I would bring an engineer's attention to how records are produced and a data officer's attention to whom they describe. Agribusiness and food boards increasingly oversee companies that hold information on behalf of others: growers' paddock records, consumers' purchase histories, suppliers' test results. Directors need to know what the company has promised about that information, whether its systems can keep the promise and what happens when a commercial idea runs ahead of consent. I have had to answer those questions as an executive, sometimes against colleagues' commercial preferences. I would also help a board read analytical claims carefully. A model's accuracy figure says little until someone states the decision it is meant to change and shows that it has changed. My limits matter as much as my strengths. I have not been a director, my experience of capital markets is limited and I would rely on colleagues for food-safety and financial-reporting judgement. A committee seat under an experienced chair would let me contribute where I am strongest while learning the rest properly.
Judgement in practice
01
Treating a consent question before a pricing question
When our sales team proposed a dealer subscription built on growers' agronomic records, the discussion was first framed around price. I argued it was a consent question that had to be settled before price meant anything. A board facing a similar proposal should ask what the people concerned were told when the data was collected, whether the company's systems can honour a revised promise and who carries the reputational cost if customers object. Those questions do not settle whether the product is wrong. In our case they showed that its commercial return depended on a use our customers had never accepted. As a director I would ask for that distinction early, keep commercial ambition and customer obligation in the same paper, and avoid treating legal permissibility as the end of the analysis.
02
Asking what a model changed, not how accurate it looked
Our failure-prediction model looked promising on accuracy charts while growers ignored its alerts. The useful board question is not whether a model is accurate in general, but which decision it changes, for whom, at what time and with what cost when it is wrong. I would ask management to show a model's effect in operating terms, such as parts availability or repair time, and to say who disagreed with its deployment and why. A comparison across sites, as ours was, gives directors firmer evidence than enthusiasm. I would also want to know when the company would retire a model. Boards hear plenty about new analytics and much less about work that stopped because it did not earn its cost, and that silence can hide money and attention spent without return.
My first year on a board
My first three months would go on learning how the company makes money and what it holds about other people. I would ask the company secretary for two years of committee papers, read the risk register against the data the company actually keeps, and visit at least one operating site with the manager responsible. I would meet the external auditor, the chief financial officer and whoever answers for privacy before raising questions in a meeting. In the second half of the year I would examine one recurring report the committee relies on: where its figures originate, how they are checked and what a director cannot see from it. I would give the chair a short written note on that review rather than a list of demands. At the end of the year I would ask the chair for candid feedback, including whether my questions helped the committee reach decisions or simply lengthened its meetings.
Conflicts and their management
Callowdene sells machinery to growers, buys steel, hydraulics and electronics from suppliers, and deals with banks, insurers and finance companies that lend against our machines. A co-operative or food manufacturer could be a customer, a grower group we negotiate with or a participant in the same supply chain. I would list those relationships before any interview, including the fund that owns 38 per cent of Callowdene and its other agribusiness investments. Where a board discussed a dealer network, farm-data platform or machinery supplier connected with Callowdene, I would declare the interest and leave the discussion if the chair considered that necessary. I would never bring Callowdene's grower records, dealer pricing or engineering information into another boardroom, nor carry that board's information back. If exclusions became frequent enough to weaken my contribution, I would resign rather than remain a director who is absent from the items that matter most.
My independence statement
Whether I am independent is for a board to judge on full disclosure, not for me to declare. I would set out my executive role at Callowdene, its ownership, my committee work at Quindara and any customer, dealer or supplier links, and accept the board's conclusion, including a conclusion that I should not be described as independent.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Callowdene Machinery
Audit and risk committee
March 2021–present
Presents data governance, privacy obligations and record-quality reports twice a year as chief data officer; not a director.
Member of a committee
Quindara Grower Research Co-operative
Data stewardship committee
2023–present
Member of a five-person committee advising the co-operative's board on how research data is shared with grower-members; an unpaid role approved by my employer.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
India's IICA Independent Directors' Databank is a requirement for independent directors there. My intended appointments are in Australia, where it has no role, so I am not registered and claim no status with it.
Completed a company directors' course in 2024 covering directors' duties under the Corporations Act 2001, financial statements and risk oversight.
Attend the Quindara co-operative board's meetings twice a year as part of my committee role, to observe how members' interests shape its decisions.
Studying the ASX Corporate Governance Council's Principles and Recommendations, particularly on risk management and the audit committee's role.