STRATEGY: WHAT ARE THE CRITICAL ELEMENTS OF AN EFFECTIVE BOARD?

THE ROLE OF TODAY’S BOARD: NORDIC LEADERS GIVE THEIR VIEWS

BOOK REVIEW: WHEN IT ALL GETS TOO MUCH

SPRING 2015THE JOURNAL OF ALUMNI

PART OF THE HARVEY NASH GROUP

The recipe strong board

for a

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R esearch, conclusions from our interviewees in this issue of AQ, and experience drawn from our own work with boards clearly show that diverse boards generally offer better advice,

make better decisions and provide better support to the CEO and the organisation as a whole. Diversity in the broadest sense thus needs to be high on the agenda when recruiting new board members in order to compose the optimum board for the organisation in question. This is not about fulfilling quotas, but about creating a board that is a powerful strategic asset to help the organisation to develop successfully.

Given the need for increased diversity, along with heightened expectations about the level of engagement, contribution and time required of an individual board member, organisations need to take a different approach if they are to secure a healthy supply of the board competencies they need. Alumni believes that many nomination committees need to pursue new avenues, adopt a multidimensional evaluation model and be challenged in terms of the kind of profiles that will really make a difference to the board work – and, even more importantly, to the development of the company.

This more rigorous approach to board composition will, in turn, create a need for more in-depth assessment of different candidate attributes. The candidate assessment process should be refined accordingly, where interviews and references can be augmented with psychometric analysis tools and in-depth background controls, for example. In too many board recruitment processes potential new board members are scrutinised less closely than candidates to other key positions in an organisation.

Moreover, as this issue of AQ shows, the increasing pace of change organisations have to contend with is likely to result in more frequent changes to the board.

Nomination committees will clearly face supply challenges when trying to ensure the best possible board composition. However, as Alumni’s LIVE concept demonstrates (see back page), taking a more proactive approach to attracting and building the right pipeline and pool of potential candidates pays dividends in terms of strengthening board succession and composition.

Are nomination committees prepared for the challenge?

About AlumniAlumni is a leading firm within executive search and leadership consulting in North-Eastern Europe. For more than 25 years we have been developing tools and services designed to strengthen the organisations and teams of our clients throughout the public and private sectors.

Through a service offering ranging from executive search and leadership consulting to high-level board advisory services, we support our clients’ business success.

We have offices in Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Helsinki, Malmo, Oslo, Stockholm and Warsaw. Internationally we operate through our owner Harvey Nash Group, with more than 40 offices in Europe, the US and Asia.

E D I TO R I A L

Taking a more

proactive approach to building the

right pipeline and pool of

potential candidates

pays dividends in terms of

strengthening board

succession and composition

The best boardAre nomination committees prepared for the composition challenge, asks Jan Hemmingson.

Jan Hemmingson Managing director of Alumni Nordic.

Contact information for Alumni:

HQ Stockholm: +46 8 796 1700Gothenburg: +46 31 60 42 90Malmo: +46 40 35 48 70Copenhagen: +45 77 99 32 60Helsinki: +358 40 727 9727Oslo: + 47 22 40 40 80Warsaw: +48 22 428 47 28

alumni@alumniglobal.com www.alumniglobal.com

For queries regarding AQ: Catharina Melin-Jones catharina.melin.jones@alumniglobal.com

Editor: Jane SimmsDesigner: Anna Hammar

© 2015 Alumni AB.

All rights reserved. Contents may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of the publisher.

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B oard composition is increasingly being seen as the most important determinant of board performance and organisational success. No

longer are boards made up of ‘the great and the good’ – people who have retired from executive (usually chief executive) roles and who turn up once a month to give the benefit of their vast experience to the executive team, have a nice lunch, pocket a fat fee and go home again.

As our interviews with three of the most senior chairmen and board executives in Scandinavia demonstrate, a great deal of thought and consideration is now being given to how to create the ‘best’ board for a company – and the definition of ‘best’ depends on the company, its circumstances and the challenges it faces at any given time.

