Is Your Board Fit for the Future? — with guest Peter Gleason

Pam Harper: The pace and scale of change is accelerating. Now is the time for you to ask, "Is our board fit for the future?" Find out what it takes. Join us for episode 188 of Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper.

Chris Curran: This episode is brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated, enabling successful leaders and companies to accelerate to their next level of success. On the web at BusinessAdvance.com. And now, here's Pam and Scott.

Pam Harper: Thanks, Chris. I'm Pam Harper, Founding Partner and CEO of Business Advancement Incorporated, and sitting right across from me as always is my business partner and husband, Scott Harper. Hi Scott.

Scott Harper: Hi Pam. It's great to be with you again on Growth Igniters Radio, and as always, our purpose is to spark new insights, inspiration, and immediately useful ideas to help visionary leaders to accelerate themselves — and their companies — to their next level of game-changing innovation, transformation, and growth.

Now, Pam, it's kind of notable that so many conversations we have these days include some variation of, "If I could only have predicted a couple of years ago, how everything would change now, I'd be so much better off." But yeah — none of us can predict the future, but we can anticipate it.

Pam Harper: Yes. And it's especially urgent for boards and management to be aware of and in sync about the top issues their company faces as the world is changing more profoundly than ever. This enables our companies to rapidly and effectively respond to the new needs.

Just one example is that the first Coronavirus vaccines came to life much faster than many people expected.

Scott Harper: Yes, it's not magic, though. People say, "Oh, it happened so fast." But that's because years ago the boards and management of Pfizer and Moderna saw the emerging need to protect against novel viruses as quickly as possible. They greenlit the continuous development of the technology platforms for these vaccines like the SARS-CoV-19 vaccine years ago. They were looking ahead.

Pam Harper: That's right. And of course, there are many other issues that impact the future and what boards and CEOs need to be looking at now in order to be responsive to the changing needs of the future. Someone who can shed new light on these issues is our returning guest, Peter R. Gleason, CEO of the National Association of Corporate Directors. He is a recognized expert in board leadership and corporate governance issues and serves as a member of NACD's national faculty. Peter is regularly quoted in the national media and is a frequent presenter on the subjects of corporate governance, executive and director compensation, risk, strategic planning, and board shareowner relations.

Pam Harper: He served as a commissioner on every NACD Blue Ribbon Commission report issued since he joined NACD in the year 2000. Today, we'll discuss highlights from the report "Fit for the Future." However, there are a number of other Blue Ribbon Commission reports that address issues such as adaptive governance, culture as a corporate asset, the Strategic-Asset Board, and long-term value creation, among many others. You can see much more about Peter's background by going to GrowthIgnitersRadio.com, Episode 188, and scrolling down to Peter's bio.

Peter, welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio! It's been a while, but this is such a timely topic. Tell us a little bit about what prompted the Blue Ribbon Commission to create this report about leading boards into the future.

Peter Gleason: Well, thanks, Pam. It's great to be with you again. And hello Scott; It's good to be with you.

Scott Harper: Hi there, Peter.

Peter Gleason: This report, we released in October of 2019; it takes about a year to put these reports together. So we gather 25-30 different experts -- CEOs, directors, subject matter experts -- and convene them multiple times over the course of the year and draft these reports. So it takes about a year, and we were actually looking at this from the beginning of 2019 until its release in October of 2019.

And what we were looking at was the lens through which boards had to look at the change that was occurring around them and that intensifying business element that all companies were facing. We were looking at shifts in the marketplace, global competition, demographics changes, regulatory changes, and especially at the time, technology changes and how fast things were moving and changing for businesses as a whole.

Peter Gleason: And that meant that boards had to rethink how they were engaging differently. So the impetus was really how do we think about what companies will need in the future as they face all these different changes. And they face them pretty much simultaneously right now. So that was the challenge that we put in front of the commission: how do we need to rethink and re-look at how we operate both as boards and the companies that we oversee?

