How do I grow my business?

How do I grow my business? It’s a key question in corporate governance and a crucial one in these turbulent times. 

The build-up of uncertainties in an evolving workplace climate has led to corporate governance changes and the need for board members and directors to accept new responsibilities. While ensuring your organisation gets through short-term crises is essential, it is equally vital to focus on a growth mindset for long-term prosperity. 

This guide will show how your board can maintain a positive outlook and continue embracing growth-tailored strategies in unprecedented and volatile situations. 

Famed author and thinker John Keats wrote about a concept known as negative capability. The process involved leaving the unknown unexplored and accepting it in its entirety. 

When taken out of literary context, negative capability enables boards to process the status quo and release the anxiety of overanalysing and understanding the details. By doing so, your board can gain clarity in establishing strategies for resilience and creativity. This is especially important since the EY Global Board Risk Survey reveals boards generally face a higher number of risks that concern them. 

These assessed risk areas include geopolitical events like trade wars, talent shortages, and general changes in the regulatory environment. The survey also shows highly resilient boards apply a negative capability approach by developing overall resilience rather than individually responding to every risk.

Effective boards should proactively vet their company’s strategy, contingency, and crisis response plans. A thorough review of these critical processes ensures your company has suitable contingency arrangements for optimised risk management. 

A board with the right documents on hand can effectively mitigate the effects of a disruptive event and expedite growth-focused activities. Your board can further refine risk response practices for improved results by actively engaging stakeholders to discuss the most cost-effective strategies according to risk prioritisation. 

Your board could consider challenging the company’s strategic response to realistic AI-based scenarios generated with company and industry data. Regular constructive challenges to your company’s stability in the face of disruption help prepare board members and stakeholders for diverse uncertainties. 

In addition to routine document reviews, board members and directors need to maintain transparent communication throughout the discussion. Your board members must address the key operational resilience considerations and the proper business continuity plans implemented for each critical business process.

One significant aspect of a growth mindset is the ability to openly accept a miscalculation or oversight during a crisis. They are always possible, and when they occur, the worst next move is pretending it didn’t happen. 

Board members and directors who accept their mistakes show a passion for continuous improvement, which helps them acquire novel insights and skills to drive organisations forward. 

Experts believe individuals with a fixed mindset (as opposed to a growth-oriented approach) surrender to the notion that intelligence and ability are limited while outcomes are predetermined and beyond control. Your board needs to develop and maintain a growth-oriented mindset to stay focused on target setting rather than passively accepting the status quo. 

You can nurture a growth mindset across your board with the following strategies.

Board members and directors may consider allocating a governance training stipend to management and employees. This encourages additional external learning opportunities to better prepare against various uncertainties. 

Boards frequently seeking stakeholder feedback can leverage multiple perspectives to guide impartial and effective actions in a volatile situation. These discussions include accepting and responding to constructive criticism among stakeholders. It is also crucial to strategise how your board members and directors react to feedback to promote learning opportunities. 

Continuous feedback sessions tap on real-time information for accurate responses. Constant feedback also shows your board’s willingness to proactively drive stakeholder development with minimal disruption.  

Your board should exemplify a growth mindset by staying engaged in active learning and improvements. These progress-driven actions can help create a cascade of growth-oriented mindsets that lead to a more positive work culture.

It is strategic to identify the dominant attitude and thought process of your board members and directors to evaluate the required steps to improve your organisation’s success and overall response to uncertainty. You can assess for a growth-prioritised mindset by checking against these shared traits:

• Curiosity – An underlying sense of curiosity encourages your board to actively search for alternate solutions and constant feedback. Curiosity posits that boards do not have all the answer, and are willing to collaborate with stakeholders to arrive at a practical solution in the organisation’s best interest. 
• Analytical reasoning – Closely related to the practice of admitting mistakes, analytical reasoning empowers boards to distinguish between the idealistic and feasible. This is crucial, particularly in time-sensitive crises. 
• Strong sense of achievement – Boards harnessing a growth mindset always strive for purposeful action. Instead of accepting things as they are, boards with a sense of achievement aim for new goals, continuing to push the bar when the situation calls for it. 

A growth mindset is a long-term solution for guiding your company across unchartered waters. The mental framework enables your board to collaborate closely with senior leadership to propel positive change and policies without delay. While adapting to the process might seem challenging initially due to status quo bias, pushing against the inherent resistance is necessary. Through a growth-driven mindset, not only can your company acquire value for a boost to organisational performance, but you could also rebound much faster than your closest competitors.

How do I grow my business – The Corporate Governance Institute