Board composition is not static, but constantly evolving in line with the changing requirements of the organisation. And the parameters chairmen and nomination

committees consider range from experience, background and competencies, through gender, age and ethnicity, to personal characteristics such as optimism, integrity, willingness to challenge and a sense of humour.

Also, board members are expected to contribute. The increasingly rich and varied perspectives around a board table count for nothing unless they are harnessed in the cause of robust decision-making. The chairman’s leadership role is vital here – as it is in determining when someone’s contribution has become less valuable, and in managing their exit.

So let’s hand over to our interviewees: Ole Andersen, chairman of the board of directors at Danske Bank; Petra Hedengran, general counsel and head of corporate governance and compliance at Investor AB; and Joakim Karlsson, co-managing partner of NC Advisory, advisor to the Nordic Capital private equity funds.

Board composition

– when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

For extended versions of these interviews, please go to our website: www.alumniglobal.com

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T he composition of the board is the most important determinant of board performance. Size, gender balance, and a spread of

professional and personal qualifications and experience are all important, but you also need the right personality fit with the rest of the team.

Team working is important, but board members also have to bring their own perspectives, voice their own opinions, be able to challenge, and think independently. Provided board discussions are conducted in the right tone, and there is mutual respect, then you can have very lively and valuable debates. It is up to the chairman to make that work, and the role of the chairman in the current era of more diverse thinking around the boardroom table is more important and more difficult than it used to be. More than ever, it is a leadership role, and to do it well, I believe, you need a talent for leadership.

It’s getting more difficultGetting diverse boards to work together effectively is harder than leading the more homogeneous boards of the past, and discussions may be prolonged. But it pays off in the longer term in the form of more robust decision-making.

Ultimately you need to get everyone behind the ‘right’ decision. And there is always the risk when you assemble a group of strong individuals that one of them can ‘lead’ other

Ole Andersen is chairman of the board of directors at Danske Bank, where he also chairs the remuneration and nomination committees. He has held

the role for four years. He also chairs the boards at Bang and Olufsen, Chr. Hansen Holding and Zebra. He has a background in corporate

finance and private equity in firms including SEB and EQT.

The chairman’s role is about leadership

The role of the chairman in the current era of more diverse thinking

around the boardroom table is more important and more difficult than it used to be. More than ever,

it is a leadership role

DANSKE BANKFounded in 1871 by a saddle maker and broker, today Danske Bank is one of the leading financial enterprises in northern Europe. Headquartered in Copenhagen, it has a market-leading position in Denmark, is one of the largest banks in Northern Ireland and Finland, and holds challenger positions in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. It also has branches in London, Hamburg, Dublin and Warsaw, an office in New York, and subsidiaries in Luxembourg and St. Petersburg.

Its vision is to become the most trusted financial partner, and it is driven by an ambition to create long-term value for all its stakeholders at all times.

V I E W S F RO M T H E TO P

board members in a particular direction, which might not necessarily be the right direction. As chairman, I manage that by getting people to take a step back once a group decision has been taken. In certain situations I have given each board member a couple of weeks to reconsider a position, in isolation from the rest of the board, and I have also asked an individual director to act as devil’s advocate and come up with counter-arguments. All that feeds into the final decision that we make at the next meeting.

Diversity comes second to competenciesAll the boards I chair have goals on gender balance, international participation and age, but these are always secondary to competencies and qualifications. Recently we appointed a woman and were praised for that at the AGM, but I had to point out that her gender was not the most important qualification – she was a highly qualified woman, not just a woman.

The kind of people you want on your board also depends on the nature of the company. There are situations where I would not prioritise diversity. In a turnaround situation, for example, I would prefer a financially-biased board, and keep it small in order to be able to meet frequently and make rapid decisions and act fast. You have to think through what makes sense for the company you’re in and the situation it faces – and when you’re defining the qualities

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and qualifications you require you also have to be aware that these will change over time to reflect changes in the external environment and competitive landscape. So you have to you monitor board composition continuously.

