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Webinar: The digital disruption of directorships
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How technology is modernising an ancient art.
For centuries, the role of the director has rested on judgement, stewardship and oversight. In the digital and now AI age, the pace, breadth and variety of technology matters are making new demands of directors, and digital literacy is fast becoming as fundamental to directorship as financial literacy.
In this webinar, you'll learn why digital skills are now a baseline expectation for every director and how the regulatory burden around cyber, data and AI governance is raising the bar on what boards are expected to know and do. We'll explore how digital experts change the dynamic in the boardroom, bringing a different way of thinking that challenges traditional assumptions, and why the pace of change in areas like AI is outrunning the controls many boards still rely on.
You'll also get a front-row look at how technology is arriving in the boardroom itself, from AI-assisted minutes and meeting organisation to the emerging (and controversial) idea of the AI board member. We'll unpack the challenges of finding and recruiting digital expertise into governance roles and why a board without deep digital expertise is sitting on a widening blind spot that affects not just strategy but also extends to the stakeholders who feel the consequences of decisions made without it.
Whether you're a sitting director, an executive reporting to a board, or a digital leader eyeing a governance career, this webinar will leave you with a clearer view of what's changing, what's at stake, and what directorship looks like in the digital age
So, hi everybody, welcome to our webinar today titled The Digital Disruption of Directorship: How Technology is Modernizing an Ancient Art. Now we have two special and new guests for our webinar today, Ben Mikavoy and Sorin Thommer. And we are joined by Helen Van Orten, who most of you should know already. So welcome, team. My name is Sean MacDonald, and I shall be your moderator in the background for the next 40 odd minutes. Firstly, thank you for attending today. We always appreciate the effort you make to be here for our uh live webinar events and join the session. If you have any questions, of course, which we hope you will do, please try and use the QA button on your toolbar as against chat. It just enables us to keep a track of things as we're going through the session. And we'll try and answer as many of those questions as we have time for. And finally, if you stay through till the end, which of course we hope you will do, and even Tony in New York, if he stays awake, we have a really short one-minute survey for you at the end of the webinar, which we would love you to consider. Your feedback really helps us bring relevant content to you week after week, and it enables us to position the uh the great team of experts that we have. Uh so please take a minute to complete the webinar at the end of the survey at the end of the webinar, I should say. So, for those not too familiar with BoardPro, we are a board software provider, sometimes called a board portal, and we serve just over 35,000 users around the world, servicing about 4,000 boards and about 8,500 committees, would you believe? We enable organizations to prepare for and run their board meetings more efficiently and effectively, with less time, and deliver more impact and value for the organization. And as much as we are a board software provider, part of our wider mission here at BoardPro is to make the fundamentals of governance free and easy to implement for all organizations, but especially those organizations with resource constraints. These webinars that we host every week and the many templates, guides, and white papers on our website, on the resources page of our website, funnily enough, are a really great tangible example of how we look to achieve our mission for nonprofits and small businesses, small medium businesses around the world. So for the next 45 odd minutes, just sit back and relax and add to the discussion by asking as many questions as you would like. A full recording of the webinar along with the slide deck and transcript will be sent to you not long after our webinar today. So let me have uh our new team introduce themselves, starting with you first, Ben.
SPEAKER_03Well, thanks, Sean. Uh, my name is Ben McAvoy, um, managing director of digital directors. This is a membership-based social enterprise that is very much interested in the topic of today. Uh, championing digital governance excellence is our tagline. So we're here to support aspiring and established and senior directors bring digital capabilities onto boardrooms and governing bodies.
SPEAKER_02Thanks, Ben. Sorin, to you, sir. My name is Soren Toma. Um, I'm also a board director of the Sydney Isaka chapter. Uh, I do a lot of board advisory work when it comes to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, primarily from a governance and strategic perspective.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Soren. And everyone should know Helen, but uh Helen, would you like to introduce yourself to those that don't?
