LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS

The board is rarely questioned when organisations are running smoothly. However, when operations go wrong, like BP, the board is held accountable and questioned about their knowledge of the missteps and their reasons for not getting involved earlier. In a July 9th opinion piece featured in the Daily Telegraph, Lord Norman Tebbit questioned the role that BP non-executive directors played in the crisis. “They should have been alert to the dangers of a lack of operational experience not only of their executive colleagues, but further down the line, among those immediately assessing the quality of sub-contractors’ operations,” writes Lord Tebbit. 

According to Richard Gillies, Director of Plan A & Sustainable Business at Marks & Spencer, the world is now on the cusp of another revolution – the sustainability revolution. “There have been three major reorganisations of society – the agricultural revolution (18th century), the industrial revolution (19th century), and the IT and digital revolution (20th century). Each of them fundamentally changed the way human society operated,” he said. “We are about, because of population and resource constraints, to go through the next one which is the ‘sustainability revolution’. This revolution will change the paradigm in which we operate. It will change our world, because we currently live in a very wasteful society.” 

Although the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) is a public one, its relatively relaxed regulations and its application of the ‘comply-or-explain’ rule mean that the role of the board can be very different to that of companies on, for example, the main list. 

The old adage states that “the chief executive runs the company and the chairman runs the board.” This is also true for AIM companies, but, owing to the nature of organisations listed on this market (typically small, growing companies), the chairman is likely to be more involved in the operational side of the company than his/her counterparts on the main list.