assert their role in linking long term strategic growth to the engagement of all stakeholders, more likely with a diverse board and inclusive culture. The fact that he titled it A Sense of Purpose speaks volumes. 

Business does not happen in a bubble – it happens in the same world where we all live and raise our families. Companies are being called upon to do more for their employees and for their communities in a way that is sustainable, and they are being held accountable for such change by their Boards, who are being held accountable by shareholders. Boards have more to do, as does management, as does the General Counsel.

THE MODERN GENERAL COUNSEL

As we navigate this boardroom culture shift, how has this shift expanded the role of the General Counsel? It has expanded four foundational responsibilities:

1. Compliance, Risk Management & Prevention

The General Counsel has always been the corporate officer who carries the water for legal compliance/legal risk management and helps the company navigate its way through legal challenges. Today’s GC has a responsibility not only to be the “defender in chief” but also to offer advice to keep the company out of trouble. One of the best ways to ensure legal compliance by business units is by setting the appropriate tone at the top. If an organization is intentional about establishing its corporate values as including integrity and ethics, that mindset should become part of business decision-making.

By advocating for that behavior within the organization and by developing a collaborative relationship with the Board in its setting and overseeing the corporation’s cultural ethical values, the GC is a crucial actor in the company’s ability to achieve its long term strategies. 

2. An Advocate for Reputation & Culture

Things can be “legal” but still not be advisable in light of stakeholder interests, or the company’s long-term goals. If something is strictly legal it may still harm the company's reputation. It is part of the GC’s role to advise and counsel the company not only about about legal risks but also about events and policy that could damage the company's reputation and culture. Encouraging companies to think about internal practices that affect the company’s reputation in its community, and that reflect on the corporate culture internally is within the purview of the evolving role of a GC, one who has regular access to the company’s board of directors. Advising on the impact of policies that shape culture is proactive risk management. 

3. Savvy Assistance in Decision-Making

Thinking through the legal and cultural ramifications of business decisions is not only proactive risk management – it’s smart business. The role of the GC has had to expand into being more business savvy in order to give relevant legal advice.

When I started my legal and business career, the General Counsel was viewed as the person who provided and managed the course of all of the legal services for the company. The larger the company, the more complex this role. As my career progressed and the world changed, the role of in-house counsel evolved. For the in-house lawyers to understand the legal risks involved, they needed to better understand how the business worked. They needed to understand the levers within the company.

Forward-thinking lawyers began to get more involved, often embedded within business units. Consequently, they grew to become counsellors in the truest sense of the term, to not only prevent problems before they could materialize, but to offer innovative legal strategies that supported the business goals. The more I understood about business processes, the more the business people trusted that I was helping them figure out the best way to get their projects done, on time, under budget and without legal repercussions. It became possible for me to raise aspects of their projects they had not considered.

With the increased rate of disruption in the marketplace, the General Counsel is often in the best position to proactively advise the business decision makers about regulatory change that could affect business operations or new products being developed. That additional business advisory role complements and informs the GC’s broader role as an advocate for a culture of legal compliance and broader corporate values—always a great tactic for proactive risk management. 

4. Encouraging an Inclusive Culture

Business leaders are in their positions because they are visionaries who get things done. But the same things that make them successful there mean that sometimes they don't think about all of the issues.  

Today’s GC realizes the importance of diversity in decision making, and that having diversity in the workplace and on Boards is not enough. There needs to be a culture of inclusion, so that the Company gets the benefit of hearing varying perspectives that come from diverse voices. That includes having a Board that appreciates the perspective of a forward thinking GC, that she/he has life experience, business knowledge and a framework for thinking about the world that is unique and valuable. Someone who thinks about risk management and long-term implications first will see not just red flags, but also opportunities where a C-Suite and board may have a blind spot.

Being someone who is willing to speak up and advocate as part of the chorus of diverse boardroom voices may very well benefit the company’s bottom line as well as help keep it out of trouble.

