Give directors the assumptions as well as the recommendation

I believe the board of a medicines manufacturer needs a clear account of the obligations already embedded in its operating plan. The discussion often begins with demand, expenditure and expected output. Those are necessary measures, but they do not explain whether the company has enough specialist attention to investigate uncertainty or whether its proposed capacity depends on work that has not been funded. As an executive director, I want those assumptions visible before directors are asked to approve another commitment.

My first responsibility is to distinguish a technical decision from the management actions around it. The quality organisation has defined authority that my commercial responsibility does not replace. Management must still organise resources, adjust priorities and account for the financial consequence. Bringing a matter to the board should not blur that distinction. Directors need to understand the system and management's response; they should not be invited to resolve a batch question through seniority or a general expression of confidence.

The investigation-ageing programme gave us a useful example. We could have presented the reduction from forty-seven older cases to thirteen as a single favourable result. Instead, the board also saw reopened cases, the evidence still required and the recurring resource cost. This allowed the discussion to address whether the organisation had improved its ability to investigate. A lower number might reflect stronger work, a different classification or a conclusion reached too quickly. Governance depends partly on making those possibilities distinguishable before the headline settles into an accepted account of performance.

Capital allocation creates another version of the same challenge. A new production line is tangible, while the supporting work may be distributed across laboratories, engineering, documentation and review. I ask that investment papers describe the complete operating path and the constraint the proposal is intended to change. Where the evidence is incomplete, a staged approval may be appropriate. The paper should state what the first phase will establish and how directors will recognise when the later decision is ready. It should also preserve the likely total commitment rather than making successive approvals look unrelated.

In the expansion case described on this site, better information raised the total planned cost. I considered it important to say so plainly. Governance is not demonstrated only when a review produces a saving. Sometimes it reveals that the original proposition was more expensive than the company understood. Directors then need a revised recommendation with its assumptions and alternatives, including the possibility that the project should change or stop. The executive team should not feel compelled to defend the initial figure merely because colleagues have already invested substantial effort in the design.

Supply reporting should be similarly precise. Six completed alternative-source qualifications and two unresolved candidates do not amount to eight available routes. I want the board to understand which options can be used, what maintaining them costs and what dependencies remain. This helps directors assess management's claim about resilience without turning the discussion into a technical inspection. The relevant oversight question is whether the organisation is sustaining the capability it funded and whether planning assumptions match the evidence, rather than how impressive the supplier register appears.

I also value a record of disagreement that survives the final recommendation. In a portfolio review, commercial leaders may describe customer obligations while operations describe the burden of variation. Both perspectives should remain visible in the decision paper, together with the reasons for the proposed balance. A unanimous final page can conceal a real trade-off if the original concerns have simply been edited away. I want directors to know what management is accepting, which consequences it will monitor and who will return if those consequences differ from the plan.

For an external appointment, my role would change from making these recommendations to testing them. I would work through the chair and agreed committee responsibilities, use specialist advice where needed and avoid creating a second management channel. The contribution I offer is an ability to connect manufacturing detail with enterprise accountability while recognising the limits of my own knowledge. I would judge my usefulness by whether the board can make a clearer decision and revisit it with better evidence, not by how often I demonstrate familiarity with the technical vocabulary.