Jessie Inman

A commitment to excellence in the boardroom In the current, evolving business and governance landscape, the ICD.D designation helps directors be better at what they do, and ultimately, create better boards and better business. Granted by the Institute of Corporate Directors after an examination process conducted by seasoned directors, the ICD.D designation represents a lifelong commitment to excellence in the boardroom, a desire to stay current, and to be a more effective dir...ector. Please see the website, icd.ca for the ICD Key Competencies for Board Members assessed during the examination (written and oral) after completion of the course. See more

COVID-19 and Volunteering Thinking about volunteering is a wonderful idea. Countless community organizations are currently short-handed. Whether you are interested in preparing boxes at the local food bank, making deliveries, caring for pets at the CA, helping at seniors’ residences or on a farm You are needed. And all these services do make a difference. What is expected of a volunteer? Things you should know?...Continue reading

Health & Well-Being Should you grow a backyard garden? Yes! Last year, 2019, was the first time since I was quite young that I had a summer when I wasn’t working full-time. I was working on my Modo Yoga Pillar Projects and I thought that a garden would be great way to fulfil the Be Healthy and Be Green Projects. Allan and I discussed the idea of growing this garden. We had only one place to put it and that required hiring Lawns & Beyond to dig up all of the deep old root...s that were on the slope behind the little storage shed that is down by our lower deck. They did that and created a terrace with wooden walls so we would have two levels to grow vegetables on. We both grew up on farms so we had some vague idea of what we were doing but not much.but between us we knew how to put down string to make straight rows and how to pull weeds. Otherwise we did some research, asked questions at our local greenhouse, Van Kempen’s, and looked at YouTube videos and read the instructions on the seed packages. We didn’t know what would work and what wouldn’t so it was a trial year. Garden 2020 is about to start! However, we were both overwhelmed with the personal satisfaction we felt from our work last year. Getting your hands into the dirt to grow your own food is a very rewarding process. We had fresh produce from our garden all summer (fresh salads every day!) and ate root veggies well into the fall. We also bottled more than 80 bottles (or frozen bags) of yellow beans, dill pickles, sweet cucumber pickles, sweet zucchini pickles, red and yellow tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, hot peppers, and hot cauliflower. I hope you enjoy this note of encouragement and this little video to show you our 2019 Garden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VkqKxO2OSc&t=1s See more

Corporate Governance What Information Should the Board Receive? This question is important and complex. The answer is also different for different organizations. A small company with a representative Board (predominantly shareholders) will want significantly more detail on progress and forward looking strategies, costs, projections, business plans, etc., than other types of organizations. What are the metrics used to provide the Board with the right information so they ca...n make informed opinions and thus provide appropriate input and advice to the Executive Team? Are these metrics tied to the strategic plan of the organization? If not, they should be. An informed Board always plays a large role in setting strategy and the Executive Team is responsible for ensuring that strategy is executed. My own experience is that execution is best done using an Implementation Plan, which is comprised of goals to meet the strategic objectives and the actions that will be taken to meet these goals. Together the Board and Executive Team can come up with the metrics that arise from this planning process. However, Boards must be careful not to place too much emphasis on metrics alone and not understand actions being taken to report only positive metrics to the Board. We saw very large banks in the U.S. focus only on the metrics and not realize how staff were selling millions of mortgages to people who did not have the financial capacity to repay them. This is what brought on the global financial crisis that started in 2007. I hope we have learned from that crisis what it really means for a Board to understand how metrics and strategy intermix to provide the right information for informed, collaborative decision making around the board table. Transparency, open dialogue, and good relationships amongst Board members and with the Executive Team will always be the best way to ensure an organization stays healthy and meets challenges with what if scenarios built in. But even with risk built into strategy and planning, companies were not really ready for what is happening now with COV-19. We may have been expecting a market correction and felt that it was needed but we didn’t know what the spark would be. I believe it is important now for all Boards to be in a dialogue about what may happen if this becomes a pandemic or a global emergency. Companies with large workforces or those that derive their income from large gatherings need to be coming up with new ways to work whether that be working from home or finding ways to gather online, or some other new and creative ways to weather this storm the world is currently facing. Let’s work together not just between nations but also between companies.

Corporate Governance Board Composition and Quality Board Members Over the coming decade, the most important aspect of running corporations will continue to be the Board of Directors. The spotlight has been on diversity and gender balance but Canada still lags behind other countries in both of these areas. Even though research tells us that balanced boards make better decisions and have higher collective intelligence, the scales have not yet reached equilibrium. It simply... makes good business sense to have gender equity on a board. But unfortunately, as CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) announced that Statistics Canada stated in May of 2019 that less than 20% of corporate board members in Canada are women. You can imagine how much lower that is for our indigenous people or people of colour, LGBQ+, or the disabled. Equally important is board composition from a competence perspective. Does your board have the right skill sets to lead the necessary Committees, understand the strategic vision of the corporation and the willingness to ask hard questions and engage in positive collaborative discussion with the executive team to ensure goals, milestones and objectives are being met to move the company forward? As a Certified Corporate Director by the Institute of Corporate Directors of Canada, and with extensive experience and interest in all topics related to Boards, I will be writing a short blog each week to share with you some of my thoughts and insights from my experience and research.