How to maximise your value on advisory boards

This discussion explores how to ‘Maximize your Value on Advisory Boards’ both from an advisor and a business perspective. Jan Easton and Renee Lahti, Certified Chairs, discuss the use of the Advisory Board Best Practice Framework and how it can maximise the value and benefits for both advisors and businesses.

With the foundations of her career residing within the tech consultancy space, Jan’s two decades of experience in this type of role has informed her own journey in the application of advisory boards. Considered an early adopter in the undertaking of an advisory board role, Jan has operated as both an advisor and a board chair within the US and Australian markets. This degree of expertise is reflected in the role she now plays with the Advisory Board Centre, as an active member of the faculty in addition to being one of the first certified board chairs, and Founding Fellows.

With a similar journey, Renee credits much of her experience and success as an advisor to her 20 long year career within the tech transformation space. However, since Covid-19 she has noted how businesses are now growing differently, encountering more specific challenges that are unique to organisations themselves.  These challenges stem from organisations external environments and often the solutions and interventions can be enhanced by external expertise.

Renee details how governance boards have their place, but addressing these external challenges require a level of agility that can only be fulfilled by the function of advisory boards. While advisory boards still possess a framework and processes like a governance board, the flexibility and expert knowledge offered by advisory board members, makes the structures well suited for these new and emerging challenges.

That’s where advisory boards come in with their agility, albeit with framework, but that agility component makes demand accelerate now

Renee Lahti

With the framework guiding this objective and ensuring that the foundations of the advisory board are strong, your value on a board can be realised through the intelligent and critical thinking conversations that follow. The facilitation of these guided conversations produces fit for purpose solutions to contextualized business challenges.

For Advisory Board Centre’s own member of faculty, Jan, maximising value for both business and self comes from supporting the implementation of fit for purpose solutions. By doing this, advisors can “help businesses reach a place that they have never achieved before.” As for themselves, advisors and chairs equip themselves with new methods of critical thinking and the ability to approach increasingly complex and challenging business situations, a trend that continues to rise within this post pandemic market environment.

Strong foundation, but with flexible implementation

JAN EASTON