421 [BEST OF] Why Strategy Fails Without the Right Board: Didier Cossin on High Performance Boards & Decision-Making at the Top

What if the greatest risk to your organization isn't economic uncertainty, market volatility, or disruptive technology—but the decisions being made in your own boardroom?

In this episode of Partnering Leadership, Mahan Tavakoli speaks with Didier Cossin, IMD professor and global expert in board governance, whose book High Performance Boards has become a must-read for senior leaders looking to elevate board effectiveness. Drawing from decades of research, real-world consulting, and cross-disciplinary experience—including economics, risk management, and even poetry—Cossin brings a powerful lens to what leadership at the top should really look like.

Cossin argues that governance has been misunderstood by many organizations as a compliance function, rather than what it truly is: a system that shapes the quality of executive decisions. He challenges CEOs and board members to rethink how they engage with one another, what information they rely on, and who actually owns governance performance. The result is a compelling case for boards as enablers of transformation—not just overseers of risk.

Throughout the conversation, Cossin shares examples and frameworks that translate theory into practice. He offers clarity on how boards can evolve to meet the complexity of today’s environment while helping CEOs make better, faster, and more strategic decisions. From the role of the chair to the structure of board packs to the power of informal intelligence, every element of this conversation is designed to elevate how boards contribute to long-term success.

If you are a CEO, board member, or executive leader committed to high-performance leadership and long-term impact, this episode offers both insight and challenge to help you lead more effectively—starting at the top.

Actionable Takeaways

• Hear how Didier Cossin reframes governance as a driver of decision quality—not just risk oversight or compliance.
  
  
  
• Learn why the chair, not the CEO, is ultimately responsible for board performance—and why that distinction matters.
  
  
  
• Discover how most boards are overwhelmed with information but still lack the intelligence needed for high-quality decisions.
  
  
  
• Understand the four levers of board performance—people, information, structure, and culture—and how each one shapes outcomes.
  
  
  
• Explore how the CEO-chair relationship must be intentionally designed, not assumed, for true alignment and accountability.
  
  
  
• Find out why board materials should be curated like an executive dashboard—and how overstuffed board books hinder strategic conversations.
  
  
  
• Learn how boards should evolve from approving strategy to actively shaping it—especially in complex and fast-moving environments.
  
  
  
• Reflect on how strong governance creates the organizational capacity to adapt, lead, and perform over the long term.
  
  

Connect with Didier Cossin
Didier Cossin at IMD 

Didier Cossin LinkedIn 

High Performance Boards 

Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:

