Boardrooms in Transition Ep. 5/5 | Penny Herscher | Board Dynamics

This is episode 5 of 5 in Boardrooms in Transition, a special series from Inside CVC by U-Path. We recommend starting with Episode 1 and listening in order. This episode opens with a short recap. If you are listening to the full series in one sitting, use the chapter marker to jump straight to the conversation. 

In the final chapter of Boardrooms in Transition, veteran public company chair and former CEO Penny Herscher explores the human side of governance—and why trust, courage, and board composition ultimately determine whether organizations thrive through disruption.

Drawing on two decades of board leadership across the U.S. and Europe, Penny shares lessons on CEO succession, recruiting directors, managing board dynamics, and creating the conditions for difficult conversations. She argues that the greatest obstacle to effective leadership transitions isn't a lack of talent, but fear: fear of change, fear of making the wrong decision, and fear of the unknown.

We also discuss:

• Why board composition is an M&A deal for talent

• The tension between investor returns and founder vision

• Why smaller boards often make better decisions

• The importance of trust between directors and the board chair

• How board principles and psychological safety improve performance

• Why boards that "cook dinner together" make better decisions

As we conclude the series, Penny reminds us that data may be your baseline, but character is your edge. Because when the stakes are highest, trust isn't a soft skill—it's the only currency that matters.

Boardrooms in Transition: www.boardroomsintransition.u-path.com
Inside CVC: www.u-path.com/podcast
U-Path Venture Advisors: www.u-path.com

Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Grammy Award-winning saxophonist and composer Wayne Escoffery for lending his music to the soundtrack of Boardrooms in Transition. A member of the Yale School of Music faculty and one of the leading voices in contemporary jazz, Wayne's work helps bring this series to life. Learn more about Wayne and his music at www.wayneescoffery.com.

Transcript

Steve Schmith 0:00

Previously on Boardrooms in Transition, a special series from Inside CVC.

Barry Salzberg 0:05

Some of the topics that boards are dealing with today are very different. Uh the balance between short-term performance and and responding to short-term operational challenges versus the need to invest for the long-term and the sustainability and success of the uh of the enterprise. One of the best ways of getting championship of an idea is make sure that the naysayers are part of the journey, not sitting in the background waiting to challenge you once you're done. If you turn the spigot off in recruiting in year one, in year five, you have no managers in the Deloitte world.

Steve Schmith 0:48

Welcome to Boardrooms in Transition, a special series from Inside CBC, where we are bringing you an inside look at the conversations and the decisions being made inside of boardrooms around the world.

Philipp Willigmann 1:00

We are doing this series because you have asked us to share some insights what really happens in the boardroom. So Steve and I reached out to our network to find the most influential board members who are willing to share their insights, how they are transforming organizations, how they are thinking about the future of ecosystems, and how we can together move to a more positive world.

Steve Schmith 1:21

And that's exactly what you're going to hear in the five episodes. Personal stories around managing AI, leading with courage, managing through geopolitical pressures. We cover it all from voices from inside the boardroom. I'm Philipp Willigmann, and I'm Steve Schmith. Welcome to Boardrooms in Transition. In this episode, we're speaking with Penny Herscher, a seasoned public company board chair with two decades of boardroom experience across US and European companies. In this discussion, we explore what it takes to build a high-performing board. From recruiting the right directors and running rigorous CEO succession processes, to the trust, courage, and vulnerability required to have the hard conversations when it matters most. And we get another look at the chair circle, first introduced in episode three, this time from co-founder Penny herself. Here's our conversation with Penny Herscher. Penny, thank you for joining us on Inside CVC as part of our boardrooms in transition series. How are you today?

Penny Herscher 2:24

I'm good, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Steve Schmith 2:27

Well, you shared with me that you've been in the boardroom for going on two decades now. And so I'm curious, as you reflect on those 20 years, how have you seen the board composition actually change? And are boards, do you think today better for that change?

Penny Herscher 2:48

Yeah, that's a great question. So I yeah, I started doing public boards outside my own company, which I took public, um, in 2006. So it is, it's 20 years now. And the first couple of boards I joined in the 2006-2008 timeframe, I was significantly younger than anybody else on the board. And I was the only female. And the all the other directors were, the majority were white male in their late 50s and 60s. And so I'd say that the the biggest change I've seen is actually the diversity of the people in the room, both age, experience, gender, um, and increasing diversity in um their knowledge and experience of what they're bringing into the boardroom. It is a lot less of the good old boys who all play golf together now than it was 20 years ago. There was a lot of that 20 years ago, people who very clubby kind of culture. So I think the last 20 years has brought less clubbiness, more diversity into boards, which is definitely healthy for the CEO.