There are boards I have joined as a director and concluded that the culture is not conducive to challenge. It is very difficult to change that sort of culture as a lone voice. Therefore, it may make sense to appoint two new board members at a time, not just one. The cost is that you lack a bit of continuity for a while. But you get a new dynamic.

While competencies vary director to director, successful board members do share a number of qualities in common. These include a high degree of integrity, a willingness to speak your mind, the ability to engage with people constructively, extensive experience, an analytical mindset and a healthy scepticism, and a level of intellect that allows you to comprehend lots of information and decide which of it is ‘material’. You have to be able to think strategically, of course, and, last but not least, you mustn’t take yourself too seriously. Previous board experience can be important, but it’s not a prerequisite. Nor is previous CEO experience.

The impact of private equityI originally came from the private-equity world, where we were doing board evaluations 15 years ago. We viewed boards as an assembly of competencies for any given company, which meant trying to optimise competency and team effort and being really tough on composition and asking people to step down where necessary. That approach has gradually had an impact on the corporate governance model of listed companies, and that is reinforced by more independent and robust board evaluations. Likewise, board succession planning has always been on my agenda, and it is increasingly so in the listed companies I chair.

Independent directors are not paid that well in Denmark, but I seem to be quite good at persuading them to join my companies. For example, at Bang and Olufsen, which is quite a small company, we’ve managed to attract onto the board senior executives with backgrounds in companies including Nokia, SAP, Kering, Lego and H&M. And they don’t just turn up for the meetings: they are very committed and keen to roll up their sleeves and help the company deal with the challenges it faces. I think they feel they can learn, have fun, work with other interesting people and achieve results, all of which stimulates their own development. •

V I E W S F RO M T H E TO P

There are situations where I would not

prioritise diversity

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Y ou do sometimes have the opportunity to create a new board – for example, when you buy a company which becomes wholly owned.

But even then, you may have something that looks optimal on paper, but when experience, personality, dynamics and so on come into play in real-life situations you may realise that the mix is not as optimal as you had hoped. You have to constantly review and refine board composition, at least on an annual basis, or when someone leaves, or when you identify the need for a new competence.

Board size is situationalSometimes it is best to have a larger board and sometimes it is damaging to have too many people around the board table. A bank or invest-ment company may need experts in lots of dif-ferent areas, for example, but other companies with a more streamlined business may benefit more from having a smaller board. Even then, the size of the board can be situational: differ-ent sorts of companies need different things, and it is often down to the chairman to decide whether the required competencies and person-alities are to be found in a small group of people or a wider group.

Diversity across different dimensions is impor-tant, but we always start from the perspective of a company’s strategy and the challenges it faces, based on conversations with the CEO and the chairman, to see if there are areas we need to strengthen or gaps that we need to fill.

After that, we may prioritise other aspects: for example, if the board is comprised solely of men, we would typically put strong efforts into finding female candidates with the desired profile. But the gender aspect may be more important in some situations than others. And there has been so much focus on gender diversity over the past few years in Sweden that we have not focused enough on diversity of background.

For example, we have a low percentage of non-Scandinavians on our boards, so we have

Petra Hedengran is general counsel and head of corporate governance and compliance at Investor AB. She sits on the board of a listed company and on a

number of nomination committees in Investor’s portfolio companies.

Increasing diversity should not be politically driven

Stability and continuity on boards is important too, so you should be wary of making too many or too

frequent changes

V I E W S F RO M T H E TO P

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INVESTOR ABInvestor AB is a Swedish investment company, founded in 1916 and still controlled by the Wallenberg family through its Foundation Asset Management Company FAM.

The company owns a controlling stake in several large Swedish companies, along with smaller positions in a number of other firms. Among its listed core investments are SEB, Atlas Copco, ABB, AstraZeneca, Ericsson, Electrolux, Sobi, Saab, Wartisälä, Nasdaq and Husqvarna.

It still has the same business philosophy it did at the outset – as a long-term owner, to finance and help build and develop best-in-class companies.

gradually become more global in our searches as we identify the need for more international experience and perspectives.