Mahan Tavakoli Website

Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn

Partnering Leadership Website

Transcript

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

Mahan Tavakoli: [00:00:00] Didier Cossin, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.
Didier Cossin: I'm delighted to be here.
Mahan Tavakoli: Didier, I was mentioning to you before we pressed record, that when I saw your book, which you have updated, High Performance Boards, Improving and Energizing Your Career, Governance.
I was thrilled because with all the boards that I have served on, the CEOs. I coach. I see so much dysfunction at the highest levels of organizations. But before we get some of your insights, the D. I would love to know a little bit more about you. We're about you grew up and how your upbringing has helped contribute to who you've become.
Didier Cossin: And frankly, my hand, I fully agree with you. I see 90 percent of boards feeling I've been quoted in the Financial Times for saying so. And I would say part of my bringing , has been really about Combining [00:01:00] many different skills and many different ways of thinking. I've always loved poetry even as a very young boy.
I've been trained as a mathematician. I had, the delight of discovering Your country, the beautiful United States by being invited to join MIT at the time as a mathematical economist. At the same time, I was financing that research by teaching poetry at Harvard. And so It was that exchange of minds that has been around me , since my youth.
And with parents that actually fostered that. My dad was a doctor, but a doctor that was very involved and actually founded the clinic himself. And so I've been around, many different ways. Of thinking, which I [00:02:00] think are necessary. And by the way, as a young man, a lot of my work was around risk.
I was trained by a Nobel Prize winner at Harvard around the risk issues , very technical risk type of matters right around option pricing, etc. And I realized that at the end of the day, things that. The number one risk is not, stock prices or interest rates or even geopolitics.
It's really our ability to make the right decision. And that's what took me to governance because that's the heart of governance, how do we make the right decisions at the top of organizations?
Mahan Tavakoli: And that is critical, Didier. I love, first of all, you have the mathematical, the science, background, and mind, and thinking, and also the poetry and the arts.
Marrying those two together, there is a science and art element. In leadership, most [00:03:00] especially in board and governance, where you have experienced in many instances, high ego individuals needing to collaborate with each other for the organization's benefit. So I see how some of your insights contribute to this.
Now you have updated your book Why did you feel it's time now, a couple of years later to, , update what is magnificent thinking on high performance boards?
Didier Cossin: Very much because governance is evolving,
governance is evolving, it's evolving massively, and frankly also the depth of interest in governance has increased massively. And so my first book gave all the fundamental principles, and by the way, that part is still there. But there is so much more to bring around that I needed to add to that.
And there is an evolution that's also [00:04:00] very fundamental, which is we're moving into a disrupted world, into a conflicted world, where more and more, it's hard for people of diverse backgrounds, To get to a full alignment around, purpose around identity, and that is creating new difficulties for boards that I wanted to address.
And I work with many top boards around. And in the world, I work with some of the largest investors in the world. I invest myself in the U. S. market and in other markets. And what I notice is that I want to be one step ahead. I think governance has become an engine of performance. And so figuring out what the next step in governance is absolutely essential in my view.
And I wanted to bring that to the readers.
Mahan Tavakoli: As you mentioned, the [00:05:00] environment is changing really fast organizations are facing transformation. Therefore the demands on the board are also greater than ever been before, which is why the board needs to be very functional, as I mentioned early on, there are so many dysfunctional aspects to boards.
Now you talk about four critical. Pillars, people, information, structures, and culture. As you mentioned, did you have experience with all kinds of boards? All of those pillars are important. What do you see as the biggest one of those barriers in your experience for effective.
Didier Cossin: So at large, and by the way, I very much appreciate your point that boards are becoming forefront and they have to become more active at large.
And if I'm looking at, At the blanket statement, people [00:06:00] quality has been still challenging on boards. We don't have very much meritocracy in boards. It's been a lot of a network. It's been a system and it's not easy to be meritocratic on the governance front. And by the way, most board members.
They don't stay there for the time of the mandate, right? They don't, there is no removal, there is no performance. There are evaluations, but there is no real meritocratic process. So I would say still, the, at large at large, as a blanket statement, the quality of the people is still a challenge.
Now, if I'm going the to the most advanced boards right, which have figured out frankly, the pillars at large, the people quality, they had the decent diversity, they're addressing the right problem. They [00:07:00] actually had the right level of dedication to the board. They figured out the information design.
They have, all these processes, the ODIC process, a strategy process, a board evaluation process, the nomination process down, and they have a positive culture that is both challenging and supporting to management and establishing a relationship to management that's trusted, right? Once, if I go to good boards solid boards, then I would say, What will be transformative in the future is to increase the intelligence of the board.