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Sean. Kira, everyone. I'm Helen Van Outten. I'm an experienced board director and chair, um, and I also run a training consulting business directly. Um, and at directly we empower boards and execs to lead with confidence in the AI era, um, offering training, insights, um, and governance frameworks to help you lead through this new technology in this new era and really turn that technology into strategic advantage.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. Thanks, Helen. Thanks, team. So over to you, Ben.
SPEAKER_03Lovely. So let me know when you can see my screen. Yep. Fantastic. All right. Well, you know us all already. So uh let's jump in and I want to frame things today um uh from the context of the impact of not just digital governance but digital trends around the world on governance. So um for uh for for those of us here in Australia, uh obviously this matter spans across Australia and New Zealand, um, and in fact around the world. But for those of us in Australia, where it kind of starts here. This is Joe Longo, he's the ASIC chair, so that's our corporate regulator here in Australia. Uh, and he's been lighting the signal fires around uh digital governance expectations in boardrooms in Australia for a number of years now. Um, this is his quote uh from an AI CD presentation he gave in 2025. Australia's falling to the back of the pack in the global race to fit innovation. Uh, and he connects that to the capabilities of digital governance in corporate boardrooms. So he's concerned about the lit the links between national prosperity and the lack of boardroom capability in this area. Uh and Joe Longo has a point. Uh, the Harvard study on uh economic resilience, essentially how sophisticated an economy is. Uh, Australia ranks 105th of the 145 countries measured. Um, we are just behind Botswana in 104th. So our economic growth has dropped 80% in our lifetimes and is currently the lowest it has been in 60 years. Now, New Zealand are a little better than us at 68th. Uh but both countries languish well below the mean. So amongst OECD countries, we are the first worst, that's Australia, and third worst, that's New Zealand, on this measure of economic complexity, with Chile between us, right? That's a country where the average income is about $20,000 a year. So if you place your eye on that black dot of New Zealand and you run it to the left, to the mean line, above which all OE other OECD countries live, other than Canada, you can see there. That distance is what I call the lucky quotient. That's where, based on the sophistication of our economies, um, we would sit if it wasn't for the fortunes of geography, history, and natural resources. So trace trace left from New Zealand, you can see where you'd hit uh that line. Um now do the same for Australia. If we weren't blessed by those factors, the lack of technological development in our economy will put our GDP per capita in the bottom third of the world, well below that 100 mark, which is the GDP average. And this is ranked on purchasing power per capita, that's PPP, uh, which is about $38,000. So we'd be about 20% below that, based on the sophistication of our economy, if it wasn't for the blessing of those natural resources and history. So truly, we are the lucky country. So Joe Longo thinks Australia's falling uh behind in innovation, particularly when it comes to digital technologies. And just before he left ASIC in 2026, uh earlier this year, uh he echoed that same sentiment in an address to the Tech Council of Australia. He linked those consequences more directly. He said, if we do not embrace new market technologies now, we will be poorer as a nation for it in the future. And Joe Longo has a point. This is data from the IMD World Digital Competitiveness Rankings. We do okay. 69 major economies ranked, 23rd Australia, we're ahead of New Zealand this time, which is nice. Uh, at 28th of 69. Um But that is a measure which takes in things like credit rating, talent, education, regulatory frameworks, and modern technology adoption amongst the society. But once we begin to look at measures which are relevant to organizations and boards, we get a very different picture. We drop from the top third to the bottom third when it comes to capital deployment for future technology, uh technological investment. This is a major function of the board. And in business agility, uh, this is essentially innovation. Uh, we drop even further, both Australia and New Zealand slide even further in those rankings. Um, and to give you a sense of how we measure up against those other economies, Australia in 53rd and New Zealand in 46th, just above us is Nigeria ahead of Australia, and Botswana again, just ahead of New Zealand. There is one category in this study which is most relevant to directors, uh, and it speaks specifically to the function of boards. So the first is opportunities and threats. So this is strategy and risk governance. Sliding again, this is Australia's measure 57th. And then adaptability and flexibility is measuring innovation. We're we're fifth last in the world at corporate