Steve Schmith 3:59

We're talking to directors as part of this series. Some are chairs of the boards for the companies they serve. Bit of a nuance between those two roles, a board director and a chair of the board. So specifically in your role as a as a as a board chair, what do you think is the job of that role?

Penny Herscher 4:22

So the the board itself, the by far the most important job the board does is the selection and support of the CEO. So then, as chair, your primary responsibility is to make sure that the right people are in the room in order to make the selection of the CEO and support the CEO and give feedback to the CEO on strategy, financing structure, etc. So you end up leading, but you're very much leading from behind because you're not the leader of the company. The CEO is very much the leader of the company and needs to be, needs to be visibly the one out in front, setting the agenda, driving the strategy. It's very important that individual is not disempowered in any way by the chair of the board. But at the same time, the chair of the board has to make sure that the right conversation is happening, which means the right people are in the room, and that you've selected the right CEO. So you end up leading, but it's a herding cats kind of leading. You're um, you know, you're consulting with every director and pushing them a little bit all in the right direction and trying to get them to see the vision that you see or the vision the CEO sees and help them all get behind the CEO. So it's uh it's leadership, but I like to say you're the last one to speak. You know, when you're a director and not chair, or you're the CEO, you're the you could be the first one to speak. New issue comes up. You just go, okay, I think that if you're chair, you make sure everybody speaks before you speak. But you've still got to bring it together. So that's why I think about it as leading from behind. So it's a very different role. And when I made the switch from director to chair, I had to figure that out. I made a few mistakes. I had to figure out that difference in the role. It's quite different.

Philipp Willigmann 6:20

When a board seems open up, you know, can you share a little bit like what's a conversation that should really happen before anyone puts any names on a potential board member and why that's so important?

Penny Herscher 6:33

And how often it doesn't happen. How often somebody says, Well, we have a C coming up, and I know, you know, Joe Blow here, he's the right guy for that. And the next thing you know, Joe Blow is on the board. Yes. Exactly. That still happens. So I think that the very first thing, conversation you need to have is what's the process you're going to use. You have to have a conversation led by either the head of NomGov or the chair to say, okay, we, you know, Joe is retiring at the next election. Uh, it is essential now that we bring the right director into the board. Let's discuss process. And so you head off the, you know, my golfing buddy is perfect for this board right at the beginning. If you say, we're going to run a process. And I think it's very good hygiene to use a professional search firm. It's not cheap, but they they play a pretty good sanitizing role of making sure that you run a process where multiple candidates are considered and you have the conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Um, and then right after the process comes the needs of the company. And that's a really important conversation given where we're at, given what we're facing, given the strategy, given the competition. Um, what really do we need in this board at this time? And that can be a you know, everything from we need a cybersecurity expert, to need an AI expert, to we need somebody who understands China, to it's all over the map. But that's a really, really important conversation, and you need you need consensus on that before you start putting names up. Otherwise, you spend time interviewing a whole bunch of people that you're not going to hire anyway, and that's a waste of everybody's time. Um, so I'm a big believer you you run the process, you hire a professional advisor to help you run a copacetic process. You do you then do the needs of the company, and then you start looking at names.

Philipp Willigmann 8:42

Can you maybe share like the nuance differences between on a public board, being on a on a startup board, and what it means, kind of like in terms of what people you want to have on a startup board versus on a public board?

Penny Herscher 8:54

Oh my god, it's night and day difference. So my experience on startup boards is very much dominated by the investors, whether they're venture or corporate investors. Um and many startup boards don't have any independent directors. And so when I coach startup CEOs, I coach them strongly to get one or two independent directors on their boards who are not the money guys. Because uh it's quite frequent that the um the motivation and agenda of the CEO is actually different than the motivation and agenda of the investors. Because the investors are literally really only looking at the return on their investment over time, the IRR. And the some, you know, some startup CEOs are all about the money, but many are not. Most are about the vision and you know, are they going to succeed? And so the culture on a startup board tends to be very dominated by a uh a difference in agenda between the CEO and the venture capitalists. The um the public company board is entirely different. It's all about governance and supporting the CEO and supporting the strategy of the CEO, and it has a longer time frame. So, you know, when you're looking at public company decisions, you're looking at at least a five-year time frame. In many venture-backed companies, you are fighting for the next round of financing. So the the tone is different, the conversation is different, there typically isn't a chair, there typically isn't disciplined process. It's very different.

