My contribution to a board
Most boards see operations through averages: answer times, losses and uptime for the year. I can help directors ask what those averages hide. Which customers waited longest, and on which days? What fails first when the power goes out, and what has management already decided to accept? I have spent nearly thirty years running the parts of financial services that customers notice on bad days, and I have presented those choices to a member-elected board for five years. I would bring that operator's eye to a risk or audit committee, particularly on business continuity, fraud, outsourcing and service quality across regions or languages. I would also bring the habit of asking what each improvement costs and what was given up to fund it. I would not bring a wish to manage. A director who used to run contact centres can easily slip into redesigning the schedule; my job would be to test management's plan and leave its execution to management.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 22 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Cooperative and mutual insurance · Regulated utilities and essential services · Health and housing not-for-profits
- Company type
- Member-owned, mutual or not-for-profit organisation, or a mid-sized regulated company with customers in more than one region
- Company stage
- Weighing resilience spending, a service change or an integration against more visible investments
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking a first independent seat on the board of an organisation whose customers depend on it on difficult days: a cooperative or mutual insurer, a regulated utility, a health or housing organisation, or a financial institution outside my own market. I would join a risk or audit committee and would not expect to chair one until I had learnt the organisation and its board. I can contribute most where operations, outsourcing, fraud or service in two languages are significant risks that the board wants examined by someone who has run them. I can offer about twenty-two days a year. My employer's board would have to consent, and I would not accept a seat whose calendar could not survive our storm season. I would expect a structured induction and a candid chair, and I am prepared for the possibility that the right first seat is a smaller not-for-profit rather than a larger company.
Judgement in practice
01Pricing resilience as an accepted exposure, not a saving
After the 2022 outage, I recommended generators and satellite links for seven branches rather than twenty-one. The cheaper plan was not a saving: it left fourteen branches exposed, and I named them in the paper. On a board, I would ask for the same honesty from management. When a resilience or security budget is reduced, I would want to know which locations, systems or customers carry the remaining risk, how long recovery would take for each and who decided that was acceptable. I would also ask whether the decision will be revisited when circumstances change, such as a new storm pattern or a supplier failure. Directors should approve the exposure knowingly, not discover it during an incident.
02Separating a reasonable improvisation from a missing control
Our offline cash decision worked, and C$1,850 of losses was a fair price for four days of access. Yet the fact that I had to decide it by telephone was a control failure, and I said so to our risk committee. A board hearing about a well-handled crisis should ask both questions: was the decision sound, and why did it need to be improvised? I would want management to show what has since been written down, approved and rehearsed. I would be wary of a report that praises the response without examining the missing preparation, and equally wary of a report that criticises staff for exercising judgement the procedures had failed to give them.
03Asking who waits behind a combined figure
Our contact centre's average answer time looked acceptable in spring 2023 because English callers were answered quickly. French-language callers waited two and a half times as long. I would bring that question to any board whose service reports combine different groups of customers: regions, languages, channels or product lines. A combined figure can hide a group that management has not chosen to treat worse but is treating worse all the same. Asking for the split is cheap; acting on it may not be, and I would expect the board to weigh the cost honestly rather than demand equal service without funding it.
My first year on a board
In the first months I would read the last two years of risk reports, internal audit findings and incident reviews, then ask management to walk me through one recent disruption from the first alert to the final report. That tells me more about an organisation's operations than a presentation of its strategy. I would visit one front-line operation, by arrangement with the chief executive, to see how a customer is served on an ordinary day. On the committee, I would concentrate on continuity testing, outsourcing arrangements and service measures, and say early which subjects I know less about, such as investment, actuarial or engineering questions, so the chair can rely on others for them. By the end of the year I would ask the chair for direct feedback on whether my questions helped the committee or simply repeated management's own concerns. I would also want to know whether my preparation time matched the work, and adjust before a second year.
Conflicts and their management
My conflicts would come from three places. First, Brayloche itself: I could not join the board of another credit union competing for New Brunswick members, or of a company bidding for our business, and I would leave any discussion touching our contracts. Second, the suppliers I manage: our card and payment processor, contact-centre technology providers and the generator and telecommunications firms we used after 2022. I would disclose those relationships in writing before any appointment, with contract values where my employer allows. Third, time. Storm season and renewal peaks fall in the same months each year, and an independent board cannot have a director who disappears whenever Brayloche has an incident. I would agree in advance with both chairs how a clash would be handled. If a conflict came up during a meeting, I would declare it, leave the room and ask for the minutes to record it. Anything I learnt at Brayloche in confidence would stay there.
My independence statement
Brayloche pays me, and my judgement on another board must not depend on its interests. Before accepting a seat I would list every supplier, partner, competitor and member relationship I can identify, let the board's own advisers decide whether I meet its independence standard, and decline if the answer is uncertain.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to join | Risk · Audit |
|---|
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Brayloche Credit Union
Board of directors and board risk committee
March 2021–present
Presents operational risk, fraud, continuity and service reports quarterly as chief operating officer; not a director.
Served as a director
Centre d'alphabétisation Peltrevaux
Board of directors; finance committee member
June 2019–present
Volunteer director of an adult literacy charity in Moncton; reviews budgets, funding applications and the executive director's reports.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
India's IICA maintains an Independent Directors' Databank for Indian companies. It does not apply to the Canadian organisations I am considering, so I have not registered. For any appointment I would follow the governing legislation, the organisation's by-laws and the advice of its counsel.
- Seven years on the board and finance committee of a literacy charity, reading management reports as a director rather than writing them.
- Completing a director education programme on fiduciary duties, risk oversight and the governance guidelines that Canadian securities regulators set for listed issuers.