innovation, business agility. Um, it's as it's New Zealand's lowest ranking in this in this study at at 47th. That's the that's their lowest ranking of every measure on that study at 47th. So Joe Longo thinks that a big part of that problem is board composition. He's repeated over and over. We need more science in the in the boardroom. We need, in particular, more technology backrooms, uh, backgrounds in our boardrooms. Uh and Joe Longo has a point. Just 7.7% of directors uh in publicly listed companies in Australia have a technology background. Um, when you survey directors, not even one in six claim to have any level of digital competence above basic familiarity or literacy. Um now the good news is 7.7% feels low, but it's rising. It's up from 7.1%. The bad news is it took four years to rise that much. At that pace, and if you think the average number of um board members in a board is about seven, at that pace we will have one digitally competent director in every boardroom in ASX publicly listed companies by 2055 at that pace. The New Zealand figures are similar. Recent IOD report shows that when measuring experience amongst Crown and NSX 53 corporations, remember, these are the most well-governed organizations in New Zealand. Technology is ranked as the third last skill above only farming and HR. And when it comes to formal qualifications, technology is dead last of qualifications held by directors. So, what would the benefits be of having more digital skills on boards? Well, uh in the US, by comparison, the MIT study uh in 2019 uh measured digitally savvy boards, what they call digitally savvy, which means having at least three directors with digital expertise. They, those boards outperformed their peers by between 17 and 38% on these key metrics you see on this screen here. Um, and when this was released in 2019, just 24% of public US boards met this criteria. 24% met it in 2019. Last year, that was 72%, with three or more digitally expert directors. And this standard is now so widely adopted that it has basically become redundant. Almost every public um board now meets this measure in the US. Um, and so the reporting now has turned, MIT have turned it from digitally savvy boards now to AI savvy boards, uh, where they demonstrate that AI savvy boards um have another 20% competitive advantage over um their peer organizations. Uh let's compare that to the ASX. These are again our most well-governed organizations in in Australia. Only 30% of them even list digital skills as a competency in their skills matrix. And when they do measure it, 49% of the time, it's the least well-represented skill, almost half the time. And if you go to the second least represented skill, that number jumps from 49% to 73%. So digital skills, if it's even on the matrix, is is very frequently the last or the second last in terms of representation on the boards. And here's the kicker the ASX Tech Index, the ATEC, it's 53 of Australia's most leading technology-related companies. Just six of them would meet an MIT digitally savvy criteria of having three directors with um digital expertise. So let's talk about the impact of digital competence in boardrooms, the changes in the digital age that brings to our um expectations of governance. We can talk about the need for digital expertise on boards. What are the challenges of bringing that expertise into boardrooms, whether it's people with digital backgrounds or whether it's bringing those skills to existing directors? Uh let's talk about the changing regulator expectations. ASIC and APRA have both been clear about those expectations on directors now increasing in terms of digital competence. Uh, we can talk about how digital directors bring to the board new ways of thinking. Um, people with technology backgrounds think differently, they address problems differently, and that diversity of thought is valuable in the boardroom. Uh, how the pace of change is challenging traditional governance controls when AI is iterating so rapidly. Um, the ASD just released uh a um a message recently that said that if you have set your risk profile for cybersecurity more than six months ago, AI have has already changed that. And you can't wait another year or two years to go back and reassess your risk framework. It was invalidated a couple of weeks ago. Um technology in the boardroom, the use of AI for um dealing with minutes, dealing with board papers, what is the use? And sometimes we even hear about uh virtual board members, right, in the in the boardroom. So technology is making its way physically into the boardroom. Uh and then we'll finish with quite the few childs. All right, so let me let me get started uh and bring Helen and Sorin in. Um so let's talk first of all about the pace of change. So I think AI is really challenging digital controls. And and if you have questions on this, by the way, on any of those topics, please put them in the chat and we'll make sure that we get to to answering those and we'll put them to Sorin and Helen as well. But Sorin, maybe you can lead us off. Pace of change, uh, AI is challenging digital controls. Um, give us your thoughts on that.
