Politics feels like a daily soap opera, the climate crisis isn’t going away, everyone still seems exhausted, and technology appears to be changing faster than most of us can keep up. If you're on a board of directors right now - of any type of entity - it probably feels like you're constantly putting out fires, jumping from one challenge to the next.

And, that’s where the truth lies…many boards are drowning because they've forgotten the reasons they exist in the first place. 

Boards often wrestle with how much latitude to give senior management. These questions cut to the heart of the board–executive relationship. On one hand, directors are recruited / elected to safeguard stakeholder interests through robust oversight and strategic direction. On the other hand, a high-calibre team might chafe at high levels of supervision, preferring directors who can enhance their thinking with industry know-how, networks and functional expertise. 

Identifying your stakeholders is just the beginning. The real work, and the real value, comes from meaningful engagement. And no, sending the annual report, conducting a staff survey, or having the management report secondhand feedback doesn't count as real engagement.

We’ve all seen how messy real decision-making is. You can’t please everyone, and sometimes, what’s good for one group might be pretty awful for another. That’s governance. That’s life. But the problem is when boards don’t talk about trade-offs decisions, they just make them. Unconsciously.

This is why every board needs to move beyond vague stakeholder awareness and into something more structured and intentional: mapping, prioritising, and interrogating stakeholder relationships in context.