Ty Wiggins

Thanks for having me.

It's great to be here again, Emma.

I remember interviewing PepsiCo's CEO, Ramon Laguada, for my book, The New CEO.

And he talked at length about how he wanted to change some key things and he knew he needed the board's support.

So what he did, he tried to establish a level of trust with them.

And he did that by not just telling them the positives, he was also open about the vulnerabilities and gave them the full picture.

You ultimately want their perspective on key matters,

And for that, they need to have the unvarnished truth.

It enhances their ability to be a strategic asset for you.

And when you do share issues with the board, always present a plan or a clear path forward.

The main conflict that we found in that research was around strategy.

And this is where the board and the CEO are not aligned in their role in the strategy setting.

So from our perspective, the best practice is that the CEO sets the strategy and the board approves it.

Now where it's opposite or the board gets into design and setting, that's where we saw the conflict.

And if I think about a recent example, a CEO stepped into a role that had been vacant for a little while.

And so the chair had been playing the role of executive chair slash interim CEO.

So one of the things that we knew we needed to do very early was to reset the alignment and expectations around strategy setting.

The chair had done a great job, but was very comfortable in that role.

So in order to establish the new CEO's right to lead, we raised it as a matter with the chair and the independent director to really understand that the strategy would now be set by the incoming CEO and not by the chair.

Well, like all relationships and all partnerships, the CEO board relationship should evolve as the business context shifts and develops.