SPEAKER_02So, look, uh, AI is having a major impact because it's starting to get into areas that have been the same at board level for many decades. For example, audit. So audits have always taken place the same way. Yes, technology has come in 20, 25 years ago, and that's improved things a little bit. Well, AI coming now has a major, major impact. Um, and in some cases, we have a lot of interesting combinations that we haven't thought about. So many companies like the Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, they're already using AI in many areas within their companies. And so if you're using AI for audit, you have AI auditing AI, and that has certain implications that are not understood. Um, for example, the challenge is trust, because we know that AI can hallucinate sometimes. So the question becomes in an audit environment where accuracy is absolutely critical, um, what happens when AI gets it wrong? Uh so you can see that the change coming through is massive. Another implication there would be we no longer need to do just sampling when we do audit. We could actually audit everything, but that turns AI into big brother. Do you want every transaction actually being audited? And what happens if you have many false positives and it generates a lot of work that shouldn't be there? So um technology and and nowadays it's mostly about AI, uh, is going to have a major impact, is going to change things, and it can change things for the better. But before it does, there is a bit of a work to be done.
SPEAKER_00What do you think, Ellen? I was just going to build on that. Sorry, and I love that you chose the audit as an example because I was actually at the IOD governing AI forum a couple of months ago. And in that, KPMG actually walked us through how they're using AI in audit. Um, and it's to exactly your point. It moves from instead of just doing a whole load of samples on a data set and just picking up those anomalies, it's now moving from that instead of being 45 transactions and extrapolating the information, it's now becoming exception-based. So it's testing everything and going for the outliers. Um, and that's a really big change. And I think a lot of audit committees haven't caught up with it. Uh, I think a lot of us in the room at the time were hoping, in fact, they asked us to do a show of hands. Um, and we all thought that the audit costs were going to come down. Sadly, that wasn't the case. Uh, it just means that the time from the auditors is going to be used differently. Um, but to your wider question, Ben, around that pace of change, um, I think, you know, auditing is one element of one profession. Um, but in the AICD survey that they did earlier this year, more than half of the directors surveyed were saying about the pace of change is already faster than their organization can handle. And again, if we step back to a board-level thinking around that, it's there's a challenge on our board cycles around keeping up with that. You know, depending on your board, you might have six, eight, twelve meetings a year, but the papers are often written a couple of weeks out, decisions coming in a month after that. Um, and by the time you've approved something, it's probably completely out of date. We literally had a, I was at a meeting this morning with one of my boards, and we were talking about cyber, and literally all of the stuff that's happened in the last few weeks had happened since the papers were submitted to directors because they've got to be there a week before the board. And so just that whole cycle is really, really challenging to keep up. Um, so you know, we need to think as boards, what does that mean for our reporting? Uh, not just risk, you know, adoption, spend, what's working, what's been switched on in our organization, what have management, you know, made decisions um around, and particularly in that AI space, as a board, are we making sure that we're seeing that at every board meeting rather than just a sort of a backward-looking report a couple of times a year? Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, I think that's really good insight. Um, Helen, the the and we talked about the disruption to an ancient art here, and it may just be that the pace of change in the digital age just means that some of these established cycles, the six-month, quarterly, annual, through biannual cycles, need review when it comes to specifically dealing with digital matters. And let's face it, digital matters have a very broad-ranging impact throughout the um the organization, modern organizations, right? Um, technologies in in everything. Um, there's a great question here uh about um the why digital is lacking in boardrooms. Do you think it's related to education of those board members who may not have had digital teaching during their education? So maybe we can talk about that. Questions on the need for digital skills, um, you know, boards signing off on things that they don't understand. Um, Helen, give us your thoughts on those skills in the boardroom, you know, and and that directors grappling with that kind of new education they need to bring to themselves, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's funny when I read that earlier, I was