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.

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.

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. 

To drive meaningful change, it is essential that leaders have broad awareness and be willing to admit that the status quo does not work. If a leader cannot bring him/herself to admit to being aware of the the very obvious visible to all around us, should they really be leading anything?

The theme "be prepared" recurs in so many areas in life, I keep expecting to see it in action. And every once in a while there are some stellar examples of preparation winning the day even if at great cost to the other side that believes in "winging it".

While business is already grappling with the need to deliver greater accountability towards the societal context they operate in, politics in liberal democracies is due an overhaul.

I pick social commentary, business books, quirky books on popularity, a business novel and poetry. Most are not on popular lists. Which is why this list is worth a read.

The cost of implementing some form of AI today is minuscule compared to the opportunity cost of inaction. After all not implementing AI today will not defer the future.