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The Boardroom Path

The Boardroom Path

Written by: Sainty Hird & Partners
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 Welcome to The Boardroom Path, the essential podcast for aspiring and newly appointed Non-Executive Directors navigating the journey from executive leadership to the boardroom. Hosted by Ralph Grayson, partner at Sainty Hird & Partners, each episode offers insightful conversations with industry leaders, seasoned board directors, and governance experts. Our guests share practical strategies, valuable perspectives, and actionable advice on how to effectively transition into board roles, maximise your impact, and build a rewarding NED career.Sainty Hird & Partners Economics Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Leading Through Permacrisis: Will Geddes on Boardroom Decision-Making Under Pressure

    Leading Through Permacrisis: Will Geddes on Boardroom Decision-Making Under Pressure
    Apr 29 2026
    How should boards lead when the world refuses to stand still? In this episode of The Boardroom Path, host Ralph Grayson speaks with Will Geddes, Managing Director of ICP Group and one of the UK's leading authorities on security, crisis management and geopolitical risk. They explore why boards now operate inside a state of permacrisis, why traditional crisis manuals rarely leave the shelf, and how directors should make decisions with imperfect, contested and fast-moving information.With markets now openly pricing in permacrisis as the operating environment and EY analysis showing that around 60 percent of FTSE 100 returns now hinge on geopolitical and macro forces, Will's perspective on judgement, instinct and audit trails has rarely been more timely. From a real-world story of advising a director caught in the 2008 Mumbai attacks to practical guidance on rehearsing crisis response across Zoom, Teams and the boardroom, this conversation offers NEDs and aspiring directors a clear-eyed playbook for leading when getting the call wrong is the biggest risk of all.(00:00) - Welcome to The Boardroom Path (04:04) - An Unconventional Path Into Specialist Security (06:06) - Defining Permacrisis for the Boardroom (08:03) - The Domino Effect of a Far-Flung Incident (11:11) - Breaking Silos and Communicating Across the Board (13:25) - Are Board Meetings Still Fit for Purpose? (15:48) - Building Horizon-Scanning Into the Agenda (18:54) - Decision-Making With Imperfect Information (23:07) - When Instinct Beats Data and Analysis (27:48) - Reputational Management (35:23) - The Next Three Things Every Board Should DoWill Geddes: Will Geddes is the Managing Director and founder of ICP Group (International Corporate Protection), a globally recognised, niche threat-management security firm originally established in 1996 that supports clients ranging from FTSE and Fortune 100 corporations to family offices and high-profile private individuals. With more than 30 years' experience in specialist security, his work spans close protection, crisis management, kidnap and ransom, counter-terrorism, intelligence gathering, multi-jurisdictional investigations, cyber and geopolitical risk. He also founded TacticsON and is a regular international media commentator on security, terrorism and risk for outlets including the BBC, Sky News, ITN, CNN, The Telegraph and BBC Radio 4 Today. His perspective combines decades of frontline operational experience with strategic advisory work for boards making consequential decisions under pressure.Ralph Grayson: Ralph Grayson is a Partner in the Board Practice at Sainty Hird & Partners, bringing extensive experience in board-level recruitment, assessment, and advisory services. With a deep understanding of the corporate governance landscape, Ralph specialises in guiding senior executives as they transition into impactful boardroom careers. His thoughtful approach, combined with a passion for developing effective leaders, enables him to facilitate insightful conversations that equip aspiring and newly appointed Non-Executive Directors with the tools they need to succeed. Through The Boardroom Path, Ralph leverages his extensive professional network and expertise to empower listeners on their journey into the boardroom.Episode Insights:Permacrisis means treating crisis as a continuum rather than a contingency, with seemingly minor or far-flung events capable of triggering a domino effect across global operations and reputation.Crisis manuals rarely come off the shelf when something actually happens, so what matters is whether the board has practised problem-solving and communication together using the tools they truly rely on.Decisions made with imperfect information are unavoidable, which is why a clean audit trail of what was known, by whom and when, is the single best protection for directors and the company.A board that defers decisions, fills silence with content for its own sake or refuses to admit failings damages stakeholder trust more than the underlying crisis often does.Strong crisis leadership combines humility, judgement and emotional intelligence; AI can support scenario planning at the macro level but the human element remains essential at the micro.Action Points:Treat crisis as a continuum, not an event: Build standing horizon-scanning into every board agenda alongside performance reporting. Ask each function where they foresee issues and how a single incident in one country could ripple across the business. This forces the board to spot domino effects early and to allocate attention to the right risks rather than the loudest ones.Rehearse together, across channels: Schedule regular cross-functional simulations using the tools you actually rely on day to day, including Zoom, Teams and phone. Test how the board problem-solves laterally rather than how individuals handle a dramatic hostage scenario. Doing this routinely surfaces communication gaps and trains people to lean on each other ...
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    41 mins
  • Thinking the Unthinkable: Why Boards Must Govern for a World Without Stability