thinking, gosh, back in the day I did part of my degree in computing. So I don't know if that uh qualifies me as a digital director, because I don't know that learning Pascal coding uh probably qualified me for anything at this stage in my career. But um there we go. Um I think there's definitely part of it, but I mean, all of us have different career trajectories. And I um, having started my career in computing, went off and did a whole load of other things and didn't come back into the tech element literally until I was on an exec team. Um so I think part of it, I mean what I always talk to directors about is actually curiosity. So curiosity. I think it is the most important attribute to have as a director, and particularly in this AI world, being curious and the fact that you've turned up today means that you are curious, which is great. I'll probably jump on to a little bit about what we were talking about, we were going to talk about a little later in the session, if you're okay, Ben. But that whole AI knowledge piece is around the amount of boards who want to bring on that AI knowledge. And you had a load of stats from New Zealand, Australia, the US. Deloitte did a big study last year, which I'm waiting for the updated version to come out. But at that point, they were saying 40% of boards were looking to bring on a director specifically with AI knowledge. And to your point, Ben, the challenge is there's literally not enough people in the market who've got that deep capability and the broader governance experience that you need for the board seat, which is where digital directors comes in. But um and Hydric and Struggles in the US again did some surveying on in March this year, and the new director appointments at that point, only 6% of them have got that technology. Um so sure that's the US, but that pool is really small. So as a board, I think if you're waiting for that unicorn candidate to come along, you might be waiting a really, really long time. But there is a really important piece for us as directors to think about what are the skills we bring to the table. Um I don't want to talk for too long because I want to make sure Sorin's got a chance to jump in as well. But um the T-shape director that we always talk about. So you've got your deep vertical knowledge, which might be marketing or accounting or finance or law or whatever is, or probably two or three of those for most directors, but then that T across the top of it, and this will be answering your question, um, Suzanne, as well, which is making sure that you've got enough knowledge across the top. Like I'm not an accountant, but I can still ask good questions about the financials in the board meeting because I've made sure that I've upskilled myself to uh get that coverage. But to your question, how do you uplift the board capability? And you're a big NZX board or an ASX board, then sure you're going to be bringing in your Deloits and your PWCs, etc., and they'll be helping support that training. Um, but there's a lot of people and companies like myself and and Sorin who actually go in and help boards with their AI training and capability, which is actually elevating the board's overall internal baseline so everyone on that board table can ask the right questions and have the right knowledge across. And Deloitte did some research on that earlier this year, and most boards are building that capability through briefings, director education rather than just through direct recruitment. Um, another thing you can do, which is we've done on one of our boards, is on our technology committee, we've brought in an external technologist. So they don't sit on the main board, but they bring that deep expertise into the technology committee. Sorry, I've talked enough. Sorry.
SPEAKER_02That's all good. The minute that you mention the word cybersecurity, say, for example, in a board context, most directors think, oh, technical. That's it. I'm past that. That's beyond it's below me. It's it's somewhere over there. And one of the things that I have to do when I talk to b boards is immediately break that link because our brains have been wired to think, oh, cybersecurity is all about technology, it's all technical. No, it isn't. At the board level, it is all about risk, it's all about exposure, it's all about resilience. So if something happens, how quickly can your organization get over it and continue to trade and uh prosper? And it's also about enterprise value. So I'll give you an example. There was a proposal that was presented to a board to bring in a new security incident event management system, and it was going to cost $50 million. So I asked a simple question what is the exposure that you're trying to mitigate? And people thought I was asking for a big risks matrix, and suddenly I got this spreadsheet with about 50,000 line items. I'm like, no, no. What is the amount? What's the worst case scenario for the risk that you're trying to mitigate? And it turned out that it was only 10 million. So I'm going to spend $50 million to mitigate a $10 million risk, assuming that the numbers are correct and the basis for it is is all okay. And so it doesn't make sense because people are not actually thinking about cybersecurity in terms of enterprise value. And the board was going to wave through the $50 million proposal because they didn't understand it. They didn't understand the exposure. So the key thing for me when it comes to the board is do you understand your risk appetite? What are you prepared to live with? How secure do we need to be in relation to our exposure? What is our exposure? Uh, boards are not there to select tools or to endorse tools or or to get through the vendor hype and the technical jargon. Boards are purely simply there to make sure that the expenditure actually achieves the purpose that it has, that the resilience is and the exposure are mitigated and that things progress. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, there's a really good insight around under if you understand the technology underneath the question, the governance question, then you can ask better, uh, you can challenge that proposal in a different way. And I think that's kind of the the underpinning to this. The question is sort of uh why are these digital skills lacking in boardrooms? Is it education? And I think it is in some cases. Many people in their um careers will have interacted with IT as the help desk that helps me make sure that my email is working, my laptop's switched on, and it's an administrative function. And so their depth of understanding of that function um isn't uh at the same level as, say, their commercial awareness or um financial control or so on, because they just haven't spent as much time in that world. And um, you know, self-education is important. Uh, I guess I would say that there is a step below the surface level just understanding what cybersecurity means. There is a fundamental requirement, I think, that is emerging now for directors that if you don't understand the fundamentals of how technology operates at a really quite a base level, then there's some self-education that you should be going to do there. In the same way that I, as a technologist, um went and made sure I was informed sufficiently on financial fundamentals, you know, managing PLs, you know, that's that's that's not a watch a webinar for an hour uh exercise. There's some effort there to educate yourself sufficiently to be able to actually ask those questions. And if you don't have that level of digital competence, if you're if you're still in that kind of familiarity, I've heard of it kind of land, I think it's time to start moving yourself in that direction. And and the and the regulators seem to agree. So I would say, Margaret, yes, I think it's education along the way. Um, you know, even um the AICD, there are two forums that they run every year. They run a governance forum and then they separate out the digital forum and they run it as a separate exercise somewhere else, right? So those two worlds um just naturally don't come together in our experience, right? So you do have to go out of your way to go and get that digital competence. You know, last year, governance forums in Sydney, you have to get on a plane and fly to Brisbane to get the technology governance experience, which I think uh and exposure, which I think you do need to do. So there is a you need to go and get it at the moment. I'm hoping that in the future those things will just be integrated. We'll think of technology governance as part of just a natural part of governance. Um and and I guess technologists need to go the other way. If you're a technologist moving into a boardroom setting, you need to learn the foundations, that T-shape you're talking about, Helen, but also how to speak to boards and um how to store it.
SPEAKER_02You're absolutely right. Ben look, I'm I'm making the transition. I I've been a director of startups, and making the transition from startups to mainstream boards. Um, I was really surprised. Um, there is this element of fear of technology and cybersecurity. You mentioned cybersecurity, and suddenly everyone goes, Oh, I don't know anything about that. Oh no, that's that's highly risky. So you've got to be really careful, and you're absolutely right. You have to learn the language and the specific um details, the way that specific boards like to work and they like to communicate. And you've got to fit into that. And the second thing I have to do once I break the cybersecurity technology link is to break this fear. Um, there is nothing to be afraid of if you actually understand risk, and a lot of the board members are lawyers, and so therefore they have a commercial and risk background, then cybersecurity, there is no magic behind it. You can actually talk about it from a risk and resilience perspective. And once people understand that, um, they actually open up and they go, Oh, I know this, I can do this. Um, and um, you're right, training needs to be there. All of us, whether we have a technology background or not, you need continuous refresher training. Um, and AACD is very good at providing that. Um, but enabling boards to understand those two key things literally improves the performance in the communication and the function of the board. Yeah. So let's talk about also going to be.
SPEAKER_01We have a number of uh questions that have come in, Ben. Do you want to tackle those? We've got a few minutes left.
