Five years ago, I sat across a board chair in the agriculture value addition space. The CEO had been sacked after a procurement scandal involving ghost suppliers and inflated invoices. But here’s the twist: six months earlier, the board had praised this same CEO for “excellent turnaround results.” Why? The numbers looked good. Profits were up. No one asked what fuelled the miracle. That, right there, is the silent rot that boards allow to fester. The point is simple: the tone of ethics is set by the board, not the CEO. When the board fails to ask the uncomfortable questions, when it chases results at all costs, accountability dies quietly in the corner. Ethical collapse is rarely loud; it starts with silence, and boards are often the first to fall silent. It starts with a conflict of interest at the board level. This makes some board members “captive” to the CEO, who serves as the keeper of their conflict-of-interest secrets. Before you know it, many board members are exposed to the executive team. A board that doesn’t smell the smoke will never call the fire brigade In manufacturing firms I’ve advised, especially family-owned ones transitioning to formal governance, ethical leadership begins and ends with the board’s posture, or simply the owner’s posture. Not policies. Not speeches. Posture. Does the board tolerate late submission of reports? Does it let the CEO skip over red flags with charm and charisma? Does it rubber-stamp numbers without demanding evidence? Does it tolerate absenteeism without question? Every time a board lets these micro-indulgences slide, it normalizes ethical shortcuts. By the time fraud explodes, it’s not a breach, it’s a pattern.   Accountability starts with structure, not speeches To anchor accountability, boards must redesign how they operate. a) Establish independent audit and ethics committees with real teeth. Not ceremonial. Please give them the power to question everything. b) Conduct executive sessions without management present, every single board meeting. That’s where truth leaks out. c) Use a board dashboard to track ethical KPIs, not just financial ones. Is whistleblower activity trending down? That’s not always a good sign. In the insurance industry, I have seen boards create anonymous channels for internal dissent. At first, it caused discomfort. Later, it unearthed a data manipulation scheme that could have cost the company its license. The board’s decision to act fast, not debate endlessly, saved the brand. Leadership tool, the ethical mirror Here’s a practical takeaway. At the end of every board meeting, ask one question: “What behaviour did we implicitly reward today?” If the answer is silence, spin, or evasion, then that’s your new culture. Boards don’t shape ethics with mission statements. They do it by what they let slide. If you’re on a board, your job is not to support the CEO. It’s to support the truth. Everything else, strategy, growth, profitability, stands on that foundation. Or it doesn’t stand at all. Stay sharp. Mr Strategy

I visited Karamoja in 2017 as part of the World Health Organization (WHO), anti-fraud risk management experts. In the evening, we had dinner with old men, one of them told us of a hunter who clutched his father’s map, drawn with charcoal on bark cloth. Every morning, he set out with pride, tracing the same route. But the rivers had moved. The forest had burned. The buffalo no longer grazed there. He returned empty-handed every day. Until he died, not of hunger, but of refusing to see the change, and adapt. That’s the story of many modern professionals. Especially risk managers. Many still carry expired maps. Here’s the hard truth: terrain has shifted, but your mind hasn’t. Many ERM frameworks were made for a world where threats moved slowly, boards met quarterly, and risk meant paperwork. Today, cyber threats penetrate systems in seconds. Social media can destroy a reputation overnight. A junior staffer with admin access is more dangerous than a thousand external hackers. In our Summit Consulting iShield 360 Project Frontline, where we compile common cybersecurity breaches and attack surface mapping, we find internal threats are one of the biggest risks. Still using static registers? Still reporting risk by likelihood and impact without real-time context? Still waiting for the audit cycle? That map has expired. I met a risk leader last month. Brilliant, articulate, been in the game for 15 years. He showed me his updated risk matrix. I asked him for a better decision. When did this make the company innovative?” He paused. Then admitted: “It’s never used. We just updated it for the committee.” He’s navigating a digital storm with a colonial-era compass. Risk managers, your job is not to maintain old controls. Your job is to detect new dangers before they surface. It’s not about being reactive. It’s about being strategic. You must become the intelligence officer of the business, not the compliance custodian.That means: a) Ditching the checklists and learning to scan the horizon. b) Using dashboards, not documents. c) Speaking in business impact, not just probability. d) Leading change, not lagging behind it. The world has changed. Have your thinking? Ask yourself: Are you the hunter clinging to bark cloth in a city of satellites? Or are you drawing a new map? This is your chance for reinvention. Tear the old one. Use data. Use instinct. Walk the terrain. Talk to real people. Challenge the models. Then build risk tools that your CEO uses. A risk manager who still uses expired maps is not just lost—they’re dangerous. The most valuable people in any company are not the ones who follow the rules. They’re the ones who rewrite the map when the road disappears. Be that person, or be replaced by them. What expired map are you still following? I remain, Mr Strategy.

Oil of Olay was a tired lotion brand of no edge, no sizzle. Just memories. Yet Lafley didn’t see a product. He saw a strategic choice. Martin helped him frame it using five killer questions: What is our winning aspiration? Not survival. Domination. They aimed for $1 billion in sales and leadership in the North American skincare market. Where will we play? They drew a new battlefield between luxury creams (like Estée Lauder) and basic drugstore brands (like Nivea). The space between prestige and price. A new masstige category. How will we win? By being better, not cheaper. Formulate actual anti-aging breakthroughs, use science, not fluff. Give women a reason to believe and a product that delivers. What capabilities must be in place? Innovation labs. World-class packaging. Celebrity endorsements. Global distribution. Business model flexibility. Not just marketing. Muscle. What management systems are needed? Tight performance tracking. Talent is obsessed with beauty science. Real-time customer feedback loops. To succeed in your assurance or governance career, you need to master strategic thinking. You can transform your audit department or firm to win. Take time and read this strategic model.