Steve Schmith 10:37

A quick break. The internal rate of return versus vision clash that Penny highlights is a massive tension in the CVC world. The investor wants a return, the CEO wants a legacy. The board's job is to act as the strategic translator in these scenarios to ensure the vision doesn't get bankrupted by the IRR. Now back to the conversation.

Philipp Willigmann 11:01

So you you know, we you spoke already a little bit about personalities, um, and I'm sure you have seen a lot come through boardrooms over the years. What are some of the personas that show up? Which ones make a great board member, which make a board stronger, and which ones are you concerned about?

Penny Herscher 11:22

Okay, so um the most valuable board members in my mind are the ones who very clearly and without emotion speak their opinions and their observations of what the company should be doing or what the CEO should be doing differently. Um they do it in the room. Um tend to be very serious people. Sometimes they're humorous, but I can think of one in particular, and he's just he never hesitates to say, here's what I saw, here's what I think is gonna happen next, and here's my advice. Succinct, non-emotional, and uh to a certain extent, you can take it or leave it. The good directors understand that their job is to give their opinion into the room, but they have no control. Right? Directors are not managing the company. Um the people who are willing to do the work. You know, being a director is not show up four times a year and collect your money. It's it's being willing to serve on special committees, being willing to dig in and interview lots of people when you have to hire a director or you need to hire a new CEO. Um then there are the people who who just shouldn't be on boards. Um the guy who sleeps in the meeting. I've had to fire somebody off of board for sleeping in the meeting. Wow. Oh yeah, even today this happens. Even today this happens.

Philipp Willigmann 12:54

Wow.

Penny Herscher 12:54

Um, the guy who talks too much has to give his opinion on every point, which is all ego and insecurity driven, right? Um that has to speak up. The guy who is texting with his grandchildren the whole time through the meeting and isn't paying attention and then checking his stock price. I sat next to a chair who used to do that. He'd be texting his grandchildren and checking the stock price while in the meeting or his stocks, you know. Um there's the parrot, you know, the person who repeats what the last person said and doesn't contribute anything original. So, oh yeah. There's there's all kinds of good and bad. And your goal as chair or as a director is to try and get the right conversation in the room. So when people aren't paying attention or they're just parroting or they're talking too much, they are getting in the way of the directors having the meaningful conversation about what the company should be doing or what advice the CEO needs. So, oh yeah, I I I could I could write a book on the Persona Syndrome.

Steve Schmith 14:09

This is a wildly interesting look inside the boardroom. Amazing. Um why don't we for a minute talk about outside the boardroom? Right? You talk about strong opinions and the need for the very best directors to come to the room with strong opinions, share their opinions. What happens if those opinions are shared outside of that context, outside of the boardroom? And what are some practices you employ to perhaps encourage a director in that sort of situation to bring those conversations into the boardroom where they belong?

Penny Herscher 14:48

So some of that is board culture. Um and some of it is geographic, actually. I sit on a board in Paris, a very large automotive supplier in Paris. And in the French culture, um, you don't bring very difficult issues into the room. It's just part of the culture. The very difficult issues are discussed outside the room. In the US board culture, um, there's much more of a preference to bring the difficult issues into the room. So what I do as chair, if somebody starts bringing me issues outside the room, I will actually encourage them to bring it up in the room and I will call on them in the room and say, I know Joey raised an issue with me that I think is important to share with all of you. And Joey will then need to share the issue. And if somebody repeatedly isn't willing to do that, in my book, they're not suitable to be on the board. So over time, I would say to that individual, you know, you either need to bring, you know, I'm not going to be your channel into the room, right? You either need to be comfortable bringing your opinions into the room and sharing them with your fellow directors, or you probably shouldn't be on a board. But it's a um it's a nuanced thing. You I mean, sometimes these are opinions about other people, then obviously, you know, as chair, you're trying to figure out okay, is this opinion valid? Does do they have a valid concern about the other director? Or but if it's opinion about the CEO, a member of the management team, uh, what you should do about an activist, that the the directors have to, in my book, have to be willing to have the open conversation in the room. Um, because otherwise you can't bring everybody together and say, okay, what are we going to do about this particular situation? But it is it is somewhat board culture dependent. And I have noticed a distinct difference between the five or six unit US boards I've sat on, public boards, and the French board.