And for that, the information design, especially around external information, what the competitors are doing, what are the big trends, what what are substitutes arising, is becoming more First and foremost, and even good [00:08:00] boards, because now I'm talking about the good boards, even good boards tend to use, management reports and do copy paste, etc.
They don't have very smart information and frankly, in the world of AI, having a good board information design with a good analysis of the external information. Is very productive for boards. So I would say at large blanket statement quality of people still, but for the advanced board, it's figuring out intelligence and information, notably on external matters to the board.
Mahan Tavakoli: I would love to find out a little bit more on what makes that information design work, but let me reflect on a couple of things I was thinking about before our conversation, when you look at the Elon Musk's of the world or Zuckerberg's of the world, or [00:09:00] even now the Sam Altman's of the world, their boards are at best rubber stamp boards, and they have done incredibly well based on different measures.
And then you look at the other side. Whether in my view, Disney, where, the CEO had to be rehired after having been involved in selecting his own successor or Intel, which was a leader in chip manufacturing. And finally they decided to remove the CEO or Boeing. You look at organizations that technically have these robust boards making huge mistakes and falling behind while organizations that are personality driven.
One person in essence gets their board of friends to rubber stamp what they want, advancing really fast. Would love to know your thoughts on why that difference [00:10:00] there.
Didier Cossin: Thanks a lot.  It's a challenge that I get regularly, and I think it's a very fair challenge. And, in the old time, we remember Steve Jobs being fired from Apple, by the board, right?
And so we have all these horror stories. And I would like to give a couple of counterpoints, right? The first one is frankly, I've elaborated myself an investment strategy that picks the 100 best governed of the S& P 500. And so 100 best out of the 500, and we beat the market by 40 percent over five years.
And it's not easy to beat the S& P 500. So I have no doubt that governance performs. And governance performs in two ways. It reduces downside risk, right? The fraud risk, the bad [00:11:00] CEO risks the bad acquisition risk, but it also increases the upside by adjusting to new strategies, by adjusting to the context, right?
By transforming at the right time with the change of administration or, new social evolution in the country, right? And so there is, and that's demonstrated, and we see actually the shape of the distributions of these returns of the stocks that are matching that. And by the way, governance works the best during crisis time.
So for example, during COVID the better govern beat the market by 20 percent in three months, right? So We have that and this is it. Now, to be very fair if you have an Elon Musk or Steve Jobs in your organization, yes, please use them and leverage them and maybe decrease a little bit your governance.
[00:12:00] But how many of our organizations have an Elon Musk or a Steve Jobs there, right? And I think that's the issue if you have the incredible genius right there, right? Be still careful not to be taken for a ride, right? Because we have a lot of integrity issues, even with geniuses, right? In today's world.
But you certainly can push the trust and the reliance on the genius a bit further, right? But that's not the case for many organizations. We have very solid people. We have talented CEOs. But we also have to deal with, a pool of talent that's a bit more limited than these and then the game is governance.
And also, by the way, for families that are moving to the next generation by many organizations that have to rely almost by necessity to good people, right? But not necessarily [00:13:00] the most talented people in the world.
Mahan Tavakoli: I love that perspective, Didier, in that I find and what I did with you is that we take some outlier entrepreneurs and success stories and While there are lessons to be learned from those in many instances, those don't transfer to the vast majority of organizations.
What you have done with studying high performing boards is that there are systems, there are approaches that can enable more organizations without the outlier geniuses. To also be able to thrive and succeed. So I really appreciate that thought. Now, what you were mentioning was the importance of information design.
And I find that is a huge challenge with all kinds of organizations and. Boards, the amount of information that is going to [00:14:00] them is vast. The board books are getting bigger and bigger. There's a lot of junk. So what ends up happening is now with generative AI, the team is using generative AI to take a few bullet points and make hundreds of pages and the people getting the documents are using generative AI to summarize them to the few bullet points.
A lot is lost. In that information communication. So from your perspective, how can that information design be approached?
Well,
Didier Cossin: I have two answers to that. The first one is a very human process. And frankly, I work with many different types of organizations. And what I'm speaking about is valid for small size organizations, for a school board, for a church board,
and it's also valid for very large organizations. I work with some of the largest organizations in the [00:15:00] world, the HSBCs, Nestles, et cetera, of the world. And and and I find there are two dimensions. One that I'm inspired by. Prominent family businesses, which is the informal side off information.
The smells the relationships and frankly, it's been Very critical in my view for board members understanding. It's a Sunday barbecue, right? It's it's the elevator exchange, right? It's it's frankly, sometimes very critical. I remember Stephen Lee at the time, the chairman of Singapore Airlines, having breakfast with the union leaders.
