E10 | Toni Brendish FAICD: From CEO to Chair – Building a Purposeful Board Career

And you've just touched on the fact that at the board level you're influencing as opposed to making the decisions and then implementing and so getting that satisfaction of really seeing that happen as a CEO.

Yes.

Both from a CEO perspective but also from a non-executive director perspective, what's the difference between a board that handles a crisis well and one that makes it worse? Practice.

Absolute practice.

If you don't do simulated crisis management... several times a year on different topics, you're never going to handle a crisis well.

You know, I've unfortunately had many and some that have been global, some that have been, you know, isolated to a particular country, some that have been, you know, emotionally just wrought crises that I've had to deal with.

But in each situation, we had practised and knew who were the key stakeholders, you know, we had phone numbers of the key people, we had everything sort of set up to manage that.

And then I've been in a situation where you join a company and they have never done a crisis management before and you find yourself in that and you're scrambling.

And, you know, one of the big pitfalls in that is you end up making decisions before you have all of the information.

And I think simulated crisis management help you understand You know, when you can make a decision and really testing, have you got enough information to make those decisions? So for me, it is all around simulated crisis management as often as the board can manage.

You now sit on boards, of course, including the ASX-listed companies Cobram Estate Olives and Clover Corporation.

You also sit on the private company Profile Foods and an unlisted business, Fresh Produce Group, where you're the chair.

So what do you look for when deciding whether or not you want to join a board?

So if I'm joining as a non-executive director, the first thing I look at is the chair, is, you know, what sort of experience does the chair have? How am I going to be able to work with the chair? What sort of relationship does the chair have with the rest of the board, the CEO and the management team? I look at those things first of all.

Then I'm looking at the business.

What is the business model? How does it work? Where is the value in this model? And what are the levers that the management team look at within the business in order to kind of drive or improve areas and then I'll make sure that I look at some of the history you know I'll do my due diligence around have there been any specific issues that type of thing and then do I think it's going to be fun because if it's not fun it's it's just work it's just hard work and so yeah I enjoy all of my boards and they all come with sort of different challenges and things but working with the colleagues that you have on the board is the most important thing and making sure that you're going to be able to do that and enjoy the work that you do.

And I guess I'm lucky in that A couple of my boards are high growth, so that's really exciting because you're thinking about how you're funding that, where is it coming from, all of those things.

And then one of my other boards is not into a high growth, but it's about strategic transformation.

So that's a really meaty challenge and an intellectual challenge to get around.

So it's nice to have that mix of boards, I think.