Australia’s Financial Review recently featured a call for digital natives on corporate boards. The author pointed to Clara Shih, Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer as examples that other countries and companies should emulate.
Naturally, I agree wholeheartedly with the author’s call to action. And I will add to it a question: “Once your board has its digital native, how will you engage him/her effectively?”.
It is not as simple as bringing a young, tech-savvy hotshot on board. Once recruitment has taken place, more needs to be done:
- On-boarding and mentorship: Set up every new director with a robust orientation experience. Continue the support by assigning the new recruit a mentor, ideally a seasoned director who is curious about digital strategy.
- Board agenda: Collaborate with the new director to help create a digital issues list for board discussion. Use this list when building the agenda for board meetings and strategy off-sites.
- Governance training: Your digital native may be relatively inexperienced with governance basics. Round out their strengths via enrolment in the Institute of Corporate Directors’ Director Education Program or The Directors College Chartered Director program.
What else would you do to ensure digital leadership on your board of directors?