Pam Harper: It's interesting how you almost knew in advance exactly what we were going to be seeing today in the days of the pandemic. I mean, 2019 seems like so many years ago, but it's just as relevant now. Tell us a little bit about why "fit for the future" is considered an urgent imperative.

Peter Gleason: Well, again, it was the speed of change. And to your point, Pam, it's interesting that we had no idea that we were staring down the barrel of a global pandemic at the time. We were really looking at things from a business perspective: how do we need to start thinking about these changes that are happening in front of us?

So the imperative was we can't sit back and let the change happen to us. We need to figure out how we manage through this effectively. And that changes relationships; it changes dynamics. It changes how boards interact with management. And that's the urgency that we were really trying to push towards -- to make sure that we were having boards think about "what do we have to do differently?" That's the imperative that we were pushing up against.

Scott Harper: Right. We have a favorite saying that we use all the time. "If you don't change the game, the game is going to get changed for you." That forward-thinking is absolutely important. The thing is here, as you've said, there are so many things going on all at the same time; what's the most impactful challenge? If you can, pick one or two challenges for boards and management teams to face in this age of rapid changing what you call "megatrends."

Peter Gleason: Yeah. And it's a great question, Scott, because I think the challenge was that these aren't new. Some of these things aren't new. Global competition's always been there; that's not something that is going to throw people off. The demographics shifts in the marketplace, yeah, those happen as we go through generation after generation. Not that big. The technology piece, I think was the one that was really challenging. Again, to the current environment that we're operating in, I look back a year ago right now is just about when most companies were moving into the virtual world. I'll use my own company as an example, the beginning of March we were thinking about, "Maybe we should be testing out whether our staff can effectively work remotely."

Peter Gleason: And we had set up our IT team to start testing our systems, and literally a week later we pulled the plug and said, "Okay, we're going roll out tomorrow and we just got to be ready." That happened to companies all around the world and it was instantaneous. So all the technology trends that we had been thinking about looking at, trying to react to, all of a sudden we switched over and actually implemented technology changes when most of us weren't sure they were really going to work as well as they have. And it forced adaptation. My workforce as a whole has been remote now for almost a year. When we were talking about could one or two people be working remotely effectively, immediately we had hundreds of people working remotely effectively, and every company around the globe did pretty much the same thing.

Peter Gleason: It forced adaptation both at the management level, at company level, and at the board level, because all boards are now meeting virtually. And that was not something that was a regular practice either. So when you talk about the challenges, it's really how well can you adapt and how well can you pivot the whole organization to be reacting to some of these changes that are in front of us.

Scott Harper: And when you have no choice, you change or you go under. The real challenge is adapting to the future and being ready for things that might come on the horizon when you're not being thrown into the deep end, then you have, "How do we do this without delaying too much or getting distracted by other things?"

Peter Gleason: Yeah. And it's interesting as we think about how we have reacted. You think about how we've pivoted strategies, how we've rethought supply chains in the pandemic. How we've rethought our communications and how we've rethought our board and management relationships. Because I think that's one of the other challenges that comes into play. And that's one of the things that we were focused on when we were looking at this report is how do we have the boards engage more deeply without crossing that line into the management sphere?

Peter Gleason: And when you're pushing for change, when you're thinking about how do we respond and you want to have everybody as active as possible, you still have to create that boundary between what the board does and what management does because when they get crossed and you have the board functioning as management, you can create a lot of problems. So it was very much how do we engage differently?

Pam Harper: Exactly in fact, because we have so many listeners who are CEOs, we want to make sure that we emphasize this particular aspect and we'll do that throughout this episode. But in terms of everything that you've been talking about so far with these challenges, how would you say that it's impacting the expectations for board and management performance?

Peter Gleason: Well, again, I think that's one of the reasons we went after this topic as immediately as we did, was the rising expectations. If you look at how the markets have been reacting to anything that goes wrong at a company over the last decade, we'll even say, it's been first, what's the problem? Second, where was the board? And you see it in headlines, in the newspaper, every time something bad happens. It's, "Why wasn't this detected earlier and who's responsible for not detecting it?" And I think that was one of the reasons we were really looking at how do we create a dynamic between the board and the management team that allows us to be more reactive to address the expectations of the marketplace.