It is important to remember that diversity is important in itself. I believe having people with different backgrounds on the board creates a better environment for making well-founded decisions for the long term. But increasing diversity should not be politically driven; it should be because the nomination committee determines that it adds value to the company.

Turnover is more balanced nowWe had a situation some years ago where we were looking for an additional board member and would have preferred a woman. There were three shortlisted candidates, one of whom was a woman, so the easiest thing to have done would have been to appoint her. But there was also a man who, in the eyes of the nomination committee, had an ideal profile for the job and was the ‘dream’ candidate, and in those situations you have to do what you believe will create most value. This is why I am against quotas: had we had mandatory quotas we would have been forced to appoint the woman. She and the second man were good, but the other male candidate stood out.

One of the companies whose nomination committee I sit on is a bank. The regulatory and compliance requirements in this sector have extended to also prescribe suitable experience and backgrounds for board members, which we need to factor in to the desired profile. These additional regulatory requirements may, however, not necessarily be aligned with what we would deem is the best for the company or bank from a strategic and long-term value-creation point of view.

There is much more understanding these days about the importance of board composition to business performance, but one of the reasons

that things are moving slowly is that it is always easier to recruit a new person than it is to replace a person who is not ready to retire. The board tenure tends to be rather long in Sweden but turnover is becoming more balanced. However, stability and continuity on boards is important too, so you should be wary of making too many or too frequent changes.

The higher turnover of board members in itself is serving to push down the average age, but you have to make sure you balance age with experience. You also need to balance the retired CEOs on the board with executives who are still active in business. Executives, of course, only have the time to take on one or two board assignments, but they make an important contribution to boards because they are still operational.

Planning for successionDigital expertise and the ‘internet of things’ are key challenges for most companies and business models today, and we need to take those into account when we are looking for new board members. But while digital expertise is increasingly important for companies, you don’t necessarily need to have it on the board.

Investor AB is a very long-term owner. We take succession planning very seriously: we look for people and keep lists for positions that are likely to come up two years hence, and we keep track of good people for whom we have no place yet. But we don’t look more than two to three years ahead, because it’s difficult to predict beyond that what you’re going to need. •

V I E W S F RO M T H E TO P

I believe having people with different backgrounds on the board creates a better environment for making well-

founded decisions for the long term

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A s a committed owner, the composition of the portfolio company’s board, along with its interaction with the management

team, are at the heart of Nordic Capital’s ownership model. The ‘ideal’ board depends on the company context, but there are some common threads to the way Nordic Capital likes to compose them.

The role of the chairman is all-important: his or her primary responsibility is usually to manage the interface between the owners – that is, the fund and the management team. The chairman should be well-attuned to what the owners want and think, but should also ideally be an experienced executive who can ‘translate’ the owners’ agenda into a language and concepts that the management team understands.

This is a very distinctive role and Nordic Capital is driving towards creating a cadre of ‘operating chairmen’ – that is, people who understand Nordic Capital’s investment model and have a history with the Nordic Capital Funds (for example, they might be former CEOs of businesses owned by Nordic Capital). They will also have demonstrated strong leadership, bring practical experience, and be able to drive board work and the board agenda.

These people are not executives, however. It is very important to be clear about the separation of responsibilities.

Diverse boards tend to work betterWe then tailor the board by combining two different aspects: specific industry or geographic experience (which is fairly standard on any board), and thorough and comprehensive functional expertise, which is less standard. One portfolio company, for example, is highly sales oriented and one of the focus areas for that board is to improve the sales force, making it more effective in terms of strategy execution, key performance indicators (KPIs), incentives and so on. Nordic Capital has for that company appointed a board member whose strength is in sales forces, and that is his key area on the board. He also participates in

Joakim Karlsson is co-managing partner of NC Advisory, the advisor to the Nordic Capital private-equity funds. He has held the role since 2010. Before going

into private equity, his previous positions include working at JP Morgan.

In search of dissent and optimism

In our analysis of Nordic Capital’s most effective portfolio companies we

have noticed that diverse boards tend to work better and cover more areas

V I E W S F RO M T H E TO P

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NORDIC CAPITALNordic Capital is a leader in Nordic private-equity investments. Launched in 1989 Nordic Capital funds have delivered outstanding returns for investors, winning numerous awards for their performance.