SPEAKER_03Yep, let me jump onto some of those. So there was a great question here on uh an AI board member. So let's talk about board composition. Is the answer a digital director with deep technology, or is it a digital champion or a different way of working? Helen, you touched on some of those. So the question here was: are you aware of any board that has an AI board member as an observer or advisor? Telstra is the one that I refer to. So they they have what they call uh an AI advisor in the room. So they um created an AI and pointed it at a whole bunch of governance information, and now they have live access to that facility inside. Um the AI CD published a um a piece on this just recently. So that's an example where the technology is literally altering how governance is done live in the boardroom with access to you know controlled data in a controlled way with guardrails around it. Um I've heard anecdotally people also using AI in boardrooms as uh, well, we can't get access to that expert, so let's have the AI play the role of are we we're thinking about an MA. What would the target of our MA process? How would they respond if we asked them these questions? Because sometimes you can't have them in the room, right? So there are these use cases that are coming in, but you know, maybe uh Helen, you talked about T-shape directors, um, digital champions. Maybe just unpack that one one more level. You you mentioned that you have somebody that you bring in that's not necessarily on the board as an advisor. What are the options available that you see that work?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think that is one of the really powerful ways to bring someone through into your technology um committee. Funnily enough, when I read that question, I actually thought they were talking about a large language model in the boardroom. Uh, and I was going to uh refer to um IHC up in the United Arab Emirates, who in 2024, I think it was, brought on Aidan as their board member and exactly what you were talking about, that that LLM has knowledge and access to everything in the organization. Very important to note they do not have voting rights. Um, another question I just wanted to uh pick up on. So Angela asked a great question Is there a future where AI replaces the CEO as a reporter to the board? Funnily enough, Sam Altman, who is the chief executive of OpenAI, came out in the last week saying uh very soon AI is going to be able to run a company uh better than even I can. And I wasn't sure if that was a good comparison or not. But um anyway, uh so and there is a there's a whole load, you could listen to a whole load of podcasts at the moment about is AI going to actually take over the CEO? If you look at these new uh, you know, the unicorn companies, which are literally making millions and millions of dollars with two or three employees, they're doing that using AI. So is there a future with that? Possibly, I think it's a long way off. Um, one of the things that I always talk about when I'm talking about AI is as an organization, think about the time that you are freeing up. What are you going to use it for? And that is where being superhuman and all of those really important human elements are so important around the table. And as directors, it's that convergence of thinking that is our superpower rather than we can do it faster with AI. So yeah, I'm not sure about that. Um, there's a few other questions there. Maybe, um, Ben, did you want to pick up one of the others or Sorin?
SPEAKER_03I think Sorin had a um it was he had maybe an anecdote to share about his personal experience about transitioning from executive into board roles and that, you know, board composition question. Um, Sorin, did you want to chip in?
SPEAKER_02Yep, certainly. Um, so look, there is a bit of a dilemma um that I came across when I started making this transition. Um, because advisors to the board can be ignored. So they can provide the advice, and the board can go in a different direction. And that is a good thing in a lot of instances. Uh, some boards, however, prefer to have someone who actually has a stake in the board and one of their own directors who actually understands the technology, they're more likely to listen to that person than they are to an advisor or an external advisor. And uh so there isn't really, I think, um one way or another. I think it's up to boards to decide which way they want to go. Some boards might, especially um bigger boards, may be able to bring on a director with specific expertise, other smaller boards where they run smaller organizations or small to medium business, they may not be able to afford to have a digital director. So bringing in an advisor is better than not having access to that expertise. But that fear of technology and cybersecurity has to be overcome. And the only way to overcome that is to get rid of the jargon. So, one of the things I'd point to, um, you know how there have been uh announcements from Anthropic and Mythos that it's broken out and it's hacking companies all over the internet and doing all sorts of nasty things. Well, there is an element of misinformation that's attached to that because Mythos did what it was asked to do. It's just that the test bed and the boundary conditions of that test were not very well set up. So it was super efficient of hacking. Um, that's not so new. I mean, governments have been using that kind of capability for many years. It's just now that it's breaking into private industry and out in the open on the internet. So it's a question of governance rather than the actual AI um uh algorithm itself doing things that it wasn't supposed to do. And and so that question as to what expertise and how do we source the expertise, as long as the board has access to it, and and I take your point, Ben, you're right. We do need to actually move up on those indexes if we want to attract in attract investment in Australia and attract business, we need to get closer to the US ideal where we have digital expertise on boards.