Peter Gleason: And as you said, Pam, the rising expectations of performance. So it really is how do we shift that relationship a little bit so that the board and management are much more closely aligned. They're rethinking their strategies on a regular basis. And they're really thinking, "Do we have the right people here on our board?" And that's where that the name comes in the title of the report was, Are we Fit For The Future? Do we have the right people sitting around this table to be able to think about those issues, address those issues, and help the company move forward?

Pam Harper: And those issues keep changing. One of the things that I especially appreciated about the report is that there's in-depth background about the implications specifically in certain areas. And that's what we're going to talk about after the break. When we come back, we're going to dig deeper with Peter Gleason, CEO of National Association of Corporate Directors, about some of the new criteria that the Blue Ribbon Commission recommends for selecting and evaluating CEO's, creating relationships and more. Stay with us.

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Pam Harper: Welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper -- that's me -- and Scott Harper. Today, Scott and I are speaking with Peter Gleason, CEO of the National Association of Corporate Directors about the importance of boards and top executive teams working together in some new ways to be fit for the future. Peter, how can people find out more about National Association of Corporate Directors?

Peter Gleason: Well, there's a lot of different ways, but probably the primary ways to go right on our website at nacdonline.org. But you can also follow us on LinkedIn. You can follow us on Facebook. we're all over social media as well.

Pam Harper: Okay. And can actually get an executive summary of the report?

Peter Gleason: Yeah, you can get to an executive summary of the report and you can download it off our website.

Pam Harper: Okay. And you can also get a link to all of that by going to GrowthIgnitersRadio.com, Episode 188. So now let's talk about some of these implications that are in the report. And the first one that caught my attention was the recalibration of roles between boards and management. How is this different from previous times? Because we've spoken before and recalibration has come up a couple of other times as well.

Peter Gleason: Well, to our earlier discussion, I think it starts with the relationship between the board and the CEO and how do they rethink and draw some boundaries around what's the board going to do? What's the management team going to do, but how are we going to communicate differently so that we are on top of all these issues and we have a much tighter relationship than we've ever had before. Because you want the CEO to be in charge obviously, but you also want to garner that experience at the board level where you have 10, 12, however many board members you have with a skill set and an expertise that they bring to the table that you can leverage. And so the CEO should be leveraging the insights and the knowledge of the board members on a regular basis. But number one, it's imperative that you have that tight relationship between the board and the CEO to start that with.

Pam Harper: So in this age of COVID-19 and remote working, it's a little bit harder to get together in person, a lot harder. Are you finding technology is helping or is it making that challenge a little bit more challenging?

Peter Gleason: It's definitely helping. Interestingly enough and I think, we've talked about the digital adaptation of boards and of management. There was always a challenge and wondering whether boards would be as digitally successful as they have been. And as we were talking about being thrown into the fire, so to speak, I think that's how you phrased it, Scott is you got to swim when you're thrown into the deep end and you got to do it fast. And I think boards and management in this virtual environment have really come up to speed pretty quickly with their ability to be in a virtual environment.

Peter Gleason: Interestingly enough, as we went through the pandemic, we're still in it obviously, but as we started in it and companies were feeling the impact of the economic difficulties and the operating difficulties that they were faced with, boards met more often than they used to meet. We're looking at each other now on this video screen, even though you can't see us in the podcast, but that's the way boards are interacting now. And they do it with a lot more ease than we thought was capable early on, and a lot more frequency.

Peter Gleason: So we're seeing more meetings more often. And especially when you think about the financial impact, that lot of companies went through whether they were doing layoffs, or they were having operating losses, those audit committees of the board were probably meeting just as often as they could to make sure that the board members were up to speed with what exactly is happening at the company where the struggling points are and how do we address them on a real-time basis. And so the technology side of this has actually been a tremendous benefit to companies to be able to have that connectivity that they may have had to wait for in the past where they waited for that next meeting, or they waited for the schedules to align. Now, you don't have to travel. So you can hop on a call really quickly, see the face-to-face with the management team and the board, and you can do it more often than we ever have before.

