I am a company director, and I have served as a trustee on a risk and audit committee. Boards and trustee groups bring me in for independent digital and AI counsel, as a non-executive director, a standing adviser or a co-opted committee member.
Book a free 30-minute conversationMost boards now have technology and AI somewhere on the agenda. Far fewer have anyone round the table who can question what they are being told about either.
So the board approves a digital programme on the strength of a paper written by the people who will deliver it. It waves through a supplier renewal because nobody can say what good would look like. It is asked for an AI position and reaches for something reassuring. None of that reflects a weak board. It reflects a board without one particular competence, which is most of them.
Buying a few days of that competence a year is considerably cheaper than discovering its absence halfway through a failed programme.
Independent digital and AI counsel to a board, a trustee group or a committee. The form varies: a non-executive director appointment with the statutory duties that carry, a standing adviser who attends certain meetings, or a co-opted member of a risk, audit or digital committee.
The job does not vary. I read the papers properly, ask the questions the executive is not being asked, and say what I actually think, including when it is unwelcome. Between meetings I am available to the chair and the chief executive.
Two audiences, and they are not the same.
A commercial board generally wants technology oversight and investment scrutiny. Is the digital spend proportionate. Is the programme deliverable. Is the supplier being managed or merely paid.
A charity board wants all of that plus the governance layer: data protection and safeguarding risk, the reserves implication of a multi-year digital commitment, and the trustee's own accountability for decisions taken on incomplete information. Having served on a risk and audit committee, that last point is not theoretical to me.
A board seat is a commitment on both sides, so the shape is agreed before either of us signs anything.
How many meetings a year, whether there is committee work alongside the main board, and whether this is a formal appointment with the duties that carry or an advisory seat without them. Charity roles usually mean more reading and less travel.
Four to six board meetings a year, with papers read in the week before each, plus a standing line to the chair and the chief executive. Committee work adds two to four sessions. Terms are normally three years, reviewed annually.
Thirty minutes, free, on what the board is actually missing. Sometimes the honest answer is that one piece of strategy work would fix it more cheaply than an appointment, and I will say so.
A short written scope: meetings, committee duties, availability between meetings, term, fee and how either side ends it. Agreed before appointment and reviewed at the end of the first year.
I do not own, licence or resell a product. Nothing I say in a board meeting points at something I profit from.
No partner tiers, no referral fees, no vendor relationships that need feeding.
Any other engagement I hold with the organisation is declared and minuted before it starts, which is how it should be anyway.
Board experience held, rather than described.
Board and trustee experience
More than forty years in business and technology, more than thirty of them in digital. Counsel from someone who has had to sit with the consequences of it.
About »Delivery record
Written up with what was done, what changed and what did not.
All case studies »It can be. Some organisations appoint me as a non-executive director with the statutory duties that carry. Others prefer an advisory seat or a co-opted place on a committee, which is quicker to arrange and easier to end. I am comfortable with any of the three.
Yes, and the two are genuinely different. I have served as a trustee and sat on a risk and audit committee, so the governance and personal accountability side of trustee work is familiar territory rather than something I have only read about.
A non-executive director scrutinises and advises. A fractional leader joins the executive and owns delivery. If what you need is someone accountable for the roadmap week to week, this is the wrong arrangement and I will tell you so.
Yes. If the board would be better served by a permanent appointment, I will help you write the brief and sit on the panel, and take nothing for the referral.
Most clients begin with a conversation. No pitch, no hard sell.
Just a straightforward discussion about where you are and whether I can help.
Book a free 30-minute call