Steve Schmith 16:57

I've got two follow-ups to that. Big corporate multinationals. Domiciled in the US versus domiciled in France as your example. Have those cultures, outside of what happens in the boardroom, have you seen those cultures and how those boards operate through those those cultural filters? Have you seen that show up in different levels of performance of those companies?

Philipp Willigmann 17:34

I think um only in the speed with which you can move on the CEO. I think that's where it shows up, but but I think the bigger issue is the size of the board. So in France, the company is four via and it's you know 28 billion euros of revenue. Um, it's a 14-person board, which is quite normal for that size of company in Europe, because you have two union representatives on the board, plus a couple of insiders who are major owners. You know, the Peugeot family owns a big piece of the stock. Um and so 14 people is a lot more difficult to bring consensus to and move than eight. And so um it's just very interesting to see the difference in dynamic that you get. So I my my observation from not enough data points, I'd be fascinated to talk to people with other data points, but my observation is the bigger the board, the longer it takes you to make difficult decisions. And a difficult decision is do you need to bring in a new CEO? How are you going to deal with a very difficult activist? Those kind of decisions. And I think a seven or eight-person board is just much more efficient. So I don't know if it's international, multinational, or just the size of the board that makes a big difference. So I try and keep the boards smaller. One of my boards is at seven, the other is at ten in the US. Um, and I just I think the smaller you need enough, you need enough people on the board to staff your committees with independence, but beyond that, you slow yourselves down if you have a big board.

Steve Schmith 19:29

How much does trust in the board chair play as a factor in a director being comfortable sharing those sorts of opinions outside or even inside the boardroom?

Penny Herscher 19:44

I think it's huge. I think it's a huge issue. Um I I have worked with some really magnificent chairs, I mean really superb chairs. Marty Kaplan, who was chair of Lamentum before I took over, um, the current chair of Four Via. And I've worked with some awful chairs that I didn't trust. And I think it makes a huge issue because I think if you don't trust the chair, you're gonna be incredibly careful about what you say. And I I now um will not serve on a board where I don't trust the chair. I've reached a stage of my life where I'm choosing not to, you know, I will step off the board. Um because uh if the board doesn't trust the chair, again, you can't get to sort of efficient trusting conversations about what are you gonna do next.

Steve Schmith 20:43

Uh we started this conversation with you mentioning it is probably one of the highest responsibilities of the board. Can you share what makes that one of the hardest things a board has to do?

Penny Herscher 20:57

Yes, and and you know, it's hard whether it is the choice of the CEO or it isn't the choice of the CEO. By the way, it's hard either way, but um, if it is the choice of the CEO, so the CEO is retiring or or he or she is leaving, um the the dominant issue is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of making a mistake, because um the right CEO can have such a profound positive impact on the shareholder value and on the employees and customers, and the wrong CEO, um as we all see, can really damage a company. So my observation is it takes a lot of courage, and you also learn through the process which of your directors naturally have courage and which don't. Um, or another dimension is which of your directors are super analytical and want To analyze every candidate 10,000 ways, and uh, and which directors are very instinctual. You know, they're like, yes, okay, I see, this is the right person. I met them, I spent 30 minutes with them, and I'm sure they're the right person. Right? So you're managing those kind of personality differences and decision-making differences. Um, and so fear of the unknown, fear of making a mistake is the really big issue. And it's even worse when uh some of your board think you need to replace the CEO and some don't. So you don't even have agreement on whether you need to replace the CEO or not. Then the fear really comes into the room of people saying, but you know, we know he's a good guy, and we he's not really screwing up, he's just like not doing as well as we could be, but he's not really screwing up, and we could get somebody in who really screwed up, you know. So you see, you again see the courage and the um the people who are very sort of future-oriented and say, yes, the the market is changing, we have to move. And the people who are more retrospective in their approach, but he's done a good job, he's a good guy, he's my friend. And you have to bring all very valid opinions together to say, is this the time? Do we need to overcome our fear of the unknown? Is this the time that we have to replace the CEO? So I think it's really fear of making a mistake that holds boards back. And I would say it's a lot of work. And I think some directors don't want to do the work. But in on my boards, they all want to do the work because if they don't want to do the work, they're not on my board. But but I mean, I have seen directors who don't want to do the work, right? Um, but mostly it's fear of the unknown.