Pam Harper: Here's a positive.

Scott Harper: Now, Peter, in addition to becoming more tech-savvy, another implication that caught my attention in the report was this issue of board renewal. Ensuring that there's a good balance between the expertise in board members, especially on emerging issues, and balancing that with the relevant past experience. Can you talk to us a little bit about that and how's that different from how things used to be?

Peter Gleason: Well, I think it's just faster Scott, and that's really what it gets to is the speed of change that we've all had to adapt to and that we're all facing on a regular basis. What we're looking at is are the boards positioned right? So are they fit for the future? Do we have the right people sitting around the table at the right time and are they contributing the right way? So as we look forward and we look at all these challenges that companies are facing and I'll put companies broadly because the boards are part of that component. But as you think about the global competition, as you think about the speed with which technology has changed how we do business, do the people sitting around the table have the right skill sets to enable us to move forward? And how do boards look at that refresh?

Peter Gleason: How are they looking at the assessment of whether we have the right talent and skills? And if we don't, how do we go get those talents and skills and how do we engage them differently? And the other component to this that's really important is this notion of a constant refresh of the people themselves. So it's not that we're necessarily switching bodies out because we need a different set of skills to address a different issue every time one run comes up, but are the board members themselves refreshing their capabilities? Are they continuous learners? Are they going back to school to a certain degree to go to programs, to understand the different issues, to get a little more depth and knowledge around each one of these potential things as a continuous learner?

Peter Gleason: And that's one of the reasons we've also launched our certification program, which focuses on a continuing renewal of people's education. So we have a continuing education requirement built into our certification that you have to do so many courses, so many hours of continuing education to keep that certification fresh and to recertify every two years. You have to do 32 hours of continuous education. So that's an output of this report was as we built our certification program, we thought we focused heavily on that recertification and the continuous education side of it.

Scott Harper: And that takes a real mindset shift for some people. It becomes part of how you select your board members. Are they willing to go through that effort and to be intellectually curious and contribute in material ways.

Peter Gleason: Right. And I think that is a challenge and it is a shift, Scott. You're absolutely right. We look at directorship as a profession and it's never been looked at that way before. It's always been almost honorary. You go to a certain point in your career, you get tapped to be on a board. You lend your expertise. We look at it as a profession. The expectations, Pam, to your earlier question are higher. The accountability is there.

Peter Gleason: There's a real need to have that expertise be put forth in the boardroom, to have those discussions, to dig deeper, and to have that expertise put into dialogue with the entire board and the management team to help the companies move forward. And that is a professional-level job. And that's why we've created the certification and the continuing ed requirement because it's got to be refreshed on a regular basis.

Pam Harper: So to do that, you can't be on too many boards. It would be pretty hard to do. 

Peter Gleason: Yeah. And I think those days are long gone. We're generally seeing now companies themselves are looking at it and saying, "If I'm looking at Scott Harper to be on my board and Scott's already on three, four boards." "Even if they're a couple of them are private companies and/or nonprofits, it's the time commitment. How much time can Scott possibly devote to my company if he's got all these other commitments out there?" And the time commitment, as we said in this pandemic that we're going through right now, is higher than it's ever been for directors. The plus side again is in the big change this year, that there's been no travel.

Peter Gleason: So when you think about a board member, you've got an East Coast company and you've got board members coming in from the West Coast between committee meetings and board meetings, they generally were spending multiple days out of their schedule to get to one meeting. Now they can call in from the West Coast, they're on the call for if it's a committee meeting, maybe it's two, three hours. Maybe it's only an hour, depending on what the topic is. But it's that frequency is higher than it's ever been. The time commitment's higher than it's ever been. So Pam, you're spot on. It's hard. It's really hard to be on too many boards. 

