LEADERSHIP AND STRATEGY
THE BOARD’ S OWN AI EXAM BEFORE GRADING THE C-SUITE, THE SHARPER BOARDS GRADE THEMSELVES ON FIVE QUESTIONS
n Does at least one director hold hands-on expertise in AI, cybersecurity and data governance, not just“ tech experience”?
n Can the board tell a real AI strategy from an expensive slideshow? n Does AI reach the agenda or sit behind the minutes and the catering? n Do you reward measurable results within a year, not a museum of pilots? n Is silence treated as a warning, so weak bets get challenged and strong ones get a champion?
What a board that passes looks like The fix is well mapped, and the better boards are already moving. Anna Marks, Chair of Deloitte ' s Global Board of Directors, puts the job with the chair and is candid about the culture it takes. Silence, she warns, is not agreement but its impostor: an absence of debate“ implies agreement”, which is precisely how a weak AI bet sails through unchallenged and a strong one dies for want of a champion. What a judicious board is hunting for, in the end, is not another slide. It is delivery. Charley ' s test is brutally concrete: a technology leader who lands well produces“ measurable results” within a year, he writes,“ not just use cases and pilots”. Revenue added, costs cut, processes rebuilt, not a museum of proofs of concept. A board that cannot recognise that difference will keep hiring the wrong person and blaming the technology. McKinsey would start further back still, with a posture before a plan. Is AI here to sharpen the business you have, or to build one you do not? Selectively, or everywhere? Settle that, the firm argues, and a board finally knows what it is meant to be governing, instead of nodding along to whichever consultant spoke last. None of it, though, lets the boardroom off the hook. Boards are right to ask whether their executives would be rehired in an AI economy. They should expect the same question fired straight back across the table. The most exposed figure in this reckoning is not the CIO defending a transformation budget. It is the director who still thinks oversight means reading the quarterly deck and nodding along. Board growth and effectiveness used to mean adding a name and refreshing the skills matrix. AI has made it closer to survival, with a double-digit swing in return on equity between the boards that grasp this technology and the boards that do not. The ones that come through will be where the corner office and the boardroom sat the same exam, at the same time, and both bothered to study.
businesschief. com 95