Builder Training · Simulation
Board Oversight Simulation
A year of oversight at Halden Freight, in 4 board meetings. Every number you are shown is accurate. 6 things are true that the summary pages never say, and finding them costs you interventions you do not have enough of.
4
board meetings in the year
9
interventions, against 16 worth making
6
things true and unreported
The company, and your seat in it
A regional logistics operator. Thirty-four depots, 2,400 people, and one commitment larger than any it has made before. Meridian is a three-year depot automation program approved by this board to take 18 percent out of network cost. Phase one is live. Phases two and three are not yet committed.
You are a non-executive director. You do not run this company and you cannot instruct anyone in it. You have four meetings this year, a pack before each one, and the right to ask.
Every number you are shown is accurate. Every status is true against the plan it is reported against. Nobody in this scenario lies to you.
A simulation where management conceals something teaches a director to look for concealment, which is the rarer failure and the one a board is already alert to. What actually happens is that the question was narrower than the thing, the measure moved for a reason the measure does not carry, and the standing instruction that would have caught it was never given.
Loading the first meeting.
Six kinds of move, and one difference between them
Every kind here is something a board really does. They differ in one property, which is when the answer arrives relative to when the decision is taken, and that single difference decides most of what happens in the year.
- Read
- Reading the pack to the end, appendices included, instead of the summary.
- Ask
- A question in the meeting. Answered honestly, and answered exactly as narrowly as it was asked.
- Request
- A paper for the next meeting. Management writes it, so it answers in management’s frame.
- Commission
- Independent assurance. Two meetings to arrive, and the only route that does not run through management.
- Meet
- Somebody, without executives in the room. Immediate, and bounded by what that person knows.
- Reserve
- A standing instruction. It costs a slot once and then keeps working, which no question does.
Where this sits
Board Governance Readiness Diagnostic
The instrument that reads a real board. Thirty-two items across eight governance domains, and it reports what it finds about yours. This page reads nothing.
Builder Training
Everything here that teaches a skill and is safe to get wrong. Nothing in it measures your organization and nothing in it commits it.