Pam Harper: You need to be clear about what you're doing and why. We talked about skillset, but of course, demographic renewal too,  is important in different ways.

Peter Gleason: Right. And that was another trend that we saw when we were writing this report is we were seeing a push towards younger directors. Let's get specific tech-savvy people on the board and let's go to the West Coast, get somebody who's under 40 or whatever the criteria were that the board was putting forth and that's fine, but you got to balance it out. And that was one of the things that we were looking at. Do we have a full board that's all 75 plus years old? Well, that's a problem, but if you've got a full board, that's all 38 years old, that might be a problem too. So how do we create the right mix of demographics of skillsets and of expertise that people can come in?

Pam Harper: It's everything. Gender, diversity... all of that.  I mean, this is a big topic in a really small podcast.

And the other thing too, that we were also struck by is this issue of transparency. And that's another implication that you were talking about hyper transparency. I mean, we're such a socially connected world. I don't think anybody would doubt that; we're sitting on a podcast after all, and the impact that social media has on boards and management is huge. I especially think about that with regard to how news travels. Talk to me a little bit about what is different about this as you see it from previous times.

Peter Gleason: Well, again, you mentioned the phrase hyper transparency, and this what we talked about in the report. And what's different, I think is we really focused on five major shifts that our board leaders should help orchestrate on their own boards. So when we're talking about board leaders, it's either the chair of the board, the lead director, or the committee chairs, they're the ones that we look to drive change. And when we were talking about hyper-transparency, we were looking at deeper, more proactive, and continuous board engagement with management.

Peter Gleason: An entirely new and fast-changing driver of strategy and risk, because as all these changes are happening, they're changing your strategy or they might change your strategy, but they're definitely changing the risks that the company faces. So how do we drive that engagement? That's number one. A more strategic forward-looking approach to board renewal through the lens of the shifting needs of the business. Again, as things change, what do we need to change? How do we have to shift? How we're approaching these things.

Pam Harper: Something that also comes up when I think about transparency is that the boards and management are being approached all the time now it seems like from employees and other stakeholders who want to really understand how decisions are being made, leadership decisions. We're hearing more about it, we're seeing it. Is something that is being addressed more by NACD?

Peter Gleason: Well, I think, it's always a moving trend in terms of how much transparency there's going to be around some of the internal decisions. I think in this era right now, there's way more than there ever has been in terms of how things are happening. How is decision-making happening and what are the communications that have to come out of that? So, yeah, we are seeing a lot more transparency at companies. And I think, again, I hate to keep coming back to it, but this pandemic has really changed how all this is happening. A lot of companies used to have their quarterly, all-staff meeting, or maybe it was a monthly all-staff meeting or a town hall that they provided insights into what was happening at the upper levels of the company so that everybody could feel like what's going on.

Peter Gleason: During the pandemic, weekly, sometimes biweekly you'll see the CEO and the senior leadership team on video conferences, not just once a week where the CEO is downloading with the entire team, but in a lot of cases, it was daily. And again, companies were faced with so much change and so many things were happening so fast that the communication level had to increase so that we could keep things moving forward. And again, the technology-enabled that to happen in real-time.

Pam Harper: Yes. As much as there are some challenges, we're hearing about a lot of the positive implications as well. It's something to consider. We're going to take another break. And when we come back, Scott and I will speak more with Peter Gleason, CEO of the National Association of Corporate Directors, about immediately useful ideas for shaping board management teams that are fit for the future. Stay with us.

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Scott Harper: You're listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. We're brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated on the web at BusinessAdvance.com.

Does this sound like you? You're a visionary board member or CEO of a successful growth-oriented company, but in this constantly shifting business environment, there are and always will be so many new twists and turns that you've never seen before. How can you and your organization anticipate what lies ahead and respond in the most effective way?