And he's a non executive chair, and so he had no commitment from the organization. But he could elevate the issues with the CEO afterwards and, finding peaceful solutions to the tensions that were elevated by the unions, the powerful [00:16:00] unions the pilot unions, which are international unions.
And so I think there is this informal side that we are missing a little bit by extra formalism and just by that board PAC reliance. Then there is the other dimension, which is what's a good board pack? What's a good information and how much can a board really swallow, right? And I'm leaving aside the AI dimension for the time being, right?
What do we as human ingest? Productively, right? And frankly, to me, it's 30, 40 pages, structured, designed with frankly let's be truthful with some graphics, right? And not only PowerPoint slides, right? Frankly, a narrative, some words, right? Brings more values and bullet points on a PowerPoint slide again, right?
And many boards [00:17:00] don't do that. It's an effort. It's an effort to actually provide the board with that. The CEO letter a CFO view of risks an analysis from the HR person on culture evolution, things that are not that difficult and often they have in their mind. Are very valuable, and often that's what I prefer rather than the 250 pages of numbers where you can hide a lot of stuff, but elevating, but for that you need a bit of that trusted relationship, which is one of the key areas of failures and of success of boards.
Now, all of that can be Productively increased and leveraged with AI, right? But it's an AI that targets human consumption, right? So it's not an AI that targets [00:18:00] completion in a different way. I think it's about, making the human brain, it's about, empowering the human brains further. And frankly, I say human brains, but in my view good board work is not only human brain it's also the guts, it's also the emotions, it's also the belonging, it's also the dedication, it's a sense of responsibility, it's a moral sense, right?
So it's many other dimensions than just a brain dimension. But certainly with AI, we can elevate that, but as long as we fit into what I just described, right? A part that's informal to information that is not formal, and frankly is coming from many different parts, and a part that is synthetic easy to understand with some meaning and that nourishes that ability of talented board members to capture a bit what's [00:19:00] going on in subtle ways.
Mahan Tavakoli: , beautifully stated, Didier, vast majority of the boards that I have also had a chance to interact with and see the human element that you emphasized that first. Is totally underestimated. It's incredible how organizations spend a lot of time getting a team of project managers to collaborate better with each other, get to know each other better, develop some of those human connections, but they don't do that at the board level.
So that human element plays a huge role, causes conflict, causes misunderstanding, a lot of issues that. Might not come out in the board meeting itself, but do impact the organization. In addition to that, sharing of insights, which requires a lot of effort as opposed to sharing everything. So in the name of transparency, you say we shared [00:20:00] everything with the board.
Didier Cossin: Yes, and I must say that , as you may know, I'm based in Switzerland and you know well that my country is not valued for its transparency and frankly culturally, I'm I don't find transparency to be an absolute value for boards. For me, the board secretary is a holder of the secret, and we have seen iconic actors of governance, such as CalPERS in California, which in my view has failed because of an excessive push to transparency. For example, at CalPERS, you may know that you have that the board meetings are video Recorded and that you can see on the website the filming of the board meeting.
And so what happens? Nobody speaks anymore, right? And nobody [00:21:00] engages. And in my view, the board is that safe place where You know, someone can say something stupid that does not get recorded, and somehow, a fellow board member can gently, correct or transform or elevate maybe a lateral thinking that could That comes from that and that will bring some creativity or another way of supervising something, et cetera, and so we need that safe space within the board. That is not about transparency. And frankly, that's very fundamental to me, to governance quality.
Mahan Tavakoli: That pursuit of transparency at the cost of everything else can be counterproductive and that's such an outstanding example of it. Now, one of the other challenges that I see a lot, Didier, is the relationship between the CEO and the chair.[00:22:00]
How have you seen that be handled most productively?
Didier Cossin: Very easy. And I did it recently for publicly listed company on the New York Stock Exchange headquartered in New York, where frankly, you have a new CEO, or you have a new chair, let's spend two days together and figure out our respective responsibilities, and also personalities.
And so let's agree What's mine? What's yours? Let's see how we connect. Let's see, who's more conservative, who's more open to change, who's more emotional, who's more resilient. Let's see who's more introverted, more extroverted, right? Who's more conscientious, who's more, let's talk, let's figure it out together and let's start with a classical list of responsibilities.
And maybe we think, [00:23:00] oh, because of your personality, you'd be better with this one, right? And let's figure it out together. And of course that's when the CEO and chair. Two different roles and separate, as you know well, in a large minority of cases, it's still combined in in the U. S.
And when it's combined, let's do that with a lead independent director and and let's figure out, that game somehow, because it is essential to quality governance. It's not. It's not only that dialectic process, right? It's not only that constructive descent. It's also figuring out the clarity of roles in a functional way.
