Claim OwnershipEnter the Boardroom with Nurole
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Enter the Boardroom lifts the veil on the secretive world of boards, giving you the information you need to get more board roles and become better board members. Join Nurole CEO Oliver Cummings as he sits down with the extraordinary people shaping today's and tomorrow's boardrooms.
141 Episodes
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Louise Hill is Exec Chair, former CEO & Co-founder of GoHenry. Her board roles include Sibstar and Innovate Finance’s Unicorn Council for UK FinTech. Listen to the conversation to hear about: Louise’s sources of support and challenge in the early stages of GoHenry (2:01) How the board helped her with product market fit and go-to-market strategy (4:27) Three key strategic decisions where the board added value (10:22) Why it can be better to target end-users than distribution partners (12:5...
Professor Randall Peterson is a Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, where he focuses on CEO personality, top management team interaction, board dynamics, leading diverse teams, and the effects of member personality on group interaction and performance. Listen to the conversation to get his thoughts on: The biggest mistakes board members make when trying to influence people (2:14) How board members can get better at influencing (4:27) The difference between executi...
Fiona Hathorn is CEO and co-founder of Women on Boards UK, now known as WB Directors and recently acquired by Nurole. Listen to the conversation to hear about: What motivated Fiona to help more women get board roles (1:40); One woman’s success story that illustrates how to get board roles (5:32); The benefits of taking on external board positions as an executive (8:15); The biggest misconception CEOs and CHROs have about board positions (16:02); The most common challenges faced by board membe...
Steve Rigby is Co-CEO of Rigby Group, one of the UK's largest family businesses and in the top 500 largest family companies in the world. Listen to the conversation to hear about: Three key career moments that have shaped Steve’s boardroom thinking (2:02) NED lessons from the retail sector and financial crisis (5:01) How to survive a potential future of inflation, rising prices and crashing assets (9:29) Steve’s playbook for growing and selling businesses (11:51) Lessons on internationalisati...
Baroness Dido Harding is a former Chair of NHS Improvement, Executive Chair of NHS Test & Trace, NED at the Bank of England, and CEO of TalkTalk Telecom Group plc. In this conversation, we cover: • How Dido handled Ofcom scrutiny after taking on her first CEO role at TalkTalk (01:50) • Lessons learned from the TalkTalk cyber attack (08:21) • The value of functional experts on boards (24:23) • Governance lessons from leading NHS Test & Trace (26:56) ...
Jock Lennox is Senior Independent Director and Audit Committee Chair at Barratt Developments plc, and Chair of Johnson Service Group plc and Clarion Housing Group. Listen to his thoughts on: the three most definitive experiences in your board career (2:01); approaching uncertainty in the boardroom (6:59); shifting boardroom thinking to focus on what’s possible rather than a binary sense of right and wrong (10:21); how to challenge the executive as a board member (11:47); the best way to harne...
Dr. Margaret Heffernan is author of seven books, including Wilful Blindness, Uncharted and Embracing Uncertainty. A former CEO of InfoMation Corp, ZineZone Corp, and iCast Corp, she was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2024. In this episode, we discuss: Balancing rigidity with flexibility in board meetings (1:35) What great board agendas look like (6:47) When ice -breakers help, and when they don’t (8:35) Helpful versus unhelpful challenge (10:58) Wilful blindness - and why smart ...
Dr. Margaret Heffernan is author of seven books, including Wilful Blindness, Uncharted and Embracing Uncertainty. A former CEO of InfoMation Corp, ZineZone Corp, and iCast Corp, she was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2024. In this episode, we discuss: What uncertainty does to board decision-making (2:47) Practical ways boards can mitigate it (6:25) Squaring “take your time” with decisiveness (11:10) What a robust boardroom decision process looks like (14:36) Being agile without ...
Peter Clark is a NED at Clarks. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What makes a great i-NED on a family board? (2:15) What should you look for when recruiting NEDs in a family business? (5:27) What questions do you ask when interviewing a NED candidate? (8:07) What mistakes have you made when hiring NEDs in the past? (11:18) How has Clarks remained a family business for 7 generations? (13:39) What is a family council? (16:01) What discussions do you have on the council? (18:39) How do you navig...
Carl-Peter Forster is Chair of Vesuvius plc and Keller Group plc. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What experiences from your executive career have shaped your non-executive career? (2:09) How would you counsel a new CEO coming into a business looking to set up their own team? (7:06) What lessons did you learn from the General Motors crisis? (10:12) What did you learn from your time at Tata Motors? (13:56) How do you advise a headstrong founder? (17:11) How do you navigate different business ...