Pam Harper: That's where we come in. As strategic growth advisors, we specialize in guiding our clients through the critical top leadership challenges that come with navigating through uncharted territory. We help them think about these ambiguous situations in new ways that cut to the heart of the issues. This helps them make game-changing decisions faster so their companies can keep creating new value for a rapidly changing world.

Scott Harper: Find out how we can help you and your leadership team take full advantage of all of your opportunities, even faster. Take the first step by contacting us today at BusinessAdvance.com.

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Pam Harper: Welcome back to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. Over the last two segments, Scott and I have been speaking with Peter Gleason, CEO of the National Association of Corporate Directors about the importance and the implications of boards and top leadership teams being fit for the future. Peter, remind us again, how people can find out more about these Blue Ribbon Commission reports.

Peter Gleason: Pam, everything that we do is pretty much front and center on our website at nacdonline.org.

Pam Harper: And again, you can get the link to all of that by going to GrowthIgnitersRadio.com, Episode 188,  and scroll down under resources. So we are at the point of immediately useful ideas. Let's take some of these issues that we've been discussing and boil them down to something somebody could do right away. And the first idea I want to talk about is how there could be a strengthening of the relationship between boards and CEOs. There had been something in the report about "trust but verify." Can you talk about how that would work?

Peter Gleason: Well, that's one of those age-old sayings, of trust, but verify. I think we really saw that come into play in the wake of the scandals back in the early 2000s and WorldCom where it wasn't just taking what management said as gospel. It was doing some of your own research, coming back, asking challenging questions, asking that follow-up question. So you're not getting the asymmetric information that we used to see so often at companies where the only information that the board saw was what management was providing.

Peter Gleason: Now in the internet age that we live in, boards can go out and get their own research pretty quickly. There's a ton of data about every company, about competition within the marketplace. So it's, "Yeah, I'm going to listen to what management has to say. I'm going to do a little bit of my own research. I'm going to spend a little time outside of the board meeting digging in and verifying that what they're telling me is actually what's happening so I get a little bit more insight into them, the competitive landscape in the marketplace that we're operating in as a whole."

Scott Harper: Okay. So having some independence, but also trying to foster a collaborative relationship, as opposed to an adversarial relationship.

Peter Gleason: Absolutely, Scott.

Scott Harper: Because when you have trust, you're more likely to get the straight dope.

Peter Gleason: Right. And that's where I think this strengthening relationship between the board and the CEO. In many ways, just the frequency of communication that we're seeing now really helps in that regard, as you have a closer tie. There's more FaceTime, there's more availability between the board and the management now than we've ever seen before. And establishing those boundaries that we've talked about earlier between, all right, what's the CEO going to do in this situation versus what's the chair of the audit committee or the chair of the compensation committee. How are we going to interact and how are we going to work together to solve some of these issues?

Scott Harper: Okay. Now let's go to a second idea. We talked about the new demands and the expectations that board members are being faced with now. Can you give us an immediately actionable idea for selecting and recruiting board members who really are fit for the future, who have that mindset?

Peter Gleason: Sure. And I think it all starts with the skillsets matrix that many boards are using now, but really identifying, what skills do we have on the board and what skills do we need and how do we go fill those gaps? And it may be that you're not looking at what's the need today, or for the next six to 12 months. What's the need 12 to 24 months, 24 to 36 months? As we look at our strategy where we're trying to take the company and how do we find directors who have those skill sets that we can plug in and go recruit those folks. We're also seeing this huge push right now around diversity, which we've been advocating for 40 years, but we're starting to see in real-time that there's a push for minorities.

Peter Gleason: We've actually seen some progress with women on boards and now we're seeing that push move into other minority categories. And whether that's blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans, you name it. There's a push to change the perspectives that are coming into the organization and I think that's a really good thing because it's going to help really make the board fit for the future, as we look to the different experiences, the different perspectives, and the different expertise that a really diverse board can bring to the table.

Scott Harper: Yeah. The more the board resembles the stakeholders you're serving, the more powerful your perspectives are going to be.

