My contribution to a board
Consumer boards now approve large sums for apps, loyalty programmes and store technology, and they usually see those decisions as a total, a timeline and a forecast of sales. What they see less often is the operating promise inside the investment: who in the store keeps it, how much of their time it takes and what the programme pays customers to do that they would have done anyway. I have spent twenty-seven years on both sides of that promise, first at a pro desk and later deciding which product work gets funded. I can help a board ask whether a digital commitment has a matching associate process, whether a rewards programme's cost is buying behaviour or merely recording it, and what the company intends to retire to make room for what it builds. I can also explain the engineering trade-offs behind a roadmap without asking directors to manage it. I have not served on a commercial board, so I would contribute as a committee member first and rely on an experienced chair to show me where my questions help and where they would intrude on management.
Judgement in practice
01Accepting a visible revenue loss to stop guessing customers' projects
The inferred-project programme had a measured revenue benefit and a small number of complaints. A board looking only at those numbers could reasonably have asked us to soften the wording and continue. I argued instead that the issue was what we had decided to know about customers without asking, and that a change of wording would leave that untouched. As a director I would bring the same distinction to personalisation, data-sharing and retail-media proposals: whether the revenue depends on a use of customer information the customer would recognise and accept. I would want to see the complaint record and the legal review alongside the attribution, and I would accept that management may weigh them differently. My aim would be to make sure the board has knowingly priced the trade-off, not to substitute my judgement for the executive team's.
02Giving a dissenting colleague direct access to the decision-maker
When Delphine Arkwrenne disagreed with my recommendation to delay order-ahead pickup, she put her case to our chief executive herself, and I made sure she had the time and the data to do it. Her concern about losing framing contractors proved partly right. A board benefits from the same practice: when an executive brings a recommendation, I would ask who disagreed and whether their view reached the decision with its own evidence. I would not treat a dissent as a reason to overturn management, but I would want the record to show it was heard and what the company accepted by deciding against it. When a later outcome vindicates part of a rejected argument, the useful board conversation is about what signal was missed, not about who was right.
My first year on a board
My first three months would be spent learning how the company earns its margin, store by store and channel by channel, before I said much in meetings. I would ask the chair and chief executive for visits to stores, a distribution centre and the customer-service floor at their busiest hours, arranged so they disrupt as little as possible. With the committee chair I would agree which recurring reports the committee relies on for technology and customer-data risk, and I would read two years of them. In the first budget cycle I would follow two large digital or loyalty investments from proposal to approval, noting what the board saw about associate time and programme cost. By the ninth month I would ask the chair for blunt feedback on whether my questions were helping. At the anniversary I would write down what I had misjudged about the business, because a director who has run a product organisation is at risk of treating another company's roadmap as familiar when it is not.
Conflicts and their management
My conflicts would come mainly from three directions. Tolvercroft buys from hundreds of suppliers and from several software vendors, some of whom also sell to other consumer businesses; a board considering the same vendor would need to know my relationship and might reasonably exclude me from that decision. I own shares through Tolvercroft's employee stock ownership plan, so any company that competes with it or trades with it materially is unsuitable. Ridgefallow Trades Foundation receives an annual donation from Tolvercroft, which I would declare to any board that also gives to it. Before accepting a seat I would list these relationships for the company's counsel and my chief executive, and I would update the list whenever my employer signs a significant new technology contract. If the exclusions became frequent enough to weaken my contribution, I would resign rather than become a director who regularly leaves the room.
My independence statement
I would not describe myself as independent of any company until its counsel had reviewed my employment, my employee share ownership at Tolvercroft and the software vendors and suppliers I deal with. Where listing standards apply, the board, not I, decides whether I meet them, and I would give it everything it needs to decide.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to join | Technology or digital committee · Audit committee, contributing on customer-data and systems risk rather than as its financial expert |
|---|
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 24 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Specialty retail · Restaurant groups with their own ordering channels · Membership and subscription consumer services
- Company type
- Family-controlled, sponsor-backed or smaller listed consumer company outside home improvement and building materials
- Company stage
- A company whose app, loyalty programme or store technology has become a capital decision for its board
The seat I am pursuing
I want a first commercial board seat where my experience addresses a question the board is already asking. A specialty retailer rebuilding its app, a restaurant group deciding how much of its ordering to own, or a membership business redesigning its rewards would each fit. I would join as a member of the technology committee, or of the audit committee for its data and systems agenda, and would not expect to chair a committee during a first term. I can commit about 24 days a year, including preparation and travel, and my chief executive must approve the seat. I am not looking for an advisory role that blurs into consulting, and I would not join a board in home improvement, building materials or any company selling to Tolvercroft. I would want to know why the board is adding a director now, and what it expects that person to question.
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian requirement and does not apply to me. My career and the boards I am considering are all in the United States, so I have not registered and have no plan to.
- I am studying how US audit and technology committees oversee cyber-security, privacy and customer-data risk, including the disclosures listed companies now make about them.
- I have read the NYSE and Nasdaq listing standards on director independence and committee composition, and I have asked an experienced independent director to review my first year's preparation.
- Seven years on the Ridgefallow Trades Foundation board have taught me how a grants committee records dissent and revisits a decision.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Tolvercroft Home & Lumber Company
Full board: annual product investment plan and major programme changes
March 2021–present
Presents the product and engineering budget, the rewards redesign and the in-stock programme; attends for those items and has no vote.
Reported to a committee
Tolvercroft Home & Lumber Company
Audit committee: customer-data use in rewards and personalisation
2023–present
Reports twice a year with the chief information officer and counsel on data inventories, consent records and personalisation reviews.
Served as a director
Ridgefallow Trades Foundation
Board of directors and grants committee
2019–present
Unpaid director of a non-profit that funds carpentry and electrical apprenticeships in central Washington; member of the grants committee.