And it's very essential. So one, one trick is this one. Let's spend the time at the beginning, to just figure out who, the personalities are and what are the responsibilities, how we define them, what [00:24:00] is my turf, what is your turf.
Mahan Tavakoli: So in doing that DDA for different types of organizations, whether for public companies or family owned organizations or nonprofit organizations, associations, lots of different types of boards who has the primary responsibility of effective board governance and functioning.
Is that something that is the responsibility primarily of the board chair or the CEO?
Didier Cossin: Oh, definitely the chair. Definitely the chair. And frankly, if the chair does not take this on, you have a problem at large in the organization. Frankly if a chair is not willing to push for governance excellence.
There is a problem. Sometimes a board secretary, sometimes an order, right? Because [00:25:00] sometimes the owner is not the chair and is present around and can push around, et cetera. But otherwise you're in a situation where, in publicly listed companies, activism becomes suddenly rational and other external forces can kick in.
The CEO, I have many CEOs that come to me and many CEOs that come to me and they say my chair is not so good, or my board is not so good. Can you help me improve the board? And frankly, I refuse, because the CEO is not in a position to do that. And he's not even in a position, or she's not even in a position to judge that.
It's very hard. It's hard for a CEO to understand what's going on the board and what is the board trying to target. And that's not the position of the CEO. So the owner of governance quality should be the chair.
Mahan Tavakoli: So you've been listening to a couple of my conversations over the past couple of weeks, [00:26:00] Didier, because I have CEOs saying that exact same thing and that same complaint.
Therefore, What I hear from you is that it is the responsibility of the chair. Now, how can the board hold itself accountable? If the chair is not a functional chair, it sounds like you're telling the CEOs, you know what, it's not your role. It's the chairs. How do you make sure that the chair is held accountable and the board holds itself accountable?
Didier Cossin: Yes, and frankly, that's where I love to be in market based economies, right? Because at some point, these functionalities, will demonstrate themselves. And that's where, you don't want to be in a state controlled system, right? And it's very nice. to have actually shareholders that can push, hedge funds that can push and other actors.
But before we get there before we get there, and [00:27:00] suppose there is a CEO that feels legitimately there is an issue, you need to speak to the chair first, right? Let's say that the chair is not convinced or that the chair is malintentioned, which frankly is rare, right? The reality is that usually it's a disagreement more than badwill, right?
Then you always can reach out to some board members, right? And the board members can reach out to the chair. Of course, a board is a group of peers, right? So the chair is not the boss of the board members, right? This is, a group of peers. And it's important to understand the engine of governance, right?
Because the engine of governance is a dialectic process. What we want is to get to the truth, right? Get To the right choice. Is this the right CEO? Is this the right acquisition? Is this the right strategy? That's what you want to get from [00:28:00] governance. And in human ways, there are three ways to get to the truth.
There are three means to get to the truth. The first one is rhetoric. Someone knows the truth and convinces the others. In most board matters, we don't have one holder of the truth. So rhetoric mostly does not work on board. The second way to get to the truth is scientific. You have data that demonstrates the truth.
The, in most board matters, again, Even in the acquisitions, you may have a beautiful discounted cash flow analysis, right? We all know that's not scientific in any way, right? And we're not, 60 percent of acquisitions feel on culture integration, and that's certainly not in your discounted cash flow.
And so if rhetoric does not work, and if scientific does not work, you're left with the only other way, which is Dialectic and the [00:29:00] exchange of well intentioned, informed individuals to elevate each others to a better level of understanding and of decision. And so this is the true engine of governance.
And so if you have a board chair that's dedicated and you have your board members that have different views, right? As a board chair, you're going to nourish that. That's why diversity of perspectives is important, because it feeds into that dialectic process. And you're going to elevate things, right? But frankly, I'm going to tell you something else Mahan?
Which is that when you have a new chair, most of the time, CEO will go pretty soon because the chair has his own or her own personality, right? And often an [00:30:00] incumbent CEO has been used to ways where the chair wants to transform And where the match is going to be hard. And sometimes it takes three, four, five years, right?
But what also I have noticed is that when a board starts asking itself, Whether they have the right CEO, most of the time it's because it's too late. It's because they should have decided that before. And so there is this issue that as a new CEO you have to understand, the chair is absolutely fundamental to the governance.
That certainly board members, our peers, can engage the chair legitimately. But. If as a CEO, you're very uncomfortable with your chair, you have a serious [00:31:00] problem.
Mahan Tavakoli: It is as you mentioned an issue that a lot of times some of the boards that I've seen address it too late in that there is a discomfort, but it is not Addressed.
It's important to do that. , Now, , what role in your view does the board play in shaping and contributing to the organizational strategy, as opposed to the role, the CEO and the leadership team of the organization play?
