Reflections from the National Association of Corporate Directors Summit
I recently attended the National Association of Corporate Directors Summit, which I’ve done several times since being appointed to my first board seat 15 years ago. The lineup was impressive, including Bill Gates, Wayne Peacock, CEO of USAA, James Gorman, longtime CEO of Morgan Stanley, Clare Martorana, Federal Chief Information Officer of the United States (and one of my favorite speakers), Rana Foroohar (I’m already reading her book), and Juan Enriquez, a fascinating expert on life sciences and technology. While my notes cover a wide range of topics, I would like to share some broader impressions that I took away from the event.
1.AI: Where are we heading?
AI was probably the most frequently referenced topic throughout the event, both as a lead and a side contextual note. I take a few “truths” away from the many comments. First, predictions are likely to be wrong if not useless. Even the people creating AI have been wrong about its capabilities. My advice; read predictions and imagine under what conditions those predictions may come true, but don’t spend a lot of time making them yourself.
Second, AI will present us with both opportunities and threats. One of the first threats may be chasing opportunity too quickly, but there will be many threats, from competition to bad actors. But opportunities will be available in small and large ways (I’m working on a guiding framework for clients that will be available soon).
Third, we need to experiment and learn to be informed. Understand what AI is good at and what it isn’t, how it works for you and how it doesn’t, how it enables humanity, and how it fails it. One of the most practical pieces of advice is something I’m glad I’m already doing, and that is to use at least two tools yourself even for the same tasks. I prefer Claude and Perplexity, but even compare their results to ChatGPT. Keep experimenting and learning, and be curious about how AI will unfold.
2. Board capabilities may be different.
While exaggerating for effect, there were historically two kinds of board members that may be less relevant moving forward. One is the “here’s what we did” approach usually based in the past and often in a single-instance experience. Second is narrow subject-matter expertise, which seems to require that boards add subject-matter experts on so many different topics every year that boards should have 25 people on them.
However, both threats and opportunities seem to change almost constantly, from strengthening DEI programs to protecting them (or not) from direct attacks, from blockchain to cyberattacks to AI, from pandemics to geopolitical threats, and from the changing interests of new generations joining the workforce.
Board members, like executive teams, must be able to demonstrate agility, resilience, and breadth (including the pattern recognition that comes from doing breadth right, read the book Range for more on that). Effective decision-making and problem-solving will depend less on solution-matching from old solutions and more on a set of skills and frameworks.
3.Invest in Yourself
In the registration, they asked if we had anything we’d like to share about ourselves such as a quote. I added the quote from Henry Ford, “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty.” I refer to this Summit as “brain candy” because I shut off and shut out other stuff to focus on absorbing ideas and insights. I took 77 pages of notes in my SuperNote notebook.
It doesn’t have to be the NACD Summit for you, but what are you doing to disconnect from the day-to-day distractions and immerse yourself in a learning mindset for days, if not longer? It might be Bill Gates-like reading retreats, or a conference, or even writing. But everyone needs this kind of immersion. It’s a boot camp for the brain. What’s yours?