The business is also committed to responsible investment. Long before this became fashionable in the investment world, Nordic Capital was deploying it as an essential ingredient in building value in portfolio companies. NC Advisory, Nordic Capital’s investment advisors, have extensive experience in private-equity investments, M&A and public equity offerings gained from careers in investment banking, management consulting and industry.

steering committees relating to the sales force, channel management, new products and so on, and he is expected to lead board discussions in these areas. We have similar experts in functions including HR and supply chain.

These three key roles on the board are augmented with a few people from our organisation too. This is the basic board framework. But we have also become more and more aware of the importance of considering the balance of gender, age and background in the board. In our analysis of Nordic Capital’s most effective portfolio companies we have noticed that diverse boards tend to work better and cover more areas. Our record on gender equality, for example, has not been that strong, but when we analysed which of the boards were most effective, gender was a big differentiating factor.

One of the boards where I have been a member, the one with the most diverse mix of directors, was also the one that approached problems in the most constructive and creative way, and operated very well as a team.

The way to hang on to good peopleIt is very challenging to find chairmen or chairwomen with the requisite mix of skills and expertise. For example, you could probably find 1,000 people who are skilled in supply chain, but far more difficult is finding one who is close enough time-wise to an ‘operating reality’. Board members also need to combine experience of different organisations and contexts with an understanding of the specific direction that their particular organisation needs to go in.

Because such people are rare, they are in demand. But you don’t want someone who sits on seven different boards because they won’t have the time or energy to focus on your companies. So Nordic Capital compensates them well to avoid that. When you find these good people you also have to make sure you hang onto them.

One of the general characteristics we look for in a board member is a willingness to speak one’s mind. That adds friction and controversy to discussions, so it prolongs them, and it prolongs decision-making. But I want dissent. I hate people who just nod in agreement. I also want optimists. It is very easy to see the problems and the risks in any situation and focus in on those, but in the private-equity sector creativity and ideas for different ways of doing things or overcoming problems are far more important.

The areas of required expertise changeIt is not easy for everyone to move from an executive role to a board role either. On paper you might have a fabulously successful executive, but they might find it difficult moving into a coaching role. As a board director it is hard to exercise formal decision-making power – you can’t step over management lines and accountability. The board role is about suggesting, coaching and inspiring rather than deciding and telling. Not everyone does that well, and the better the executive was as a leader, the more effective a board member they tend to be. But it’s difficult to figure that out beforehand.

Finding suitably qualified board members is a perennial challenge. And the areas of expertise required evolve – for example, certain geographies, like China, new technology, new product development and service are all burgeoning areas. Sometimes the required expertise might lie at executive level, but ideally there should be expertise at both board level and executive level. In the portfolio company I cited earlier, where the board is focusing on developing the sales force, there are experts on the board, on the management team and in the form of an external consultant with whom the company has worked for years.

So if there is a particular area of focus, the best way to cover that is from two or three different angles. •

V I E W S F RO M T H E TO P

On paper you might have a fabulously successful executive,

but they might find it difficult moving into a coaching role

10 I N S I G H T S

F or the past two decades Alumni has advised companies on board composition, and in doing so we have accumulated a significant body

of quantitative data and qualitative insights on the dynamics of successful boardroom work.

We advise companies when they are recruiting and developing board members, but it is our recurring board reviews, where we assess how well specific boards meet established criteria for effective working, that yield some of the most fascinating insights.

The past two years’ reviews reveal some interesting commonalities, despite the broad scope of organisations they cover in terms of ownership, size and industry sector.

Key findings from our board reviews• Overall, board members say their boards have

the competencies required to best serve their companies. Indeed, on a scale of 1 - 6 they rate themselves 5.0 on average here.

• Some 40 per cent of boards here reviewed say their board would benefit from being smaller; just 17 per cent think it should be larger.

