A simple matter of boardroom balance

DEVELOPING a strong portfolio of company board positions is no longer just the domain of retired executives, but has become a viable option for youthful – and not so youthful – business people.

For women, changes to the ASX corporate governance principles and recommendations to include board diversity targets have meant a broadening of professional board opportunities.

So what is the best way to go about getting these roles?

At a recent WA Business News, forum Marvic Packaging executive director Kellie Benda said experience formed the foundation for board positions.

“If you don’t have the actual business skills or background that is relevant to a listed company board, you still aren’t going to get it even if you have sat on 47 other boards,” she said.

Committee for Perth chief executive Marion Fulker said executives were the ‘feeding pond’ for company boards, which tend to go for “environments they know, brands they trust, and women they feel comfortable with”.

Australian Institute of Company Directors WA state manager Suzanne Ardagh agreed, and told WA Business News that generating strong presence in networks was imperative to generating board opportunities.

“Building a board career takes time, you need to build profile; no matter what people say, getting onto boards is about having very strong and well established networks,” Ms Ardagh said.

“Very rarely is someone going to be put on a board where nobody knows them. They might have a reputation for being a great operator, but if no-one knows them there is no stamp of approval.”

If business reputation is the key, then networking may seem like an obvious strategy.

Ms Benda is actively seeking commercial board positions and has taken a different tack, having approached a well-known business contact to advocate for her in her pursuit of a board career – a role she referred to as a ‘sponsor’.

“They go into bat for you at executive meetings, push you forward for promotion, protect you from the politics, from harmful interactions with other executives, for example,” Ms Benda said.

“I thought to myself, ‘I am going to talk to some people I know well, and say I need a sponsor’; I need, for want of a better word, a bloke to be my sponsor and tell other chairs or board members, ‘you need to put that person on your board’.

“It’s got to be someone who is in the inner sanctum. Much of it is merit and if we assume someone has got the abilities, a lot of it is exposure, politics, opportunity.”

In 2010, 25 per cent of all new director appointments to ASX200 boards were female, compared to only 5 per cent in 2009. The increase followed ASX Corporate Governance Council changes to board diversity principles, but Ms Fulker questioned how these figures should be interpreted.

“There is increasing recognition that women add a different dimension to the board table and the decision making table at an executive level but that is not transcending to more opportunities, so there is a disconnect,” Ms Fulker said.

“People keep coming to me and saying ‘I can’t find any women to put on boards’. I keep saying, they’re out there, they are absolutely out there.”

So perhaps the question really is, are there enough women with the right credentials to fill these positions and, beyond that, are there enough women who want a board career?

According to executive search and board consulting firm Gerard Daniels’ global practice leader board consulting, Alison Gaines, the answer is yes.

“There are lots of women interested in being on boards, and very experienced women from professions, women who are entrepreneurs and women who are in senior management roles who are ready to make a transition to a portfolio career,” Ms Gaines said.

“There is no shortage of women who are interested.”

According to Challenger Institute of Technology chief executive Liz Harris, the answer lies in companies broadening their horizons.

“I think we need to encourage organisations to look at the people that are perhaps in the non-traditional roles, the not-for-profit sectors, the government sectors,” Ms Harris said.

‘‘It is the ASX200 kind of companies that get looked at, rather than the smaller agencies, where there are women who are making an enormous difference.”

There is a perception in some circles, however, that not-for-profit board positions can leave a mark on a director’s credentials – an idea Ms Harris immediately discredited.

“I think that is a pretty unsophisticated view of what kind of women are needed and I think it is a bit culturally bound to Perth. If you were in America you wouldn’t have that kind of view, where philanthropy is very respected,” she said.

“Part of the problem is the culture is still not mature enough to see that you need a whole range of experiences to make a good organisation.”

Global Diagnostics chief executive Angela Whittington said she wondered whether people who established their board careers with a not-for-profit position were harming their appeal to commercial boards.

“I wonder if you’ve been in the not-for-profit sector then people just assume you’re not interested any more. I wonder if you get branded ‘soft’ or ‘not for profit’, and how do you get out of that?” she said.

Ms Gaines said the not-for-profit board positions were a stalwart among some of the country’s top board portfolio holders, which should encourage people who held board ambitions.

“A lot of sophisticated board members, both women and men, have a mixture of commercial roles and not-for-profit and charitable roles. They don’t often talk about their charitable roles but I can’t think of any high profile non-executive directors who don’t do that work,” she said.

“I think people need to develop a boardroom practice, they need to know how to behave in a boardroom and understand the role of directors and distinguish their role as directors from their role as managers. It is a good place to prove your own boardroom technique.

“I think what they need to do is make sure it is not too heavily weighted so it doesn’t look like they don’t have time to undertake non-executive director roles on commercial boards, so they just need to make sure there is a balance.”