Agility. It turns out this thing that many of us might have once dismissed as a corporate buzzword, is in fact, quite important. Tellingly, we recently surveyed 250 C-suite leaders of companies with £100m turnover* and they cited agile decision-making as being essential to the organisation’s survival during the pandemic. The majority of this same group agreed agility would be key to their company’s future success.
But how do you get more agile? According to our respondents, shorter, sharper board papers were one of the top three things that would help them move more quickly. After all, if the board is presented with lean papers that put the key messages upfront, they’re able to have focused discussions which lead to swifter decisions. On the other hand, if the board is presented with bloated papers containing too much irrelevant information, they’re going to waste time pondering the not-so-critical information, and likely come back to you with further questions.
“Shorter papers leave a lot more time for action, and the board can get straight to the decision-making.”
~ Paul Lester CBE, Chair, McCarthy Stone, and advisory board member
So, if the antidote to boardroom bottlenecking is shorter, sharper papers, then who is responsible for ensuring this length and concision? What steps do they need to take? And what are the consequences of not doing this? We worked with an advisory panel of both executive committee and board members to determine the answers to these questions, which you can find in our ExCo’s Guide to Shorter Papers.
Download your copy here.
*Source: 250 C-suite leaders of organisations with over £100m turnover surveyed by Census Wide on behalf of Board Intelligence, December 2021.