• The fact that boards remain insufficiently diverse in terms of cultural or national background, gender and age is a serious concern for many board members. They score diversity on average as 4.7 (out of 6).

• When asked specifically which competencies they lack in the boardroom, it is clear that very few are as content with the status quo as their responses to overall board composition (as described in the first bullet point above) suggest. Less than 10 per cent reply that the board composition is ‘good as is’. Interestingly, less than four per cent specify that they think more CEO experience in the room would be beneficial. Instead, over half the respondents believe more functional expertise – consumer insight, digital, IT, R&D, HR and so on – would be beneficial, while nearly one-quarter think general or specific international experience would improve the board. Several respondents

would like to see board diversity increase by adding younger and/or female members.

• Most board members describe themselves and each other as having healthy levels of integrity (5.5) and engagement (5.6) – a critical ‘bill of health’ for boards.

Critical insights from the reviewsWhen we discuss our top-level findings, people are often surprised at how positive it seems. However, boards and chairmen who subject themselves to this sort of objective and in-depth review are typically performance-focused and development-oriented. Also, participants typically only use the top half of the available score – a typical feature of self-assessment that Alumni counters by conducting detailed interviews for a more nuanced understanding.

Based on our board reviews, we agree with comments from interviewees in this issue that most companies would benefit from ‘rotating’ their board members more frequently. There are many competencies and backgrounds perceived to be missing from boards, yet there is general agreement that many boards today shouldn’t grow; if anything they are already too large.

What’s more, when considering what would augment the board, functional and international experience seem to be valued more highly than more CEO experience. We all know that most boards will benefit from greater diversity but the main constraint is often cited as a dearth of women or people with different cultural backgrounds who have the necessary CEO experience. Could it be that, while board members understand that CEO experience isn’t a prerequisite, nomination committees and owners have yet to reach the same conclusion?

It is usually the board chair who initiates a board review, with the nomination committees and owners simply reading the final report. However, by being more involved throughout the review process, nomination committees and owners would gain valuable additional insights based on the observations and experience of those who work in the boards. •

Boards can provide valuable insights about how to improve their composition in order to be more effective. Catharina Mannerfelt,

partner and head of Alumni’s Board Services, explains.

What do boards themselves think about their composition?

Functional and inter-national

experience seem to be

valued more highly than more CEO

experience

Is the board the right size?

No, should be smaller

No, should be bigger

Yes, right size

Additional competencies needed?

CEO experience

Functional expertise

International experience

Other

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LARS STRANNEGÅRD: FAST FACTSQ: Which accomplishment from your earlier career are you most proud of? A: Finalising my PhD thesis

Q: What motivates you? A: The fact that things can be different

Q: What’s your key takeaway from this book? A: That the term ‘too much’ is a way to understand how we categorise our world

Q: What in your life is currently ‘too much’? A: Old clothes in my wardrobe, toys in our childrens’ rooms, unanswered emails

A rgh…too much! Too much to do, too much information, too many choices, too much food! The ‘overflow’, or ‘excess’, of things and

activities in our world today is central to many people’s lives. Indeed, the concept of ‘overflow’ characterises many significant facets of modern society. Yet, to date, the concept of ‘scarcity’ has been much more heavily analysed – and it’s interesting that scarcity doesn’t carry the same ethical and moral associations as overflow.

Both ‘overflow’ and ‘excess’ imply a surfeit. Even the word ‘too’ in ‘too much’ suggests that something is not right. All these concepts have a clear judgemental undertone. A trustworthy and reputable individual is seen as one who consumes modestly, who is prudent and productive and who makes sound investments for the future. The economist Deirdre McCloskey has argued that the development of these virtues, more than anything else, has underpinned the development of the Western world. Conspicuous consumption and excessive behaviour have for centuries been seen as vulgar and immoral.

Definitions of excess varyCoping With Excess – How Organizations, Communities and Individuals Manage Overflow, edited by Barbara Czarniawska and Orvar Löfgren, examines how we can manage ‘too much’ – whether that be money, information, music, clothes, office space, food, baby stuff or any other commodity.

