Boards hardly succeed by accident. In fact, it takes intentional efforts to construct a consistently high-performing board. This was one of the key takeaways from a recent session of Egon Zehnder’s Directors Development Program which delved into how to build a high-performing board.
A healthy board of directors requires that each member be in top contributing condition. As part of the Directors Development Program, Ashley Summerfield, Global Practice Leader for CEO Succession and Board Consulting at Egon Zehnder, Vineet Hemrajani, India Managing Partner of Egon Zehnder, and Darpan Kalra, who specializes in board consulting for Egon Zehnder, share what it takes to be an effective director and the key qualities of a chair in unlocking and enabling board effectiveness.
In today’s rapidly evolving corporate landscape, the need to establish, promote, and maintain a sense of shared purpose throughout an organization is more important than ever. Whether it’s addressing the growing need for environmental sustainability or social equity and inclusion, many of the increasingly urgent and complex challenges facing businesses today will simply not be overcome in the absence of a truly collaborative and mutually rewarding workplace culture.
In a recent session of Egon Zehnder’s Directors Development Program, the focus was on the nuanced role of the chair and the delicate art of managing dissent in the boardroom. The insightful discussion, moderated by Egon Zehnder consultant Namrita Jhangiani, featured two notable speakers, Subhash Mundra, former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Chair of the Bombay Stock Exchange and seasoned board leader, and Deepak Satwalekar, former Managing Director and CEO of HDFC Standard Life Insurance, Chair of Asian Paints and accomplished board director and chair, who brought their wealth of experience from the realms of regulatory oversight and corporate leadership.
As part of the Directors Development Program, a session centered on the role boards play in developing leadership, talent and culture, was led by Kalpana Morparia, former Chair and CEO of JP Morgan’s South and Southeast Asia region, who explored the best practices for fostering a healthy board culture, diving into strategies and experiences she has embraced throughout her career.
One of the sessions of Egon Zehnder’s Directors Development Program addressed the multifaceted challenges of cybersecurity in a world that is becoming more technology driven and more connected. With a focus on cybersecurity risks and how the board can address them, the session was hosted by Rahul Tyagi, co-founder Safe Security, one the world’s largest cybersecurity assessment company, and Nandkumar Saravade, former CEO of ReBIT and a renowned authority on data security.
Over the past couple of decades, traditional financial institutions and service providers have gradually found themselves in the midst of an entirely new and continuously evolving competitive landscape. Facilitated by rapid and extraordinary advances in modern technology, the rise of digital services and new players from the burgeoning fintech and insurtech sectors has not only led to increased optionality for customers but has also given birth to a range of novel use cases and a veritable reimagining of how customers interact with financial products in the digital age.
As tools like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual and augmented reality, and advanced robotics continue to evolve at a rapid pace, many professionals across industries find themselves playing catch-up in an effort to understand the near-term and long-term impacts of these technologies on both their work and day-to-day lives. Are the increasing capabilities of modern AI systems something to be feared or received with open arms? How will interacting in the so-called “metaverse” make the real world a better place? What would a meaningful relationship between a human and a robot actually look like?
A new installment of Egon Zehnder’s Directors Development Program unpacked legal principles and liabilities for board directors in a session titled “The Board’s Legal Environment.” Leading the discussion was Sharad Abhyankar, a Senior Partner at Khaitan & Co. who specializes in commercial and corporate law and corporate governance matters.
Over the past decade, the gradual rollout and success of the India Stack has allowed the country to emerge as an unexpected global role model for facilitating rapid economic growth, financial inclusion, and the creation and refinement of a nationally sanctioned digital public infrastructure (DPI). From the 2009 conception and implementation of Aadhaar, its novel biometric digital identification system, to the 2016 launch of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), an interoperable and increasingly secure digital payments application and infrastructure, India continues to expand on the capabilities of its DPI and position itself as a leader in both technological innovation and social progress.
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