Practical Governance
Mastering Board Papers
Discover expert insights from Alison Watkins AM on writing board papers that drive effective decision-making.
Balancing Board and Exec Roles
Discover how experienced leader Christy Boyce navigates the challenges & benefits of holding both executive & non-executive director roles simultaneously.
Richard Conway
Dec 15, 2024
In the latest episode of Minutes by boardcycle, I had the pleasure of interviewing Christy Boyce, an accomplished leader who has combined executive and non-executive director roles throughout her distinguished career. With experience spanning line management, management consulting, and serving on the boards of companies like JB Hi-fi, BAI Communications, and EMM Consulting, Christy offers unique insights into navigating these dual responsibilities successfully.
The Benefits of a Portfolio Approach
Christy notes that taking on both executive and board positions was often a deliberate choice, recognising that building a board career takes time. "Particularly at the early stages of your career, it does make sense to have some sort of portfolio," she explained. This approach allows individuals to gain diverse perspectives and apply their expertise across different organisations.
Managing the Challenges
Of course, holding multiple roles comes with its fair share of challenges, particularly around time management and maintaining focus. Christy emphasises the importance of carving out "thinking time" - the ability to step back and consider the big picture, rather than simply churning through tasks and meetings. "I do think my best thinking is when I go for a walk," she explains. Christy admits that work-life balance isn't always perfect on a day-to-day or even week-to-week basis, but aims to achieve a better balance over the course of a year.
Navigating Context Switching
One of the key hurdles Christy faces is the need to quickly shift gears between her different responsibilities. As a management consultant, she may be working with multiple clients simultaneously, each requiring a distinct mindset. Similarly, transitioning from an executive role to a board position involves a change in approach, from delivering solutions to providing constructive challenge. Christy finds that allowing for breaks and taking time for reflection helps her navigate these context switches more effectively. "You can't just run from one thing to another," she notes. "It just doesn't work."
Considerations for Aspiring Board Members
For those looking to launch their non-executive career while still in an executive role, Christy offers valuable guidance. She emphasises the importance of understanding the relationship between the management team and the board, as well as being deeply engaged with and supportive of the organisation's purpose. Christy also cautions about the potential conflicts that could arise if a serious issue occurs at the executive's company, and how that could impact their ability to fulfil board commitments.
Christy's experience demonstrates that it is possible to successfully combining executive and board roles - but doing that requires careful planning, self-awareness, and a commitment to maintaining a broader perspective. I hope that her story provides a valuable roadmap for those seeking to build a diverse, impactful career at the intersection of management and governance.
[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Minutes by boardcycle, where in each episode we pack the insights from one of Australia's boardroom leaders into just a few minutes. In today's podcast, Richard Conway interviews Christy Boyce. Director of JB Hi-Fi, former director of CSR, and former senior partner at Port Jackson Partners on how to successfully combine executive and board careers.
[00:00:28] Richard Conway: Welcome to the Minutes podcast. I'm your host, Richard Conway, and today my guest on the podcast is Christy Boyce. Christy is the director of JB Hi Fi, BAI Communications and EMM Consulting. Prior to that, Christy held non-executive director positions in a range of organisations, including CSR until it was recently taken over, Monash IVF and Greencross Vets, alongside her management consulting practice as a senior partner at Port Jackson Partners, and prior to that at McKinsey.
[00:00:58] Richard Conway: Christy, welcome to the [00:01:00] podcast.
[00:01:00] Christy Boyce: Thanks Richard. Delighted to be here today.
[00:01:02] Richard Conway: Christy, more so than some other directors, you've combined your executive and board careers. And so I just wanted to ask if you could talk us through that career so far and your approach to holding both executive and board positions at the same time.
[00:01:19] Christy Boyce: Thanks Richard. I mean, over my entire career, I've probably sat on all the different sides of the table. So I've been a line executive briefly, but I have played that role. I've been a Management Consultant, and I've been a Director. And I think it's really helped me to have those different perspectives when I come to the table.