    Thinking the Unthinkable: Why Boards Must Govern for a World Without Stability
    Apr 15 2026
    What happens when the world your board was built to govern no longer exists?In this episode of The Boardroom Path, host Ralph Grayson speaks with Nik Gowing, founder of Think Unthink, former BBC World News presenter and co-author of Thinking the Unthinkable, about why boards are structurally unprepared for the scale and speed of disruption now unfolding. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 2026 Iran conflict, Nik draws on decades of frontline reporting and direct engagement with leaders to argue that zombie orthodoxes are blinding boards to existential threats.With the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2026 ranking geoeconomic confrontation as the number one global risk and UK unemployment reaching a post-pandemic high of 5.2% amid accelerating AI-driven job losses, the conversation could not be more timely. Nik introduces the Pinball Principle — the idea that crises now cascade at speeds no board can control — and calls for heretical thinking, new mind muscle and a fundamental rethink of how often and how deeply boards engage with the realities confronting them.(00:00) - Welcome to The Boardroom Path (04:08) - Nik Gowing: From the Berlin Wall to the Boardroom (05:59) - Are Boards Fundamentally Misreading the World? (10:51) - AI, Mass Unemployment and a Coming Societal Implosion (15:09) - The Pinball Principle: No Predictability, No Control (18:38) - Are Boards Designed to Avoid Uncomfortable Truths? (21:24) - Why Boards Are Getting Blindsided on Risk (25:58) - Cyber Attacks, War Gaming and Saturday Morning Crises (28:47) - Heretics in the Boardroom and Tearing Up the Rule Book (33:56) - The Adversity We Are Not Prepared For (37:00) - What Every Chair Should Ask at Their Next Meeting (40:26) - Embracing Uncertainty: The Positive Way ForwardNik Gowing: Nik Gowing is the founder and director of Think Unthinkable and co-author of Thinking the Unthinkable: A New Imperative for Leadership in the Digital Age. A former main news presenter for BBC World News (1996–2014), he spent 18 years at ITN as bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw and as Diplomatic Editor for Channel Four News, collecting a BAFTA for his coverage of martial law in Poland. Nik has reported from the front lines of major global crises including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the conflicts in former Yugoslavia and the events of 9/11. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a Visiting Professor at King's College London and a former member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Geo-Economics. He has advised the President of the UN General Assembly on leadership challenges and holds honorary doctorates from Exeter and Bristol universities. Most recently, he moderated high-level plenary sessions at the 2026 Villars Ocean Forum on planetary tipping points.Ralph Grayson: Ralph Grayson is a Partner in the Board Practice at Sainty Hird & Partners, bringing extensive experience in board-level recruitment, assessment, and advisory services. With a deep understanding of the corporate governance landscape, Ralph specialises in guiding senior executives as they transition into impactful boardroom careers. His thoughtful approach, combined with a passion for developing effective leaders, enables him to facilitate insightful conversations that equip aspiring and newly appointed Non-Executive Directors with the tools they need to succeed. Through The Boardroom Path, Ralph leverages his extensive professional network and expertise to empower listeners on their journey into the boardroom.Episode Insights:Boards are constrained by zombie orthodoxes — inherited assumptions about stability and predictability that no longer reflect reality — and what qualified leaders for their roles may now disqualify them from understanding the scale of disruption ahead.The Pinball Principle captures how crises now cascade in unpredictable directions at speeds that outpace traditional governance structures, leaving boards feeling powerless but unable to admit it.Risk and resilience registers are being artificially constrained, with some chief risk officers told to cap the number of risks they report, leaving existential threats outside the boundary fence.Boards need heretics — people sanctioned to challenge consensus and think beyond established orthodoxies — valued as visionaries rather than treated as problems to be disposed of.AI-driven disruption threatens a societal implosion, with mass unemployment, mortgage crises and a fundamental breakdown in the social contract happening not in decades but in months.Action Points:Build new mind muscle at board level: Challenge every board member to identify at least three assumptions they hold about the business environment that may no longer be valid. Create structured exercises that force directors to confront scenarios they instinctively resist, building the cognitive flexibility Gowing calls new mind muscle.Tear up the quarterly ...
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    43 mins
  • Stewardship, Governance and Long-Term Value Creation with Kimberley Lewis

