Scott Steinberg · Consultant, Analyst and Business Strategist
In a world of growing change and uncertainty, boards need to to understand areas like corporate strategy, change management, AI, technology, cybersecurity, the future of work and more. A consultant to over 3000 brands, Scott Steinberg serves as an external director bringing his strategic consulting, trend forecasting and strategic foresight expertise to bear.
Board contribution across assorted areas like workforce strategy, workplace trends, the future of work, technology and digital oversight, AI strategy and governance, market and competitive foresight, innovation and product judgment, and translating technical risk into board-level decisions.
Boards recruit independent, non-executive, outside directors to help provide needed expertise. Below are sample areas among many that we address via strategic experience.
Boards are accountable for technology decisions that most directors cannot independently evaluate, which produces oversight that consists of accepting management's summary.
This external director seat asks the questions that make a technology presentation useful, and tells the board when an answer does not hold up.
Every board is being asked what the company is doing about AI, and most are hearing an answer they cannot assess for substance or risk.
The external director brings a working view of what is deployable, what adoption actually requires, and what governance the organization should have in place before it scales.
Boards see the competitive landscape through management's framing, which is necessarily shaped by the strategy management has already chosen.
An independent read on where a market is heading and who else is moving into it gives the board a second reference point for testing that strategy.
Product and innovation investment decisions reach boards as budget numbers stripped of the judgment about whether the thing being built is any good.
Any given external director contributes a view on the product itself, drawn from decades of assessing consumer and business products across categories.
Technology risk arrives at boards either as reassurance or as jargon, and neither lets a director exercise judgment about materiality.
The director translates cybersecurity, data, platform dependency and vendor concentration risks into terms the whole board can weigh against everything else on the agenda.
Transformation programs consume multi-year budgets and frequently under-deliver, and boards find out late because progress reporting measures activity rather than outcome.
This seat knows what genuine progress looks like in these programs and what the warning signs are twelve months before they become obvious.
Acquisitions with a technology component carry risk in what was not examined during diligence, particularly around integration, technical debt and platform dependency.
The member brings the questions that should be asked before a deal rather than discovered during integration.
A single technology-literate director is an improvement; a board that collectively asks better questions is considerably more valuable.
Part of this seat is briefing fellow directors so the whole board raises its baseline rather than delegating an entire domain to one person.
An outside director earns their seat between meetings as much as in them, and availability for the calls that happen when something is developing is part of the commitment.
Preparation, attendance and contribution across the regular board calendar, including committee work where relevant.
Reachable when something develops, which is where a technology director is most useful and least often available.
Direct access for executives who want a sounding board on technology decisions before they reach the board.
Briefing fellow directors on technology developments so the whole board can ask better questions, not just this seat.
Scott Steinberg is a futurist keynote speaker, consulting expert and thought leader with over 28 years of experience advising more than 3,000 businesses and brands, from startups to government agencies and Fortune 500 firms.
He is the author of over 30 books and has published more than five thousand articles covering technology, marketing, leadership, innovation, advertising and digital transformation. He appears regularly in media outlets like ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC.
He has led seminars, keynote speaker talks and training programs for organizations including Wells Fargo, the PGA Tour, Century 21, Ford, Dell and Procter & Gamble, and has been recognized by the International Association for Scholastic Excellence, Fortune and the 21st Century Icon Awards.
Fiduciary accountability and continuity. A consultant is engaged for a question and leaves. A director carries responsibility for the company's direction, sees the same issues develop across quarters, and is in the room when decisions are made rather than briefing into it.
Strategy, innovation, technology, AI, digital and market foresight, etc. Boards that recognize they are overseeing technology decisions nobody around the table can independently evaluate, and want that changed rather than managed with more frequent CIO presentations.
Boards needing a financial expert for audit committee purposes, an accounting specialist, or someone with operating experience as a former CFO in your specific industry. Those are distinct recruits and should be named as such rather than hoped for.
Standard board calendar plus committee work, plus genuine availability between meetings. The between-meeting part matters most for many seats, since the questions that need answering rarely align with the quarterly schedule.
With the gap. What is the board trying to be able to do that it currently cannot, and is this the right expertise for it. Those conversations are confidential and carry no obligation on either side.
Share your company stage, sector, board composition and the gap you are trying to fill. Conversations about fit are confidential and without obligation on either side.
Our independent, non-executive and external directors stand ready to assist. Reach out if you have a corporate board member role that you're looking to fill today.