Didier Cossin: Ah, great topic, which I published on at MIT because that's in my view, very important for boards today. Obviously there is a dimension of strategies that's very management like, and I would say it's a bit shorter term, maybe two to five years, depending on management, right? And it is.
Within the industry [00:32:00] structure and within what I would say a more traditional context of governance, probably engaging less around the very external stakeholders like government relations, unless you're, of course, in a very specific industries, right? But you're not engaging the new forces.
of the world. And government power, you understand my point, right? Government power is increasing a lot in the business world. And so that's a transformation that most businesses are not engaged with. So boards in simple context should just be supervisory on strategy, but organizations are less and less in simple context that tend to be in complex or chaotic context these days.
And when you move that road, the board needs to become more co creative [00:33:00] to the strategy. And that exchange needs to be nourished. Hence my point earlier of intelligence and information around external evolution, because the board then becomes strategic. And to be strategic, a board has a longer horizon.
In a traditional publicly listed company, in my view, it's eight to 15 years, depending on the organization. In a family business, it's typically 25 years, the next generation. In a sovereign wealth fund, It's typically 50 to 75 years because we're looking at the horizon of the state, which is quite a long horizon.
In pension funds, of course, it's also quite long, right? And so depending on the organization, you have a longer horizon for the board, but In today's world, figuring out the identity of the organization, the mission of the organization, its purpose is actually [00:34:00] quite long term. And so it is a board responsibility, and you need to align the strategy to that.
So I do find that boards at large have much more appetite to contribute to strategy because they are challenged and they're challenged on the identity of the organization on the long term and they have to be involved for that is a very classical board role. So in the past boards did not get involved very much in strategy, but because of the evolution of context towards more complex and chaotic context, and because of the challenge to the long term horizons there is much more board involvement on strategy, but many boards did.
Still use dated agendas and dated processes, which are not good for figuring out strategy. If you want to work well as a board on strategy, you need to have a strategy discussion at every board meeting. You cannot do that [00:35:00] only once a year. And so true involvement of the board on strategy, which I think is very legitimate for many organizations, requires redefining how you work as a board.
Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding perspective, Didier, first of all, boards are required, as you're saying, to have more strategic thinking and get involved more in that strategic thinking. I love Ron Adner's work on ecosystems and how in essence, in many respects, the traditional Industries, the way we viewed them, those barriers have come down.
Therefore that requires, , diversity of understanding and perspective. A healthy board represents some boards don't represent in order to have the kind of strategic views. What you're saying is that is not the board getting together [00:36:00] once a year for a strategic conversation. It has to be an ongoing part of.
Those board conversations for that strategic view of the complex environment.
Didier Cossin: That is very right. And maybe let's say you do a four to six board meetings a year. Maybe during one board meeting, you talk about competitors. Maybe during another board meeting, you talk about technology evolution. Maybe during another board meeting, you talk about significant global trends for your industry, right?
And in another meeting, maybe. You'll talk about substitutes, right? And then you'll be ready for a significant strategy retreat, which will be well designed and well informed. Frankly, at large, right? Boards want to be more involved in strategy, but this is not the case. This is frustrating to management because the knowledge of [00:37:00] boards is not very granular and they're very superficial.
But if you have done your work well and that you understand the strategic view of the board is complementary to the management view, different horizons, different topics, and you nourish both and you make both sophisticated, you can truly elevate the strategy work. Of the organization,
Mahan Tavakoli: beautifully put in that yes, both are called strategy or strategic view, but they are drastically different versions of that strategy and strategic view.
Now, one of the other challenges that I see DDA in part, in some instances, it's because the CEO has played a role in selection of certain board members in other parts is that people are in the same country club or communities. There is. A lack of accountability at times in terms of the board holding the [00:38:00] CEO properly accountable.
What are best practices in your view with respect to doing that? Now with some public companies, they do have shareholders or other representatives, as you said, hedge funds who contribute to that, but what lessons can other organizations, whether. Family or privately owned or nonprofits or associations.
What lessons can others learn in how best for the board to hold the CEO accountable?
Didier Cossin: , my view of that is I don't know how you call it, but maybe integrity or sense of responsibility. And by the way, is that That sense of accountability is so essential that's really maybe the first thing I spot in an interaction with a board member of a chair to assess the quality of the board [00:39:00] at large.
I think everything comes from there, right? If you don't feel That you have a duty, which by the way is a legal duty, a duty of care for the organization and a duty of loyalty to the organization and not to the CEO or to any stakeholder, right? I think you're, personally, I think you're missing the boat in your life.