[00:01:39] Christy Boyce: So you know, there are challenges and you've got to remember which hat you've got on, because you behave quite differently depending on which role you're playing. But I do think I sort of understanding what people in those different positions are looking for. And what it might feel like for them does help enhance [00:02:00] how you play each of those roles.
[00:02:02] Richard Conway: And was there a choice to hold those different roles sort of in combination with each other, a deliberate choice on your part? Did you want to be kind of sitting on different sides of the table at the same time or was it a chance? Did it just work out that way?
[00:02:17] Christy Boyce: Probably a bit of both, but I do think, you know, when I was starting my board career, it takes a long time to build a board career. That's the reality.
[00:02:25] Christy Boyce: And particularly if you're thoughtful about which roles you take and you want to be with the board career. So you don't want to be rushing it. So that's the first thing I'd say. So I think it does make sense to have some sort of portfolio, particularly at the early stages of your career.
[00:02:40] Christy Boyce: And I think it does benefit you as I've talked about before. It's a challenge from a time management point of view at times, and I think you can't go into it thinking that you're going to be sort of perfectly managing work-life balance every day or even every week.
[00:02:58] Christy Boyce: So if you're going to do that, there are [00:03:00] times when your executive career or your consulting career is going to be demanding and that's just the way it works. And there will be times when your board career will be particularly demanding when there's something going on that requires a lot of attention, and you've got to make the time to do that.
[00:03:16] Christy Boyce: I always say that I manage my work-life balance quite well over a year. I do not necessarily manage it well day-by-day or even week-by-week. And there have been weeks, you know, where you end up working 15 hours a day, you know, six or seven days a week. And that's just because certain things have happened and you need to be there and you need to do the job well. But, over time, at least in my experience, it all balances out.
[00:03:40] Richard Conway: And outside of the challenge around managing time, Christy, what other challenges do you think exist from holding those different roles in combination with each other? And on the flip side, what did you see as the big advantages of holding them together?
[00:03:56] Christy Boyce: So I think the challenge is when they're all demanding, making sure you [00:04:00] still have thinking time. Because to do any of those roles well, you need thinking time. We all know that you just can't sort of run from meeting to meeting. You don't want to just be reading the papers and getting through them. You actually need to have that sort of soaked time to reflect.
[00:04:14] Christy Boyce: And I think that's where you bring the value in any of those roles is actually making sure you are taking the big picture, you're reflecting, you're thinking about what matters and you're not just working your way through the papers or churning out the documents or going to the meetings or whatever it happens to be.
[00:04:32] Christy Boyce: So, I think that's the challenge. Remembering which role you're playing. So, you know, I think the role of a board member is what I would call constructive challenge. To me, management delivers strategy, risk management, et cetera.
[00:04:49] Christy Boyce: And the board's role is the oversight role, but also the constructive challenge role. And to look at it and say, have you thought about this? What about that? How could that go wrong? Those sort of [00:05:00] big questions that sometimes we're in the middle of things, are a little bit harder to see.
[00:05:04] Christy Boyce: And to some extent, as I've sort of evolved in my consulting career, that's more of what I do. I'll be coming. I tend to be sort of, you know, very focused on a specific issue. But it is taking that big picture approach and working with teams, et cetera, to have thought about those things.
[00:05:21] Christy Boyce: So it's that switching gears between the different roles because there's a management consultant, you're pulling together material, you're pushing yourself for an answer. You own sort of the delivery of the answer and the solution working with clients in quite a different way than you do as a board member where it's more about helping it to be better. So they're quite different.
[00:05:42] Richard Conway: And I wanted to ask you, Christy, about context switching.
[00:05:45] Richard Conway: Like there's a lot of material out there about the cost of context switching, in terms of our ability to think clearly and that, that kind of thing. When you are holding these different roles in parallel, and I guess, you have an additional [00:06:00] challenge in your role as a management consultant that you might have multiple clients.
[00:06:04] Richard Conway: So context switching between clients there, did you have any tricks or practices that you use to help you get in the right frame of mind for the job that was at hand today or this part of the day?