Making room for things like Legal Risk Prevention, Advocacy of Reputation and Culture, Savvy Assistance in Business Decision-Making, and Encouraging an Inclusive Culture mean that today’s General Counsel is more than a legal mind—today’s GC is a critical part of setting the tone at the top and driving the corporate culture in a beneficial direction, one in which leadership is intentional about creating longterm, sustainable shareholder value and in being more responsive to stakeholders.

The State of Boardroom Strategy

Ever changing and ever-present risks are plaguing the boardroom. What steps are being made to tackle them?

A Statistical Snapshot On Boardrooms in 2017

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For a deeper dive into the evolving thinking around this evolving role, explore these reports:

• ACC: Chief Legal Officers Survey (2018)

• ACC Global Summit: Achieving Trust and a Positive Work Culture (2018)

• Raconteur: Including general counsel could prevent scandal (2018)

• Columbia Law School: How General Counsel Are Becoming More Essential in the C-Suite (2017)

• Bloomberg Law: Why the Role of General Counsel Is Expanding (2016)

• Harvard Law School: Lawyers as Professionals and as Citizens: Key Roles and Responsibilities in the 21st Century (2014)

5 Things Boards of Disruptive Companies Need to Watch

Anyone watching Silicon Valley companies lately knows that every disruptive breakthrough that redefines a market can turn around and disrupt their own growth if no one is paying attention.

Uber’s absentee board for much of Kalanick’s tenure is one example. The litany of privacy concerns and questions now plaguing Facebook is another.

Indeed, the things that make tech entrepreneurs great at disrupting industries can also plant legal landmines if no one on the inside is watching their back.

By the time we read about these stories in the news, it usually feels like someone inside should have seen it coming and done something – and that means either no one did (which is scary), or someone did and didn’t do anything about it (which is scarier).

Here’s what boards should be paying attention to for disruptive companies.

1.    The Charisma Trap 

All too often, charismatic founders ride on charm and chutzpah. That plays great in the media, but not so great in the world of governance. It’s the board’s responsibility to make sure that the glad-handing and bluster that plays well with the camera is backed up by legally sound paperwork and best practices. Founders aren’t supposed to know all of that stuff – the board is. And it’s the board’s responsibility to speak up, not get swept up. Uber could have saved itself a lot of bad press and a year of backsliding if they had taken action early on Kalanick, or even seen it coming and stepped in long before it became an issue in the media.

2.    Pushing the Envelope Too Far

Facebook is the current poster-child for this, but they are certainly not the only one. Have they finally pushed the privacy envelope too far to keep growing and save face? We’ll see. What we do know is that they repeatedly get in trouble for not putting the privacy of their users first. That’s the kind of thing the board should be pushing for – and it falls squarely in the lap of the modern general counsel.

3.    Skipping Stakeholders 

Stick around the Concinnity blog long enough and you’ll hear us talk about how important it is to mind the stakeholder gap. A disregard for stakeholders is an abdication of the basic responsibilities of a board. Every Board of Directors has a responsibility to identify who all of the stakeholders are in the organization and make sure that their interests are taken into account when decisions are made. With disruptive companies, it can be easy to ignore one or more sets of stakeholders in the name of speed and progress. Don’t. Executives, employees, customers, and suppliers all deserve a voice. It’s the board’s responsibility to give them one, and make sure the company leadership is listening.

4.    Not Preparing Culture to Grow

Startups have a reputation for emphasizing fun, flexible work cultures. That is great for internal team morale and cohesion, but it cannot come at the expense of planning for the structural and systematic requirements of growth. If a company succeeds, growth follows. And with that growth comes a larger staff and a team that will rapidly grow beyond the initial group of 10 or 12 employees. When the company hits 100, things will change a lot. When they hit 1,000, they’ll have changed again. The board can play an important role in emphasizing that the internal culture needs to adapt along the way, not ignore what’s happening and hope for the best.