And that you're just, fine. I'm sure you, you can get wealthy and you, I'm sure you, you can have comforts of life. I don't think you can feel very good at the end of it. And and so I'm putting it like that. Sorry. It's a bit stark, but I think that if you have that sense of accountability.
The means are easy. And so you have many different means, right? It can be board evaluations, 360s. It can be smart discussions. It's how do you figure [00:40:00] things out as an individual and as a group, right? It's all of these tools are easy, but they're very secondary To that true sense of accountability and we all know that the board evaluation can be a tick the box exercise.
That's so easily gone around. And what I'm talking about, by the way, that sense of accountability. is decently present in the business world. I find in the business world, you always have corrupt organizations, et cetera, but at large, I don't face that a lot, right? We have weaknesses, it's personal weaknesses, et cetera.
I think it's decent. Unfortunately, the philanthropic world is still Tends to be less good. And we are the enough, right? Because the financial the financial incentives are not there, but somehow there is less less sense of responsibilities. It's maybe because of the prestige or the network or, the [00:41:00] social status coming from there, right?
So there is a bit less of a sense of accountability and dedication that comes with that. But frankly, is at the heart of governance, the heart of governance.
Mahan Tavakoli: That accountability, whether it is for the CEO or board members holding each other and themselves accountable is critical to that governance. Now, Didier, we are living through a transformation of times, whether it generative AI or other technologies that are.
Exponential technologies that are advancing really fast. So would love to know your thoughts, not necessarily on organizational strategy, but with respect to boards and board governance. How do you view technologies use and impact on boards and board governance?
Didier Cossin: So on boardwork itself, it's just nascent, right? We're not using AI to the [00:42:00] point. I feel we should and it can come in many different ways. I've already started describing the intelligence for boards today, right? Figuring out Really good information for a board is very expensive and difficult.
And that's why most boards don't do that well. By the way, a good activist hedge fund will put 20 to 30 million dollars to figure out some strategic elements. for the organization, which most boards won't do which means that the activists will have better information than the board and often better information than management itself.
And so that's one thing where AI can be extremely helpful, not only on the design of the information, but on the content of the information, the gathering, the scraping right of the internet and figuring out. All the elements that are [00:43:00] pertinent to the board. So that's one to me. It's critical.
I see board starting to do that. By the way, I work with many of the large sovereign wealth funds of the world actors that are beyond the trillion dollars, right? And typically they have teams that are strategy teams that feed board members that represent them. And that gives a real edge to their board members on these organizations, even if they hold only five, 6%, right?
It's worth it for them to actually Put, a few tens of millions of dollars of intelligence behind their board members. And that's not something that you see independent directors of publicly listed companies heading and profiting from. But I think with AI, they will be able to leapfrog some of that system.
The other thing is simply on the boardwork analysis itself, right? [00:44:00] Meaning equality of participation. The emotionality of the board meetings right through the natural language processing of the words used and the meanings and the subtext behind, right? The key dimensions that are arising in the board and frankly the building of minutes and the equation to the agenda and which points of the agenda.
Adding more stress to the board work, which points of the agenda maybe would be better located earlier in the meeting versus later in the meeting. So there is a whole optimizations that can be done through intelligent AI for boards. I'm impressed that even in tech companies, this is not being done yet.
I know. Some individuals and a couple of organizations that are working on that, but it's still very conceptual and has not landed [00:45:00] while it seems obvious to me that this is a good area of work to increase the governance quality across in our system.
Mahan Tavakoli: It's incredibly powerful, but it requires that human intelligence, which then comes at it with asking the right questions and seeking the right insights that can add value, which is why, from my perspective, as I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, DBA.
Your insights are brilliant in high performance boards in that it's important for organizations to be high performing at all levels, but I find sometimes organizations spend so much time on getting teams lower levels or mid levels to perform more highly and don't spend as much time and effort on making sure that their board is high performing, which is why I'm here today.
Your insights in high [00:46:00] performance boards are outstanding to reflect on and to act on for chairs, board members, and CEOs of organizations. , where can they access your book and also follow your thought leadership DDA.
Didier Cossin: So very easy, obviously, my book is available on all the classical platforms, including Amazon, and I'm D. J. Carson, and this is High Performance Boards. And of course, I'm on LinkedIn. I post quite regularly, and I'm on many websites. I'm quite easy to find in the Google sphere or wherever,
on internet.
Mahan Tavakoli: We will put A link to all of the resources as well as your website and LinkedIn in the show notes. I so appreciate your insights and you taking the time to share it with the Partnering Leadership Community. Thank you so much, Didier Cossin.
Didier Cossin: It was a real [00:47:00] pleasure. Thank you, Mehan.