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Key Takeaways On a board, a decision does not end when it is approved. You don’t get the reassurance of execution, only the responsibility of watching consequences unfold over time.
Boards are often asked to approve decisions framed around efficiency, but efficiency has a habit of externalizing its costs.
Control and responsibility are not the same thing. Being on a board is less about owning everything and more about ensuring the health of the organization.
The most important decisions made in a boardroom involve slowing things down, choosing not to push and absorbing pressure rather than reacting to it.
For most of my working life at Kowloon Motor Bus Company, I have sat slightly to the side of the action. I have been involved in businesses without running them day to day, and that changed me. When you are not the one executing, you lose the comforting illusion that you are in control. At first, that is unsettling. Over time, it becomes clarifying.
Sitting on a board forces you to watch decisions travel. You make them in quiet rooms, then live with the consequences long after the papers are filed away. That distance teaches you things that are hard to learn when you are placed right in the middle of the machinery.
Here are five things I have learned from that position.
1. Decisions do not end when the meeting ends
When you run a business, there is a natural sense of closure once a decision is made. You move on to the next problem. You do not get that relief when you are on a board.
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