The idea of studying ‘overflow’ is innovative, because, despite the climate of excess in which so many of us now operate, it has not until now been analysed in any comprehensive way. The 17 contributors are all academics, but come from different areas within the broad humanities and social sciences fields.

But the authors point out that overflow and excess can mean different things to different people – and even on different days. Our view of

overflow depends on ‘framing’ – that it, defining what is ‘appropriate’ and what is not. For instance, we might consider heavy consumption of rich food excessive on a weekday, but frame it as completely normal at Christmas.

Making sense of the overflowEven so, Coping With Excess is a fascinating book because it helps us to see, analyse and understand the world we live in and the economy that dictates our habits. It provides guidance on how we should treat the abundance of stuff and information, with suggestions of mechanisms and tools to help us navigate and cope. What is Google, for example, if not a tool to help us find order in the world of abundant information? There are similar devices and mechanisms all around us, their sole purpose being to help us make sense of the overflow.

Coping With Excess forces the reader to take a fresh look at everyday things and practices surrounding us. After reading the book, you see the world slightly differently – which, in itself, is a rare gift. •

A new book, Coping With Excess, provides valuable insights into how to steer a course through a world of overflow. Lars Strannegård, professor and

president of Stockholm School of Economics, is impressed.

When it all gets too much

BOO K R E V I E W

12

For further information please contact: Suzanna Malmgren, suzanna.malmgren@alumniglobal.comor Hans Henrik Lüttichau-Holm,hanshenrik. luttichau-holm@alumniglobal.com

I N S I G H T S

How did the LIVE initiative come about?Hans Henrik It is essentially a natural response to a very clear trend in the marketplace. Companies are exposed to more radical and frequent change than ever before, which increases the demand for continual timely adjustments to the board composition. The process can also help them plan for management succession and support them in their efforts to increase diversity and inclusion.Suzanna LIVE offers a much better system for planning and responding to organisations’ future needs. We have built the system as a wheel consisting of four parts: Learn, Identify, Verify and Engage.

What does the Learn part of the LIVE wheel entail?Suzanna It is to do with understanding the client’s strategic objectives and translating them into long- and short-term requirements for the board. And those requirements include the right personal characteristics as well as the right skills. However, it is important to look at the LIVE concept as a moving wheel, where the different parts are always active.Hans Henrik I agree: the continuous activity is one of the main advantages of the LIVE system. Throughout our work with our clients we have formal ‘Learn meetings’, which keep us up-to-date with our clients’ strategic objectives and momentum, and keeps our clients up-to-date with relevant candidates available in the market.

Tell us a little bit about the Identify and Verify parts of the LIVE wheel. Hans Henrik We ‘Identify’ candidates on a continuous basis and make sure we have an external succession pool at all times, which we make transparent for the client. When the client is ready to look for a new member of the board we already have several potential candidates lined up.

Exposure to more radical and frequent change increases the demand

for continual timely adjustments to the board composition

Timeless, continuous and speedy board recruitments through LIVE

To optimise the composition of the board, companies need to shift from a series of one-off recruitments towards a more holistic approach to board development. Alumni has developed the LIVE concept to help companies adapt their board to ongoing market and situational challenges. Suzanna

Malmgren, senior manager Alumni Malmö, and Hans Henrik Lüttichau-Holm, country manager Denmark, who head LIVE, explain how the concept works.

Suzanna We then move into the ‘Verify’ stage. Here we further verify the profiles that we and the client consider to be most relevant for their needs. This stage may include interviews, 360-degree references, executive profiling and testing, depending on where we are in the recruitment process.

And what happens during the Engage stage?Suzanna This is when the client actually meets the candidate, either at an informal lunch or a more formal interview.Hans Henrik And this is the stage where the benefits of the system become most apparent. Clients can move quickly to recruit, which is particularly beneficial if they need to fill a specific gap or meet an immediate market challenge, because much of the identification and assessment work has already been done.Suzanna LIVE is a means to move away from ‘stop-go’-type processes. We can meet clients’ needs faster and more efficiently, while they see real value in the transparency and the access to the market that the system affords. •