Navigating Boardroom Pitfalls: 10 Reasons why boards fail

The last decade has seen a plethora of organisational failures in a wide range of sectors. It appears that Governance Codes, although welcome, are only taking us so far. Perhaps the problems may lie in the board’s conversations inside and outside the boardroom.

This webinar will help you:

• Help you spot the early warning signs of boardroom dysfunction
• Recognise risky boardroom behaviour and what to do about them
• Ensure you are having the right conversations inside and outside the boardroom

Join us for actionable insights and strategies to ensure your board is functioning at its best.

Kathryn Bishop and Gillian Camm have each spent decades in boardrooms in private-sector companies, public bodies, charities, and schools, working with boards as Chair, Senior Independent Director, non-executive, or executive member. Their focus on making boards more effective blends this real-life practical experience with their research and teaching.  They have poured everything they have learned into their new book, Board Talk: 18 crucial conversations that count inside and outside the boardroom.

Kathryn is an Associate Fellow at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, where she teaches and works with boards of global organisations. She combines her teaching with practical experience working in organisations. She has served on boards in England and Wales in the public, private and charity sectors, including as the first Chair of the Welsh Revenue Authority, set up to raise revenue in Wales for the first time in 800 years. Her first book, Make Your Own Map, about women’s working lives, was published in 2021, and she received a CBE in the 2021 Birthday Honours list for services to diversity and public administration. Her website sets out her other publications and videos, as well as her occasional blog (www.kathryn-bishop.com).

Gillian runs her own executive coaching and consultancy business, drawing on her extensive experience on boards in the private and public sector, including roles as the senior independent director on a Plc Board and at Wessex Water, as a main board director at Clerical Medical Investment Group, and as worldwide partner of the Hay Group. She was a member of the General Medical Council (GMC) and as the first lay Chair of the Fitness to Practise Committee. She has also served as Chair of the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education and as Chair of the Board of Governors of the University of the West of England. In these roles, she has been actively involved in working with investors, regulators, and consumer groups, and in reviewing and developing systems of governance. For example, she led a review of governance of the GMC following the Shipman Inquiry and of university governance in Wales culminating in the publication of the Camm Review in 2019. She has chaired  or been a member of the nominations committee, the remuneration committee and the audit and risk committee in a wide variety of sectors. She has also written for the Journal of General Management and the Financial Times