5.    Letting Legal Lag

Growth will also mean governance realities and challenges most startup founders don’t even know exist. People start disruptive companies because they dream of making a difference, not because they dream of filing paperwork or dealing with SOX regulations. It’s not the job of executives to learn all that stuff -- It’s the board that needs to sound the alarm and help prepare the leadership to do what is necessary so that they can keep leading and growing the company.

Disruption is not doomed to fail.

Disruption can indeed be well-supported and done right.

The key is a strong board full of smart people who know their role and are willing to speak up.

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How The National League of Women Voters and The National Football League Found Concinnity

Not long ago I heard a story at a board colleague’s retirement dinner that made me smile

At the retirement dinner in late 1984 the staffs of both the National League of Women Voters and the National Football League were busy going about their respective businesses. Unbeknownst to them, their worlds were about to collide.

The League was hard at work getting agreement between the campaign staffs of Walter Mondale and Ronald Reagan on the particulars of the fall presidential debates, something which, I understand, is about as easy as negotiating a major trade agreement. At long last the dates were settled and the staff went about the process of notifying the media. Almost immediately the president of the League of Women Voters received a phone call from a senior executive with ABC television.

As it turns out, ABC had the rights to broadcast the Sunday night NFL games that year, and the campaigns and the League had picked a time for one of the debates that conflicted with an already scheduled NFL game.

The ABC executive was in a real pickle, and he let that be known in no uncertain terms. ABC was contractually obligated to the NFL to broadcast the game; violating that contract would have cost the network millions of dollars. But broadcasting in a time slot conflicting with the presidential debates amounted to public relations suicide. He was hoping to convince the League of Women Voters to change dates.

The reality was that the league president was between her own rock and hard place: bringing the Mondale and Reagan campaigns back to the negotiating table would be no easier than renegotiating an NFL broadcasting contract.

So the president of the League of Women Voters had a better idea, much to the shock of ABC. Why not just call the NFL commissioner and talk it over? Undoubtedly a good percentage of the NFL audience wanted to watch the debates and, no doubt, there were plenty of voters who would be torn between the debates and the game, which is to say these two leaders had a number of stakeholders in common.

They needed a skillful, harmonious, and elegant way to piece together the various parts of this shared dilemma. They needed concinnity. And they got it. With the help of the commissioner, the debates were moved up a half an hour and the game was moved back. Everyone gave a little, and everybody won.

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The 10 Most Common Corporate Governance Mistakes

EFFECTIVE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE IS A HALLMARK OF ANY HIGH-PERFORMING BOARD AND EXECUTIVE TEAM.

We believe that governance and leadership are the most important ingredients for high-performing organizations, and of course, governance is half the battle, although often overlooked.

Below are the ten most common corporate governance mistakes we typically see:

1. Failure to clarify roles and responsibilities between the CEO/C-suite and the board.

2. Failure to get the right people around the boardroom table, fully engaged, and doing the right things.

3. Failure to develop a consensus in detail about where you are, where you are going, and how you will get there.

4. Failure to tend carefully to the interests of multiple, diverse stakeholders.

5. Failure to be deliberate about exactly what information the board needs to do its job.

6. Failure to be clear on the board’s responsibility for culture and its role with the CEO in managing and changing it.

7. Failure to get CEO and C-suite compensation right.

8. Failure to understand CEO (and C-suite) need for a coach and the board’s very different role as a boss.

9. Failure to appreciate the inevitability of CEO, C-suite, and boardroom turnover, and inadequate efforts to keep it positive.

10. Failure to actively cultivate wisdom in the boardroom: thinking vs. doing, reflecting vs. reacting, compassion vs. insensitivity and uncaring.

Each of these mistakes has its origins in a failure to be deliberate in pursuing consensus, working together in harmony, and approaching corporate governance through concinnity.

Step one to resolving these issues is certainly awareness, but an important second step is accepting that good governance is a journey, whether you have deep experience or are new to it. Those who do it well seek sustained excellence and appreciate the journey, and by no means adopt an attitude of “been there, done that.” And of course, achieving good governance is a journey you take with other board and executive team members who may or may not share your depth of experience or views.

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