Philipp Willigmann 24:00

Penny, staying with this for a little bit, what happens if a board is truly trying to protect relationship over performance? And the board is really afraid of doing the hard work and asking the tough questions. How can you as a chair break through there? What tools do you have at hand to move from, yeah, not asking the tough questions to really focus on the performance and the transformation of the company?

Penny Herscher 24:27

Um, so you have you have a well, you have the simple tool of you know, you as the chair um work with each director, and you have to be willing to share feedback with the director. You have to be willing to, and you have to be willing to do it in a way that the director can hear your feedback. Because this is not like a manager and subordinate situation, you know, when you're in your 20s and your manager tells you uh, you know, when you do that in a meeting, nobody likes it. Um, because you're very much peers, even when you're chair and directors, you're very much peers. You're all very experienced, you all have good reasons for being in the room. So the ability to give the feedback is very important, you know. Um, but I'd say the other thing that I've recently done is go off site with the board and develop a set of board principles and talk about what does it mean to be on this board and what are the behaviors and responsibilities that we have on this board. And we did this recently with one of my boards where we actually had a facilitator, it was Egon Zender, facilitated, they were brilliant. And lots of issues came out of, well, when you do that, it really pisses me off. And, you know, I don't think you listen to me when I talk about this. And and uh the this board that I took to this offsite, we have a uh a tremendous spectrum on conservatism. We have some people in the room with a who are very comfortable with risk, and other people in the room who are really not comfortable with risk, which is healthy for a board. It's healthy, but it makes some of the conversations very difficult. And so I, as chair, spoke to each director before the offsite and said, you know, my goal is we need to be really high performing because of the tremendous opportunity in front of us. We have to be high performing. We owe it to our employees and our shareholders. So, and we are not very good. We'd we'd gone through a CEO search and we'd had various fraca during the CEO search, as happens. And so we went off site and we spent two days just talking about how we were gonna behave as a board. And how and we and we wrote a set of principles, and we share those everybody has those principles now, and so now I have the ability in the room to say, okay, guys, we all agreed on this principle, but we're breaking this principle right now. So I think there are sort of informal ways you can do it, but there are also formal ways you can agree. How are you going to behave as a board? But it's work. You know, people have to be willing to go to go off site for two days and be vulnerable. But the best thing I did in that in that exercise is I also organized that we cook dinner together. And everybody got a task. Everybody got even one of my lovely directors who said he didn't know how to boil water, got a task.

Philipp Willigmann 27:42

You boiled water.

Penny Herscher 27:45

You can also do things just to build trust between the directors because a lot of this issue is trust. Can I be vulnerable in front of you? If I really think what you just said was wrong, can I say it in the room? Can I say, no, no, no, Fred, that that's just not right. But that's what you want in the room. So uh the board principles, developing the board principles, I think can be very helpful.

Philipp Willigmann 28:08

To push the pause button again. Camaraderies as strategy. Penny mentioned that boards who cook dinner together make better decisions. This isn't soft stuff. It's about building the psychological safety required to fire a CEO or approve a $5 billion acquisition, as well as making that investment into the future technology the whole company needs to believe in. And now back to the conversation.

Steve Schmith 28:37

You talk about principles, and and certainly many CEOs also share or have some role on the board. Um important is it for the CEO to buy into those principles of how the board behaves and what the mandate of the board is, etc.

Penny Herscher 28:54

I think it's absolutely critical because the CEO is a member of the board. Um and the CEO is going to be dealing with the ramifications of how the board behaves. So um I'll give you an example. So when board members behave badly in front of the management team, the CEO has to directly deal with the downstream effects of that. And so, for example, um, an agreement that you will always be constructive, that you will not um you will not go down the you guys are all screwed up, la la la la la, right? That your your input into the room has to be constructive and forward-looking. Makes a big difference to what the CEO has to deal with for the management team after the meeting. So uh we have that explicit discussion that it is not okay on our board to sort of rant at the management team about, well, I told you you should have done this, and I told you you should have done that, and you know, now you're gonna miss this opportunity. Well, that's just not helpful, right? And so that's the kind of thing where the CEO is in the room the entire time, except the last 30 minutes, right? They're in the room the entire time, they're a full member of the board, and they're dealing with what happens outside the room with the management team after the board meeting. So they have to be part of the development of the culture and the principles and how you behave in the room. It's very important.

Steve Schmith 30:36

If there is a board chair right now listening to this and knows that there is something wrong with the composition of the board that they're leading, but doesn't know where to start to affect change, to move the board culture and composition in the right direction. What advice would you give to that individual in terms of where to start?

