Supporting the development of future directors

A year ago, we had just declared COVID-19 a glob­al pan­dem­ic, which we all thought would be over in a few months. How wrong we were. We didn’t realise at first just how seri­ous a toll coro­n­avirus would take on the world.  

At that time, direc­tors and their organ­i­sa­tions were deal­ing with the after­math of the down-to-the-wire Brex­it deal when the mes­sages from South­east Asia about COVID start­ed get­ting loud­er. None of us could have pre­dict­ed the endur­ing impact of the pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, and like a lot of crises it has also pre­sent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ties to trans­form the way in which we do busi­ness. 

The major­i­ty of organ­i­sa­tions, regard­less of com­pa­ny size, type, indus­try or loca­tion, have had to learn to adapt and con­tin­ue to evolve at a pace nev­er seen before to sur­vive. Amid the con­tin­ued uncer­tain­ty of post-COVID recov­ery, one thing is cer­tain: the Insti­tute of Direc­tors (IoD) is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing direc­tors to bounce back bet­ter and thrive. 

Devel­op­ment of any organisation’s work­force is fun­da­men­tal to its suc­cess. While human cap­i­tal is not a tan­gi­ble asset on the bal­ance sheet, the skills and capa­bil­i­ties of your work­force are incred­i­bly valu­able. 

In a recent sur­vey of our mem­bers and the direc­tor com­mu­ni­ty, 96 per cent of respon­dents rat­ed con­tin­u­ing pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment as impor­tant to them. Fur­ther­more, respon­dents iden­ti­fied strat­e­gy devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion, cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, cor­po­rate gov­er­nance, lead­er­ship and dig­i­tal skills in their top five learn­ing pri­or­i­ties. 

As a pro­fes­sion­al insti­tute, under our Roy­al Char­ter we have a duty to sup­port the devel­op­ment of direc­tors to be the best they can be. This isn’t just about sup­port­ing direc­tors in the here and now, it’s also about build­ing a sus­tain­able future for the next gen­er­a­tion of enter­pris­es and their lead­ers. Our pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment pro­grammes are specif­i­cal­ly designed and deliv­ered by direc­tors for direc­tors, com­bin­ing aca­d­e­m­ic rigour with prac­ti­tion­er expe­ri­ence and all under­pinned by our acclaimed com­pe­ten­cy frame­work. 

In 2020, we cel­e­brat­ed the 21st anniver­sary of our inter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised Char­tered Direc­tor pro­gramme, which has attract­ed tens of thou­sands of direc­tors and busi­ness lead­ers across all sec­tors and indus­tries. Char­tered direc­tors are role mod­els who embody good gov­er­nance, lead­er­ship and a com­mit­ment to life­long learn­ing. 

In response to the pan­dem­ic, we pri­ori­tised the rede­vel­op­ment of our entire Char­tered Direc­tor pro­gramme via vir­tu­al class­rooms. The feed­back has been phe­nom­e­nal; nat­u­ral­ly with most organ­i­sa­tions oper­at­ing remote­ly, our vir­tu­al pro­grammes are see­ing increas­ing demand with­in the UK and in new mar­kets over­seas. We know from our research that three quar­ters of our mem­bers will be keep­ing increased remote work­ing after COVID and so access to hybrid pro­grammes, which incor­po­rate dig­i­tal and vir­tu­al devel­op­ment path­ways, is here to stay. 

We have also been respond­ing to the needs of direc­tors by inno­vat­ing and devel­op­ing new pro­grammes. We know cyber­se­cu­ri­ty and data gov­er­nance are incred­i­bly press­ing issues for our mem­bers. We will be offer­ing tai­lored sup­port and addi­tion­al devel­op­ment in these areas over the com­ing months. We are pas­sion­ate about improv­ing diver­si­ty on boards and cham­pi­oning inclu­sive work­ing prac­tices for under-rep­re­sent­ed groups. The IoD and The­Board­room Africa have been part­ner­ing to enable board-ready women to com­plete the IoD char­tered direc­tor qual­i­fi­ca­tion since 2018 through the Open Doors Pro­gramme.  

We are also work­ing to sup­port the direc­tors of the future, through a new devel­op­ment pro­gramme, Tomorrow’s Direc­tor. This aims to build and sup­port stu­dents’ entre­pre­neuri­al­ism, under­stand­ing of good gov­er­nance, effec­tive board per­for­mance and improve their employ­a­bil­i­ty. Par­tic­i­pants also get the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence reverse men­tor­ing with our char­tered direc­tor com­mu­ni­ty. This is anoth­er area where the IoD will act as a dri­ving force for pos­i­tive change. 

As we emerge up the “off ramp” from this pan­dem­ic, the IoD will retain our laser-sharp focus on direc­tor devel­op­ment for the ben­e­fit of indi­vid­ual direc­tors, but also for the ben­e­fit of the glob­al econ­o­my and soci­ety as a whole.