My ownership cannot be the answer to every question

Ownership gives me a continuing interest in the business, but it does not make every capacity in which I act interchangeable. I am a founder, majority owner, executive director and CEO. A question that concerns my shareholder position is not automatically an instruction the executive team should receive from its chief executive. Since the minority investment, I have worked with a separate chair to make those distinctions usable in actual discussions. The purpose is not to deny the influence that ownership carries. It is to ensure that colleagues can understand the capacity in which a proposal is being made and the route through which it should be decided.

The most revealing tests are often smaller than a major investment. When a manager has authority over a parts decision, does a colleague still approach me privately because they expect a different answer? If I respond, have I supplied relevant experience or effectively reversed the manager? I used to regard those conversations as part of staying close to the company. I now ask whether my intervention strengthens the person responsible for the work or teaches the organisation to wait for me. The record of delegated engineering decisions included my own bypasses. That made it harder to describe the problem as other people's reluctance to take responsibility.

A separate chair needs information that has not already been shaped to make the founder comfortable. In our discussions, I want the operating team to distinguish a decision it can implement from a recommendation that requires board consideration. An unresolved disagreement should not disappear because I have expressed a preference before the paper reaches directors. I explain why I favour a course, what the alternative would preserve and which assumptions remain uncertain. The chair can then decide how the board should examine the issue, including whether another colleague should present the operating evidence without me answering every question first.

The refurbishment case illustrates the importance of maintaining an uncomfortable comparison. The replacement proposals represented RMB 34 million of potential work; the refurbishment cohort produced RMB 11 million of contracted work. Those were different scopes, and the proposals were not secured sales. Both qualifications belonged in the account. I did not want the board to mistake a smaller invoice for a measured commercial success merely because the customer received a technically suitable alternative. Directors needed to see the costs, capacity requirements and evidence still missing before deciding whether the approach deserved a larger place in our business.

People investment needs similarly precise language. Forty-two apprenticeship entrants, thirty-one assessed completions and twenty-seven colleagues retained another year later describe different stages. The programme cost included the time of experienced people who could otherwise have been assigned to production. If that time were hidden, the board would be assessing a training model the operating plan could not actually support. I asked the people and capability review to keep departures and incomplete assessments visible. The relevant question was not whether the headline made us look like a supportive employer. It was what capability the investment had produced and what teaching capacity the next group would require.

Equipment monitoring adds another boundary. Information from a customer's installation does not give our service team authority to change how that installation operates. We agree the scope of information use and the response process with the customer, and retain the distinction between a signal, an engineering interpretation and an operating decision. At board level, I discuss the service obligation and the economics of the offer. Directors should understand what we are promising to support, who can act and whether the company has the people to respond. They should not be encouraged to infer an engineering conclusion from a coloured status indicator.

My external commitments must also reflect my ownership and executive responsibilities. Commercial connections may extend through partners, component suppliers or customer groups, even where another company's products do not directly compete with ours. I would disclose those connections before an appointment and keep them under review. A defined contribution to another board could be useful; an arrangement that repeatedly required withholding papers or leaving discussions might not be. I would rather identify that difficulty early than allow the attraction of an additional title to obscure whether I could participate responsibly. Governance, for me, includes knowing when the contribution a role needs is not one I can presently make.