243. What are we afraid of?

This season, every episode of OMG focuses on a question that directors really need to answer. OMG is written, produced, narrated and scored by Matt Fullbrook.   TRANSCRIPT: Question #41: What are we afraid of? I wonder if you’ve noticed something that I’ve started to notice lately. There’s a bit of a trend among people who think and speak and write about corporate governance where some of them seem to be trying to pathologize the way that people behave in boardrooms. For example, classifying boardrooms as places where people are scared to speak up and where systemic power structures make it impossible for directors to call out bad behaviour or question status quo. Now, that might all be true. I’m no expert on fear. But in my experience it seems much more likely that everyone in the room is just doing their best, but the problem is that they’re doing it only within the narrow scope of what counts as normal when it comes to boardroom processes and behaviours. And that, to me, is the fear: boards are often afraid to try new things. This, of course, gets reinforced by regulators and institutional investors who are often trying to impose more and more boxes for boards to tick. It’s all mostly fine, I guess. Except we have no real evidence to suggest that those boxes are any good, let alone “best”. Here’s what I’m getting at: what’s something your board would really like to change or try, but is afraid to give it a shot because it might not conform with “best” practice or the expectations of the regulators or institutions? What might it take for us to give it a shot anyway?