[00:06:17] Christy Boyce: Gosh, I'd love it if I had a really good trick for that. The only thing I think I've really come up with is allowing a bit of space. So I do think, you can't just run from one thing to another. It just, it doesn't work. You've got to have a little bit of space between the different roles.
[00:06:33] Christy Boyce: And I do think, you know, taking breaks just generally from my point of view, is important. A lot of my best thing is when I go for a walk, and there is something about doing those things and sort of stepping back and having that more landscape view of whatever's going on that is really helpful.
[00:06:51] Christy Boyce: I think it's challenging, but it's also useful because I do think my background as a consultant and having seen lots of different contexts [00:07:00] and issues, helps me sort of engage with the different issues you see as a board.
[00:07:05] Christy Boyce: But it's interesting, you know, I have clients where I later joined the board and I thought I had quite a broad view of their corporate strategy, and what was going on. But then there were things that I had just never even thought about when I joined the board. I probably hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about safety, for example, I hadn't spent a, I certainly hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about hedging accounting, for example, or treasury or things like that. So it's interesting. You can think you have a really good understanding actually of the business and what's going on there. And there are things that are really important functions that you have never really thought about that much.
[00:07:43] Richard Conway: I guess that's the challenge of being a Director, isn't it? That you can't ignore anything. You can't necessarily choose to focus on a particular area.
[00:07:52] Richard Conway: But another question I wanted to ask Christy about, I guess it seems to me that there's some executive [00:08:00] careers or roles that are better suited to be combined with director roles. And I wanted to ask your thoughts on that and particularly whether you felt, you know, as a management consultant, that it was well suited to combine that way or not well suited to combine?
[00:08:15] Christy Boyce: I think it's pretty well suited because you don't have to be full time as a management consultant. Particularly as you get more senior, you tend to be working on multiple projects. So you can sort of manage your part time portfolio that doesn't stop the, everything happens at once, and having to do the, you know, seven days, 16 hours a day for a week or so, because everything's happened at once. But it does mean that over time, you can balance things out.
[00:08:42] Christy Boyce: I do think it would be really difficult to be a really senior executive, And hold a board position in another company. Simply because, if something really goes wrong and you're a really senior executive, you have to be there, sort of, available almost 24/7. [00:09:00] And totally engaged in it in a way that you probably are not going to be as a consultant.
[00:09:05] Christy Boyce: Like, things might be very important, but there isn't that level of urgency and the need to be there and totally focused and committed in the way you might as an executive.
[00:09:15] Richard Conway: Yeah, absolutely. And finally, Christy, I guess it's also very common for people to want to launch their non-executive career while they're still in their executive roles.
[00:09:26] Richard Conway: And I wanted to ask you a couple of things that you think people should be considering when either selecting what kind of NED role they're going to do or before committing to a role when they've got that executive position already.
[00:09:42] Christy Boyce: Well, I think you do have to ask yourself that question, you know, what happens if something really serious happens in the company where I'm an executive and how am I able to meet my board commitments, and deal with that at the same time, and sort of have thought that through?
[00:09:58] Christy Boyce: Because I think that can [00:10:00] be really challenging, particularly if you, as I said, you're an executive. And then I think, Okay. You know, and this is probably sort of general advice. If you're thinking about taking on a board, I always have a few things I sort of want to understand. The first thing is, what's the relationship between the management team and the board?
[00:10:17] Christy Boyce: And you want people there to be a sense that you're all on the same team, albeit playing different roles. So that's a really important thing always to me that there's a good relationship between the management team and the board. And I mean, the other big one is, are you interested in a particular, role that the organisation plays, and do you think it's important and you sort of a supportive of the purpose, and are you excited and it's something that you will want to spend time thinking about beyond sort of reading the board papers and turning up to the meetings.
[00:10:50] Christy Boyce: Because every company that I've been involved with, I felt that it does something really important. And I've felt committed to that purpose and I've wanted to [00:11:00] help the organisation perform that purpose better. And if you don't have that perspective, I'm not sure you're going to spend the sort of incremental time that, you know, when you're going for a walk, thinking about, how are we going to achieve this? What are all the things we need to do? You've got to sort of be engaged at that level to really be prepared before you sign up, I think.