Photographer: Joe McNally/Getty Images
What is the best job in business? Consider the company director. The pay is handsome (in Nepal directors might earn between Rs25,000 and Rs30,000 a meeting) and the workload is light as well (they gather perhaps a dozen times a year). It is a position of quiet influence, free from the daily grind and glaring scrutiny that burdens the executives they nominally oversee. Yet when a crisis hits—a chief executive melts down, a bet on technology goes bust, a geopolitical shock waves through the supply chain—these genteel part-timers are suddenly expected to act with the decisiveness of a wartime cabinet and the wisdom of a supreme court. Their cosy world vanishes in an instant.
Herein lies the central paradox of corporate governance. Boards are more important than ever. The companies they steward shape everything from your pension and house prices to the planet’s climate. Their mistakes can crater economies and cost thousands of jobs. But we still have no good idea how to pick the people who sit on them. The system is trying to solve a problem of human judgment with the bureaucratic tools of a human-resources department. It is not working.
Look at how boards select their members. Terrified of missing some crucial expertise, they draw up “skills matrices”—grids that specify the need for, say, financial acumen, cyber know-how or experience in Asia. It’s a comforting exercise. It implies that governance is a technical puzzle which can be solved by assembling the right set of competencies. But real crises don’t arrive labelled and predictable. Hospital boards had pandemic plans; they didn’t have plans for global supply chains for masks collapsing. Energy firms had risk committees; they didn’t have a playbook for a land war in Europe. A matrix designed today would demand an AI ethicist; it won’t specify what to do when the next unknowable disruption hits.
This checkbox approach misunderstands the job. A board’s duties boil down to three things: picking the boss, offering sage advice and keeping an eye on risk. Each requires not a specialist’s knowledge but a generalist’s character. Choosing a chief executive, for instance, is the board’s most consequential act. Do you promote a loyal insider who knows the firm but may be blind to its flaws? Or gamble on an outsider who might bring change or chaos? Think of Tesla’s directors grappling with Elon Musk’s antics or Disney’s board navigating succession after Bob Iger. It’s a decision that blends psychology, strategy and intuition—none of which features on a skills list.
The tasks of advice and oversight are just as slippery. A good director must challenge the chief executive without undermining them and probe for risks without spreading paranoia, as well as understand the details without meddling in them. It’s a balancing act. Many directors are former bosses themselves. Their experience is invaluable but it can also be a trap, tempting them to second-guess management or dwell on past battles. The boardroom isn’t a cockpit: the director isn’t there to fly the plane, but to make sure the pilot isn’t lost or reckless.
And the airspace keeps getting more crowded. A board once answered mainly to shareholders. Now it must navigate demands from employees, activists, regulators and politicians on all sides. It’s less a committee and more a diplomatic summit in permanent session.
Faced with this complexity, the instinct is to recruit for the last crisis. An accounting scandal? Load up on forensic accountants. A #MeToo moment? Prioritise diversity advocates. A war? Find a geopolitical strategist. But crises, by nature, don’t repeat themselves. You end up with a board perfectly designed to fight yesterday’s war, leaving it exposed to tomorrow’s unknown threat. The rear-view mirror is a terrible navigational tool.
So what should companies look for? They need people with the confidence to speak truth to power but the humility to listen; the curiosity to grasp new threats and the moral courage to act when the path isn’t clear. These aren’t skills you list on a CV. They’re traits of character. The best directors are not walking databases of expertise. They are adults with sound judgment, who can weigh conflicting advice, absorb complex briefs and make tough calls under pressure. They are the anti-technocrat.
Too many boards are still filled with ghosts—names on a letterhead who offer little beyond a prestigious connection or diligent box-tickers who see governance as a compliance exercise. They do harm. But the greater danger now is the well-meaning quest for the perfect set of credentials. It provides the illusion of control while missing the point entirely. In an age of volatility a company’s greatest asset isn’t a spreadsheet of competencies in its boardroom. It’s the collective character of the people sitting around the table. Pick them for that or don’t bother. Their easy job just got hard. ■
