CEO Today Magazine October 2019 Edition

TIPS & ADVICE www.ceotodaymagazine.com 28 Heading into fall with eyes on 2020, corporate boards should brace for the increasing impact of digital migration, artificial intelligence (AI), and cultural shifts on their companies – and what this means for their role as Directors, says WomenCorporateDirectors Foundation (WCD). “Trends point to a very different reality for boards today than five or ten years ago”, says Susan C. Keating, CEO of WCD. “With boards asking more questions of management and exercising more oversight in areas that were once fully ‘owned’ by the leadership team, Directors require much more real- time information and awareness than ever before.” Opportunitiesand risksaroundemerging technologiesandwhat companies can expect from their workforce, investors, and other stakeholders as far as changes to corporate culture were themes at the WCD Global Institute in Silicon Valley – a sold-out event that is WCD’s largest annual gathering of its members. WCD members serve on the boards of public and large, privately held companies. Nearly 300 board Directors, CEOs, and experts on governance and digital, legal, and regulatory matters convened at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise headquarters this spring in San Jose, CA, to explore urgent and emerging developments and concerns for boards. From the discussions, WCD has identified ten trends that are key to board agendas for fall and 2020. Increasing need for a “digital trust bank.” “An increasing reliance on digital platforms requires us to have a ‘digital trust bank’ to use when things fail, because things will,” says Shamla Naidoo, Global Chief Information Security Officer at IBM. “To build this digital trust, we need to communicate thoughtfully with our customers. We need them to understand that, just like everything else in the world, digital is not perfect – it can fail. But we need them to know that we are not reckless or careless in our decisions. Whether it’s a data breach or an e-commerce failure, we must engage transparently and quickly with customers to show them that we understand the issues and that we take proactive actions where we can and we react quickly where we must.” Persistence of demand for digital currency. “The hardest thing to understand for the vast majority of even the most sophisticated investors is why 100 million people are buying and trading Bitcoin,” says Matthew LeMerle, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Fifth Era and Keiretsu Capital. “It’s because we have the dollar, the euro, the British pound – all high-quality, reasonably secure, trustworthy currencies that basically maintain their value. But about four billion people in the world do not. Argentina’s peso lost half its value vs. the dollar last year, with one two-day period down 22%. Indians had all their big banknotes declared worthless – in an economy where 95% of transactions were made in cash. Living in an unstable country may mean having to get out quickly and leaving the money in your bank accounts behind. When your wealth is tied up in these situations, the notion of a secure, usable, digital currency vs. a fiat currency is of enormous value.” 10 Trends Directors Need to Know as 2020 Approaches By Susan C. Keating, CEO of WCD www.womencorporatedirectors.org 1 2