Small data, protecting kids online, metabolite surveillance, and tech nihilism are this week’s picks.

Startup founders make some common mistakes when they seek to build boards and good governance for their companies. They are preventable and fixable.

Startups have a governance problem but it is solvable with good strategic thinking and knowledge of what to expect from board directors.

Employers need to be proactive about addressing the challenges of grief, bereavement and trauma faced by employees.

Trying to control things is largely futile and suboptimal. Death, the only certainty in life, is unpredictable and out of our control. The acceptance of that truth is immensely clarifying.

A board’s most important task is to ask regularly if it is itself fit for purpose. That requires, above all, a deep sense of self-awareness and metacognition, a skillset no boards seem to be seeking actively in their search for new directors.

Small businesses need good governance for financial and social sustainability, but are not always able or willing to build governance capacity or brook independent challenge.

In the face of triggers and minor aggravations, we have a choice. We can feed the wolf or we can take a pause. Because the wolf you feed is the wolf that feeds on you.

The lack of experience holding board-keen people back is a real challenge. Advising inexperienced board-keen people to try and become charity board directors is not the answer. 

When evaluating job offers, think of the role, the degrees of freedom, the culture. But real wealth will come if you know how to deliver real, positive and sustainable impact with all of these.