Laurence Garett is General Partner at Highland Europe, a VC firm, and NED at Wirepas, hyperexponential, Modulr, Featurespace Ltd and Goodlord. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What strategic contributions did the board make to Featurespace’s growth? (2:01)How should board members think about pricing? (9:44) How can board members help organisations bring new products to market? (12:59) What do CEOs and board members need to keep top of mind when moving to the US market? (17:31) What were the t...
Ian Phillips is Chair of Watling Park Primary, consultant at Clew Education and author of How to be a great GoaT, a guide to being a brilliant governor or trustee. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What does the role of governor or trustee involve? (1:57) Are there archetypal board member profiles that you think are most needed? (6:20) What questions should candidates be asking to decide whether they take on a role? (10:46) Can board members add value to schools running at a deficit? (17:03) H...
Karen Blackett CBE is NED at Diageo plc and Chancellor of the University of Portsmouth. Tune in to hear her thoughts on: Where have boards added most value for you as a CEO or a president? (2:21) What advice would you give to CEOs going through a transformation? (7:07) What does good internal communication look like? (14:11) What questions should board members be asking to help a transformation process? (15:15) How do you strike the balance of being a proactive vs overbearing NED? (17:24) How...
Yvonne Bajela is Partner at LocalGlobe and Latitude. Tune in to hear her thoughts on: What value can a board bring to startups? (1:28) What is a North Star metric for startup boards, and should they be looking for one? (5:28) How do you effectively challenge a founder as a NED? (8:58) How do boards navigate hypergrowth, with the associated challenges? (10:47) What have been the three most challenging situations you've faced as a board member? (12:02) What have you learnt about dea...
Rita Clifton CBE is Chair of Simplyhealth and Deputy Chair of the John Lewis Partnership. Tune in to hear her thoughts on: Why should boards care more about brand? (1:52) What framework do you use to assess brand when joining a board? (5:49) How should CEOs think about return on brand investment? (8:03) How should boards manage the lag between internal changes and market perception?(17:59) When has your brand expertise helped unlock board-level value? (20:18) What did you do at ASOS when the ...
Fred Destin is founder of Stride VC and was lead investor at Cazoo, Deliveroo, Integral Ad Science and Zoopla. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: Where have you seen start-up board members add most value to their organisations? (1:39) How did the Zoopla board get comfortable with giving away 30% equity in one go? (6:16) How did you manage having customers on your board? (7:26) What KPIs should board members be looking at? (8:27) Have you spotted patterns across particularly valuable board membe...
Elena Botelho is co-author of the international best-seller, The CEO Next Door, and partner at ghSMART. Tune in to hear her thoughts on: What mistakes do boards most often make in CEO succession? (1:50) How should boards use external advice when evaluating CEO candidates? (6:23) What lessons can board members learn from failed CEO hires? (19:46) How can individual board members overcome deference to powerful CEOs? (22:34) What's your framework for hiring a CEO? (25:49) Should CEOs have board ...
Malcolm John is Founder and CEO of Action for Trustee Racial Diversity, a trustee at the Association of Chairs, and former Vice-Chair of Anti-Slavery International. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What was your journey to the boardroom? (2:23) How do you add value to boards? (7:00) How do you gain confidence in the boardroom? (9:53) How do you make someone feel welcome on a board? (15:21) What are the lows of your non-executive journey? (17:28) How much time should you allocate to board role...
Christian Unger is Partner at Partners Group. Tune in to hear his thoughts on: What is the Partners Group approach to boards? (1:49) How do you attract CEOs to board roles? (5.23) What is the perfect board size? (10.18) How much ownership do individual NEDs have over specific strategies? (17:56) Where have you seen NEDs add the most value? (26:28) How do you stop disagreement for disagreement’s sake on board? (30:09) How do you measure board member value? (37:44) How many board roles are too ...
Dorothy Burwell is a Partner at FGS Global, NED at Post Holdings, and Pennon plc. Tune in to hear her thoughts on: What key lessons as a comms exec have shaped the way you act as a board member? (2:13) How did you navigate merging four founder-led businesses together at FGS? (4:21) How quickly should changes occur post-merger? (11:17) What advice do you give to an executive team going through a merger? (12:54) How do you discover the culture of an organisation? (13:40) How has your experience...
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