Governance In An Age Of Asymmetric Threats

Over the past few years, governance and the board have become a greater part of our work. The drivers are many (including regulatory), but some others include:

1. A need for risk ownership at the top.

2. “Build more controls” doesn’t work in an asymmetric threat and uneven enforcement environment.

3. We’re losing - corruption, fraud, and other ills (greenwashing to human trafficking) are not waning; in some cases, they’re exploding.

4. Expecting one person (or a small team) in ethics, risk, compliance, ESG, business integrity (whatever else you call it) to stave off all the baddies is wildly unrealistic, especially as budgets shrink.

5. If that one person or team doesn’t have ‘top cover’ (support), a leadership team incentivised to hit targets will do as they please; ethics will come second.

In this setting, the old model board isn’t doing terribly well. Part of that isn’t their fault. We’re all drowning in data. Board packs now overflow with guff, as it’s always easier to add that to be concise (”I didn’t have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead,” Mark Twain).

For example, if you present the board with data including product returns, rework requests, absenteeism, hotline usage, turnover, or the results of the latest engagement survey, most of that is useless without context. What isn’t reported, what does good/bad (baseline) look like, and crucially, why are there anomalies (different sites with similar operations reporting divergent patterns), inconsistencies, gaps, or spikes/dips?

In prior posts, I’ve spoken about the distinction between knowledge (in this case, vast amounts of reporting data) and wisdom (what matters, what it does/doesn’t tell us, what to do or not do, etc.).

I went a bit further in a recent essay for Wiley’s Board Leadership publication. In the article, you’ll find:

1. Why boards keep reinforcing the risks they can see while missing the cultural and behavioural clues that actually bring companies down.

2. How “my door is always open”, and box‑ticking compliance quietly shut down real speak‑up and drive misconduct further underground.

3. The simple questions and dull‑sounding metrics (rework, exceptions, backlogs, uneven reporting) give an earlier sight of brewing problems than glossy dashboards ever will.

4. Why high performance combined with low engagement is one of the most reliable early clues of corner‑cutting, burnout, and fraud.

5. How to use AI to connect scattered clues across functions and geographies with a shared risk schema, so boards get to better questions faster instead of drowning in summaries.

If you don’t have a subscription but would like to read more about how to optimise governance and boards in the ‘knowledge’ overwhelm era, message me (button below) or comment “governance”.