    Stewardship, Governance and Long-Term Value Creation with Kimberley Lewis
    Apr 1 2026
    What do investors actually look for when they sit down with a board? And has stewardship lost its way in a sea of tick boxes and league tables?In this episode of The Boardroom Path, host Ralph Grayson speaks with Kimberley Lewis, Head of Active Ownership at Schroders, one of the world's largest global asset managers. Kimberley leads Schroders' global stewardship strategy and works directly with chairs, CEOs and NEDs on governance, climate, human capital and geopolitics.They explore why quality stewardship should feel like a partnership rather than a compliance exercise and why boards need more courage to explain rather than simply comply. The conversation covers the growing wave of shareholder activism in Europe, with a 44% year-on-year surge in UK companies targeted by activists in 2025, the impact of the US ESG backlash on UK engagement, and why Kimberley believes companies that double down on their principles will ultimately be vindicated.From board composition and NED stock ownership to the balance between curiosity and technical expertise, this is a practical guide to what good governance looks like from the investor's chair.(00:00) - Welcome to The Boardroom Path (03:30) - From Law to Active Ownership: Kimberley's Career Path (05:01) - What Good Stewardship Really Looks Like (08:31) - Navigating the US ESG Backlash from London (13:01) - The Rise of Shareholder Activism in Europe (15:29) - Influence without Authority: Credibility in the Boardroom (18:02) - Stewardship in 2026 and the Updated Blueprint (21:24) - How Boards Handle Risk across Competing Themes (24:33) - Should NEDs Own Stock? (28:15) - Diversity, Refreshment and the Red Herring Debate (32:51) - When Stewardship Becomes Confused with Compliance (34:40) - The Future Board: Skills, Curiosity and JudgementKimberley Lewis: Kimberley Lewis is the Head of Active Ownership at Schroders, one of the world's largest global asset managers. She leads the firm's global stewardship strategy, overseeing how Schroders engages with boards and executive teams across listed and private markets on issues including corporate governance, climate change, human rights, human capital and geopolitics. A former lawyer in the United States, Kimberley pivoted into corporate responsibility roles at AstraZeneca and Pfizer before moving into investment stewardship, initially covering North American companies at a boutique ESG-integrated firm. She holds an MBA from London Business School and is a member of the International Corporate Governance Network. Ralph Grayson: Ralph Grayson is a Partner in the Board Practice at Sainty Hird & Partners, bringing extensive experience in board-level recruitment, assessment, and advisory services. With a deep understanding of the corporate governance landscape, Ralph specialises in guiding senior executives as they transition into impactful boardroom careers. His thoughtful approach, combined with a passion for developing effective leaders, enables him to facilitate insightful conversations that equip aspiring and newly appointed Non-Executive Directors with the tools they need to succeed. Through The Boardroom Path, Ralph leverages his extensive professional network and expertise to empower listeners on their journey into the boardroom.Resources & Links:Schroders 2026 Engagement BlueprintThe State of Stewardship Tulchan ReportIA Stewardship Working Group ReportUK Stewardship Code 2026Episode Insights:Quality stewardship is a collaborative, research-driven partnership between investors and boards, not a tick-box compliance exercise driven by league tables or voting records.The US ESG backlash is making stewardship harder but more important: companies are responding in very different ways, and those that double down on their principles are likely to be vindicated in the long run.Shareholder activism is surging in Europe and the UK, and boards should treat large, long-term shareholders as trusted partners and engage with activist concerns early rather than waiting for a crisis.The UK corporate governance framework needs more courage in the "explain" of "comply or explain": private conversations reveal boards often know what they should do but fear the headlines.Assessing true board quality remains one of the biggest unsolved challenges in stewardship: composition metrics and skills matrices are imperfect proxies for the judgement, curiosity and culture that really matter.Action Points:Treat your largest shareholders as strategic partners: Proactively reach out to your long-term institutional investors for candid conversations about governance, strategy and risk. These investors often have a broader market perspective and a genuine shared interest in long-term value creation. Use them as a sounding board before challenges escalate into activist campaigns.Embrace the "explain" in comply or explain: Resist the temptation to default to compliance for an easy life. If a departure from the corporate governance code serves the company's ...
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    39 mins
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