Board governance is becoming more demanding at the same time that expectations of directors are rising. Boards are being asked to oversee organizations through geopolitical instability, regulatory change, technological disruption, shifting stakeholder expectations, and more complex workforce dynamics. For directors, that means governance is no longer only about monitoring performance and approving plans. It also means asking whether the organization is prepared for several plausible futures at once.
That was the focus of Ivey Impact Live: From Oversight to Foresight – Board governance in a polycrisis world, moderated by governance expert Sharon Castelino, EMBA’12. Castelino was joined by Nadine de Gannes, HBA '09, Assistant Professor in Managerial Accounting and Control, and Sustainability at Ivey; Karen Fryday-Field, MBA '98, Managing Partner and Senior Consultant at Meridian Edge Leadership & Governance Consulting; and David Robinson, MBA '94, Board Director at Rogers Communications. Their discussion ranged from board education to AI, strategy, trust, and culture.
Spend less time looking back and more time looking ahead
One of the clearest messages from the session was foresight needs to be built into the board agenda, not reserved for an annual retreat or a single strategy session. Fryday-Field argued that many boards still devote too much time to retrospective oversight, operational detail, and compliance, even when they say they want to be more strategic.
Her definition of foresight was clear: “Foresight is not a prediction of the future. What foresight is, is disciplined preparedness for multiple futures.”
That means boards need regular space for questions about strategic uncertainty, emerging risks, innovation, and organizational resilience.
Robinson made a similar point in describing the board’s role in relation to management. “The job is to have your eyes out and your fingers off the keyboard,” he said. Directors should help management lift its view from the immediate issue of the day without taking over management’s job. In practice, that means asking longer-horizon questions, testing assumptions, and making sure the board is spending time on what could happen next, not only on what has already happened.
Continuous learning is becoming part of the job
The panel also made clear that board education can no longer be treated as occasional or optional. Robinson said boards now “need to be prepared to re-educate ourselves more regularly,” especially in areas where directors are less confident or where the pace of change is unusually fast.
Fryday-Field added a useful benchmark. "There is evidence that high performing boards are spending 25% of their time learning,” she said. “We need to talk more about learning boards.” In practical terms, that means education is no longer a side activity limited to one or two sessions a year. It is becoming part of the fiduciary role itself.
De Gannes pushed that idea further by questioning what kinds of knowledge boards tend to value. She argued that boards should think beyond technical fluency in finance, cybersecurity, or AI and also consider what they can learn from other disciplines. Overall, de Gannes suggested foresight may require a wider range of perspectives than boards have traditionally sought.
Duty of care needs a broader definition
A third theme from the webinar was that one of governance’s central concepts may need to be interpreted more broadly. De Gannes argued that boards should revisit what the duty of care actually asks of directors in the current environment. “We have to level up what care means for an operating board,” she said.
She sharpened the point by asking directors to think about “an ethic of care” and not just care as a matter of “competency, skills, and expertise.” That framing pushes governance beyond technical proficiency alone. Financial literacy, sector knowledge, and risk experience still matter, but the discussion suggested they are no longer enough on their own.
De Gannes connected that argument to the wider role corporations play in society. Boards, she suggested, are not making decisions in isolation. Their choices shape organizations that affect livelihoods, institutions, and public trust. In that context, the duty of care still has its legal and fiduciary meaning, but the conversation made clear that many directors are now being asked to think more explicitly about the human and societal consequences of board decisions.
AI literacy is now a baseline board competency
If one topic showed how quickly governance expectations are changing, it was AI. The panelists treated AI not as a specialist issue for one technically fluent director, but as a board-wide competency gap that has to be closed quickly.
Robinson made the expectation explicit. “There’s an obligation on every board member to have a basic understanding of AI,” he said. His warning was that relying on one designated AI expert can encourage complacency among everyone else.
De Gannes said directors need enough trust and shared understanding to ask difficult questions and admit where their knowledge is incomplete. In the AI discussion, she said that “People don’t like to feel stupid” and argued that boards need “a shared language set” to oversee risk and strategy effectively.
Furthermore, Fryday-Field added an important caution about judgment. Boards, she said, should treat AI as “a support tool for governance judgment, and not a substitute for fiduciary responsibilities.” Taken together, boards need enough shared fluency in AI to oversee strategy, confidentiality, misinformation risk, and boardroom use policies without outsourcing their own judgment.
Candour, trust, and comfort with uncertainty
A final takeaway was that board effectiveness depends as much on culture as it does on structure. The strongest boards are not only technically capable but are also willing to hear difficult information, surface disagreement, and make decisions without pretending that uncertainty can be eliminated.
Fryday-Field said boards must be prepared to “lead in ethics, which builds trust. Lead in inclusion with more voices being at the table.” She also returned to the idea that foresight is about disciplined preparation, rather than certainty.
Robinson reflected on a board’s perspective on innovation and risk. “They have to be prepared to be wrong,” he said. In a volatile environment, some decisions will need to be revised as assumptions change or new facts emerge. That is not necessarily a governance failure, it can be part of governing responsibly when conditions shift.
Finally, De Gannes approached the issue through the language of trust and leadership character. She asked what it takes for directors to trust the information before them, to trust one another, and to act collectively. She also argued that effective boards need more than technically strong individual directors, but require people who can share airtime, hear diverse viewpoints, and exercise judgment as part of a group.
