Creating the no-surprises board

The topic of GGI's main monthly webinar for May will be Creating the no-surprises board.

The best boards are those where there is such complete and candid sharing of issues and problems that, while the news may sometimes be bad, it’s never a surprise. It’s a key element to the ‘high-performing board’, a concept largely developed by Harvard and McKinsey around 25 years ago and one that GGI widely promotes as best practice for organisations with a public purpose.

This doesn’t just happen. Key enablers are non-executives who know how to get the best out of the executive team, properly functional relationships based on trust, candour and respect, and a highly functioning assurance system that goes beyond the numbers.

Working towards becoming a high-performing board should be the core of the board development programme every chair should be insisting is in place.

This webinar with contributions from highly experienced public purpose board members will explore both personal perspectives on achieving the ‘no-surprises’ board as well as some of the practical lessons around what works. GGI’s insight into board impact is drawn from the many hundreds of boards we have worked with over the last 15 years across many sectors, including the NHS, universities, FE, schools, housing, the third sector, sports, the arts and regulators.

Here to guide us through this discussion will be Sir Peter Bazalgette, Senior Independent Director of Saga and Chair of LoveCrafts, Caroline Alexander CBE, Group Chief Nurse, Barts Health NHS Trust, and Andrew Corbett-Nolan, Chief Executive, Good Governance Improvement.

Please email events@good-governance.org.uk should you have any queries.

Caroline Alexander CBE
Group Chief Nurse, Barts Health NHS Trust

Caroline graduated as a nurse in 1987 from Edinburgh University (BSc/RGN) and has an MSc in Nursing Studies from South Bank University (2001). From 1987 to 1993, she specialised in nursing older people in Edinburgh and then London at Guy’s Hospital as a ward sister. Caroline then worked for the Foundation of Nursing Studies for three years, supporting nurses to use research in practice.

In 1998, Caroline returned to the NHS and worked in Tower Hamlets in a range of roles within older people’s services. In 2005, Caroline took up her first director post, as director of nursing and therapies within Tower Hamlets PCT. With the clustering of PCTs in London in 2011, she took on the role of director of nursing and quality within NHS East London and the City initially and then within NHS North East London when the clusters merged in 2012, until she joined NHS England as regional chief nurse for London in April 2013. Caroline took up her current role of Chief Nurse for Barts Health in March 2016.

Caroline was a 2008 Florence Nightingale Leadership Scholar and has been awarded honorary doctorates from City, University of London in 2017, Middlesex University in 2018 and University of East London in 2021. She is a trustee of the Foundation of Nursing Studies. In 2020 she was made a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Sir Peter Bazalgette
Senior Independent Director at Saga and Chair of LoveCrafts

Sir Peter Bazalgette is Senior Independent Director on the board of Saga and also chairs LoveCrafts, an online retailer. From 2016 to 2022 he chaired ITV, and previously served on the board of Channel 4.

Sir Peter spent many years as a TV producer, devising several internationally successful formats. He became chief creative officer of Endemol and was later president of the Royal Television Society.

He led a 2017 independent review into the UK’s creative industries as part of the government’s Industrial Strategy and now serves as co-chair of the Creative Industries Council. He also chairs the Council of the Royal College of Art. From 2013 until 2017, he chaired Arts Council England.

Sir Peter has also been a non-executive board member of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and currently chairs the Baillie Gifford Non-Fiction Book Prize Trustees.

He’s currently on the board of Department for Education and previously performed the same role for DCMS.

Peter’s book about the business of TV formats, Billion Dollar Game (Time Warner), came out in 2005, and in 2017 he published The Empathy Instinct (John Murray).

Andrew Corbett-Nolan, Chief Executive, Good Governance Improvement

Andrew co-founded GGI in 2009. He is well known as a leading thinker and commentator on modern governance and a practical facilitator and coach to boards across the public and third sectors. His leadership of GGI is associated with developing a mature understanding of the challenges facing boards in the modern world.

Heavily influenced by the work of Professor Mervyn King, Andrew sits on the board of the Johannesburg-based Good Governance Academy, which is working to influence the curricula of business schools and universities globally. And in 2020, he became a Salzburg Global Fellow for his work promoting good governance as a means of creating social value, securing a prosperous future that is better and fairer for all.

Outside GGI Andrew was a visiting professor of governance at the University of Chester until 2022 and has recently been appointed as a visiting professor at the Institute of Health at the University of Cumbria.