SPEAKER_00I mean, and can I just add one other thing, Ben? Uh, which is um adding on to what you said, Soran, but also asking Nicola's question around if you've only got the one savvy board member in this space. Um if even if you've got the expert on the board, it's so important they're not there to do technology any more than the accountant is there to do the accounting. All of the board, going back to that t-shirt, all of the board need to be asking questions, need to be thinking. Um, and if the rest of your board table goes quiet because they think that that expert's got it covered, you are not fulfilling your duties as a director. So that would just be the one flag I would say to be really cautious of. Don't delegate that responsibility.
SPEAKER_03One of the things that we at digital directors um do is we support those digitally expert directors in boardrooms to have an impact to champion those matters inside the boardroom and have those conversations with people who perhaps aren't as far down that maturity um pathway and say, Hey, let me explain what this is about, or let me have an offline conversation with you, or let me offer you some time to help to brief those other directors or to bring their knowledge up over time, right? If you're a champion in the room and you're offering that expertise and you're able to actually lift and bring that across the whole board, not just, as you say, taking on the delegation yourself, that's a more effective approach, I think, um uh overall and over time. Um so look, Sean, I I know we're running short uh on time. Uh Helen, I think you had one last piece you wanted to mention when we talk about what the future holds. I know that um uh board pro has some sessions coming up, uh which addresses exactly this subject, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, so this is um just coming up. We have got uh BoardPro are running a governing with impact roadshow across Australia and New Zealand, which is running late October, November. I'm sure Sean will be briefly mentioning it, but I'll do the job for him. Um and that is all about how directors move from AI anxiety to AI advantage. Um and at that um road show, I'll be one of the speakers in New Zealand and Alexei uh will be uh speaking, who's my often my co-host on these things, will be speaking on the same topic in Australia. Um and this whole uh this whole road show is around governing with impact. And so it will be really, really powerful for those of you who do want to know. And I am I right in saying early bird tickets are still on sale, Sean?
SPEAKER_01Or are you proposing until the 30th of September?
SPEAKER_00Okay, beautiful. Uh and so we'll be talking about uh how boards should be governing AI in a way that creates value rather than just thinking about how we manage the risk. But I know you've got amazing speakers on a whole range of different topics on AI in particular. Sean, back to you.
SPEAKER_03And I would I would add to that, sorry, Helen, I would add to that that um there's a couple of questions here about insights around the not-for-profit space and how we get digital governance um moving and and digitally savvy boards. Digital directors, we're a we're a social enterprise, um, we're membership-based, and we can support boards and directors who are pursuing um digital upskilling and also um digital governance reviews for your boards. So um we we can offer those services um to those who reach out to us. Uh so Sean, I guess um, we talked about digital governance obligations increasing. We've talked about the need for these skills in the boardroom uh and um you know digital risks that are emerging as well and the pace of change. Uh I think there's a lot to do in boardrooms, but I'll hand back to you to close out.
SPEAKER_01Thanks, Ben. So thanks again, team. Uh, please feel free to connect with our presenters, everybody on LinkedIn. I'm sure they'll look forward to your connection. And as Helen mentioned, we've got some exciting uh things coming your way at the roadshow, October and November for Kiwis and Aussies, that is. Um, you can find out all about it on our website homepage. You'll see it uh listed there. So we'd love to see you there and finally put a face to the name, as it were. As Helen said, early bird tickets are available. Uh you get 35% off the ticket price if you book now between now and the 30th of September. So if you're looking for past webinars, of which there are many, hundreds, uh, to hone your knowledge, then you'll find a library of webinars in our community portal. It's free to join. Um, so we invite you to be part of that growing community there. You'll find uh all of the slide decks from the webinars, the transcripts, and all of the other uh resources as well. Uh you'll receive an email from me tomorrow now, which will include a recording of today's webinar, the transcript and the presentation slides. They'll also be hosted on the community portal, as I just said. And of course, if you're considering board management software for your organization, we would love to hear from you. Better still, why not try our free 30-day free trial? It's really simple and straightforward, doesn't require any credit cards to get started. So thank you again for your attendance, everybody. I hope you enjoyed the session today as I did. Thank you, Ben, Sorin, and Helen. Uh, look forward to seeing you all at our next webinar. Everybody, have a great day.