Pam Harper: And of course, one of the things that I've also found from recruiting experience has been that when I go to places that I don't usually go to, to look for people or get recommendations, you can find more of the types of experience, the demographics, all of that, that we need. It's something that is ongoing work.

Let's talk about the final immediately useful idea for increasing transparency. Something that might be immediately useful for increasing employee and customer understanding about what the does and how it operates. This is always a big question.

Peter Gleason: Yeah. And I think the transparency, it's funny when I look at all the reports that we've written over the 20 years that I've been at NACD. There's a call for increased transparency in each one of them. That regardless of the topic that we're addressing, there's always, "Well, how are we going to communicate what we just did?" So that may be the communication to the public, it may be through press releases, it may be through town hall meetings with the public and the stakeholders at large.

Peter Gleason: But you've also had that internal component. And as we've been talking about the virtual environment and the accessibility that we now have via the technology that we're all operating with, it's amazing how fast things get to be transparent many times when you don't even want them to be transparent, they become transparent. So how do we harness that power? How do we make sure that it's regular, it's recurring, and that we're in front of not only our employees but our stakeholders at large talking about what's happening and why things are happening the way they are.

Scott Harper: And I imagine that part of transparency is also being prepared for disinformation because it happens, especially with social media rumors and blackballing can get out of control and the board has to be ready for that as well.

Peter Gleason: Right. And it's immediate. Scott, to your point. You used to have a little lag in the time something hit the marketplace to prepare for when the media would come calling. Now it's instantaneous and you've got to be thinking about, "Well, what are our communications plans? What our response plans to anything that happens like this and how are we as an organization going to address those challenges as they come forward?"

Pam Harper: So here we are. We're at the end of the episode. Do you have some final thoughts about the leadership imperative to be fit for the future?

Peter Gleason: Well, yeah. Thanks, Pam. It's interesting; we were somewhat, I guess we could call it prescient. In releasing this report a year before the pandemic hit, or half a year before the pandemic hit, because we were ahead of, I guess, one of the biggest game-changers that our generation has ever faced in COVID where you have a worldwide pandemic where business fundamentally changed overnight and how companies responded, how they thought about how are we going to address these issues because they're rolling at us on a daily basis. And they're not something that we've necessarily dealt with before. You've seen industry shut down, you've seen retail just get crushed as people couldn't go out and they're still struggling to come back. And well, I think we're going to see more business failures until this vaccine is out and the entire world has become vaccinated, it's been a struggle for a while here.

Peter Gleason: And so boards thinking about and interacting with management about how do we handle the different elements that are coming up in front of us? How do we think about the longer-term impact on our business of this crisis that we've gone through and how are we going to come out stronger on the back end of this and rethink our strategy, rethink our personnel, rethink our own composition as a board because that may have to change? And as we move forward, we've got to be fit for the future. We've got to be thinking differently, even at the composition of the board level, and to make sure that we've got the right people sitting around the table at the right time.

Pam Harper: Well, Peter, thank you for being our guest today. This has been a very important conversation. And I think the one thing we can all agree on is that we're only going to see a lot more of these changes and the evolving world.

Scott Harper: Peter, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

Peter Gleason: Thanks, Scott. Thanks, Pam. It's great to be with you again.

Scott Harper: And thanks to you out there for listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. To get show notes and resource links for this week's episode, go to GrowthIgnitersRadio.com and select episode 188.

Pam Harper: Until next time, this is Pam Harper...

Scott Harper: And Scott Harper...

Pam Harper: Wishing you continued success and leaving you with this question to discuss with your board:

Scott Harper: Are we as a leadership team devoting enough towards anticipating what the future can bring and increasing our capability to lead for whatever comes?

Chris Curran: Growth Igniters and Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper are registered service marks of Business Advancement Incorporated. All Growth Igniters Radio episodes are copyrighted productions of Business Advancement Incorporated intended for the private use of our audience. Except as otherwise provided by copyright law, all other uses, including copying, editing, redistribution, and publication without the prior written consent of Business Advancement Incorporated are prohibited. All rights reserved.