What I Know Now
Notes from 35 years in the Boardroom
People get promoted into senior roles, then left to work out for themselves how to get good at them. That is slow and expensive, and it does neither the person nor the business justice.
It happened to me at every level of my own career. I have yet to see an SME do it well. It’s difficult.
Last year Invest NI asked me to spend half a day with twenty CEOs and business owners on their Leaders Programme, talking about how to professionalise a board. Afterwards one of them, someone who had built her own business over twenty years and sold it, told me she wished she had sat through it five years earlier. She would have done a lot of things differently, and better.
I started writing notes, so the group would have something to keep. The notes turned into stories. The stories turned into this.
I have worked at board level for more than 35 years, across around fifty businesses. Fifteen of those as a serving director, MD, CEO, chair or investor. The rest as mentor or advisor, over sustained periods rather than a handful of meetings.
Nearly everything worth passing on came from the things that did not go the way I hoped. Those are the ones in here.
It is written for people already doing the job who know they could do it better, and for people getting ready to step into it.
Not to teach you my lessons. To help you recognise your own.
There is nothing in it I haven’t lived. Each chapter ends with one question for you to answer for yourself.
Why it costs anything
I wrote it to share, not to sell. But nobody values what costs nothing, so there’s a price on it.
I didn’t want that price read as a commercial motive, so every penny I receive goes to Northern Ireland Children’s Hospice. That was decided on the spot at an event where I heard someone from the Hospice describe what the money pays for.
The book is the tool. Sharing the experience is the point.
Pass it on
The book closes by asking who else around your table could use it. The same applies here.
If you read it and it helps, the useful thing is not to tell me. It’s to recommend it to someone earlier in the journey than you, or to mention it to whoever runs the leadership programme you sit on.
About the author
An engineer by training. Thirty-five years at board level across manufacturing, food, retail and engineering.
I chair two Northern Ireland businesses and mentor owners and chief executives. Fifteen boards as a serving director over thirty-five years, four of those as CEO and another four as chair. From start-ups to over £100m companies. The largest employed nearly 800 people. The smallest board had four directors.