Penny Herscher 31:03

Uh the first thing that individual needs is a sounding board. So sometimes it's somebody on the board. Uh on one of my boards, I've developed a relationship with another director where I feel like I can call him and say, you know, I'm seeing this, am I crazy? You know, I I'm trying to figure out how to handle ABC. Will you brainstorm with me? So either on the board or another chair, I think you have to talk to somebody to start to start it. Some of the recruiters are very good at helping you think it through, some of them are not. But you kind of have to develop a plan. Like I I um I have been in a situation where I I kind of had looked across the room and I knew it was going to take several years to change the structure and the nature of the board. And so I built a plan kind of in my head of okay, the first thing we're gonna do is this, and then the next thing we're gonna do is this. Because it takes years, you can't just switch all your directors at once. You need to, you need to sort of rank them, prioritize the skills. Like no matter what the culture is, you need a great audit chair. Yeah, that that's more important than any other chair position. So you have to kind of build a plan and think it through. But I'd say get a get a sounding board, somebody you trust, where you can start to talk through. I see person A, pros and cons. Not my number one priority, but shouldn't be there in three years. I see person B, number one priority because of behavior X, Y, Z. It's like you need a plan.

Philipp Willigmann 32:46

Penny, this sounds like uh the Share Circle. Um, who I've co-founded with Karen Francis, uh, who's also uh on the show. Um, what were you trying to build uh with the share circle uh and and what you felt uh didn't exist?

Penny Herscher 33:04

So the chair circle came out of my 2024 experience being intimately involved in three CEO searches, and seeing how the um the process is not smooth is a polite way of saying it. I mean, my goodness, what a mess. Very, very difficult. And you see people behave badly. I mean, men, grown men having a temper tantrum and throwing their toys out of a pram, um, grown men standing up in a private room or restaurant and shouting at the board. I mean, really bad behaviors, right? And I came out of that year and I was like, wow, I wish I had known at the beginning of the year what I knew by the end of the year. And I had this desire to share my experience with other board chairs, because every board chair is worrying about CEO succession at some level. And I realized there really isn't a forum where you can pull high-quality public company board chairs together in a small forum and talk about difficult issues. So it grew out of that. And you know, the topics are very difficult that boards are dealing with today. It's significantly more complex than we started with, you know, 20 years of experience. Some of the topics today, like how do you react to the administration if the administration chooses to take an interest in your company? Right? How do you deal with how do you uh you know, how do you deal with some of the very aggressive activists that are becoming the norm? They're not the exception anymore. It's those are the kind of things that um I do think chairs can really support each other on because they're difficult issues. You know, these uh moonshot pay packages, dual-class stock, so many very difficult issues that we're dealing with.

Philipp Willigmann 34:56

Um Penny, it was a true pleasure to have you on the show. Uh, thank you very, very much for your time. And um I look forward to having uh you know another conversation maybe in a year from now to see um how the role of the board has changed then.

Penny Herscher 35:10

My pleasure. Thank you for having me on your show.

Steve Schmith 35:12

Thank you, Penny. Such a fascinating look inside the inside the boardroom. Thank you for your time.

Penny Herscher 35:17

My pleasure.

Steve Schmith 35:19

Philip, what struck me was Penny's point of view that board composition is an MA deal for talent. If you build an echo chamber, you're building a liability. So, with that context and that backdrop, what are some questions that our listeners ought to be thinking about?

Philipp Willigmann 35:36

Thank you very much, Steve. So many insights to unpack. I think there's again three major questions everybody should ask in their next leadership retreat, executive meeting, or board meeting. Number one, the deal for talent. Is our current board composition ideal for the talent we need three years from now? Or is it just a reflection of the expertise we needed three years ago? Two, the fear audit. Are we delaying any necessary leadership transitions because of a lack of candidates? Or is it actually a fear of the unknown and social friction? And again, last but not least, the trust index. Do we have enough vulnerability, trust, and camaraderie in the room to handle a multi-billion dollar crisis without the board fracturing into silos?

Steve Schmith 36:35

Such an amazing series. When I think about it, data is your baseline, but your character is your edge. Innovation is your best defense, and venture is your sharpest tool. This was Boardrooms in Transition, a special series from Inside CVC. Thanks for listening, and you can find all of the episodes of Inside CVC on your favorite podcast platform or online at upath.com forward slash podcast. That's the letter u hyphenpath.com forward slash podcast. As always, thanks for joining us for this special series.