A board needs one person who can afford to be unpopular
A non-executive director on your board: independent judgement, real governance, and the willingness to ask the question everyone in the room is already thinking. Not an advisor, not a mentor, but a director, with a director’s duties.
An advisor can be ignored. A director cannot be
A non-executive director is a director. The same duties under the Companies Act as every executive on your board, including the duty to exercise independent judgement and to promote the success of the company, and the same name on the same register.
That is the whole distinction, and it is the one most of this market is careful not to draw. “Board advisor” and “advisory board” sound adjacent and are not: an advisor gives an opinion and carries no duty, and an opinion with nothing behind it is easy to thank and then set aside.
Everything else on this site is somebody going into your business to do the job. This is the opposite: somebody sitting on your board who deliberately does not. The value is in the distance.
Usually it is the board composition that tells you, not a crisis
Everyone on the board reports to the CEO
A board made entirely of executives is a management meeting with a different name. Nobody in it can disagree with the chief executive without it also being a career decision.
You have just taken outside investment
Institutional money brings an investor director whose duty runs to the fund. An independent voice is what stops every board discussion becoming a two-sided negotiation.
The founder has nobody to argue with
Conviction is what got the business here. What is missing is one person with standing, no line management relationship, and no reason to soften the answer.
Governance has not kept pace with the size
The controls, the reporting and the risk register are the ones written when the business was a third of the size, and everybody knows it and nobody owns it.
You are heading towards a sale or a raise
Diligence looks at how decisions were made, not only at what was decided. Board minutes that show real challenge are worth more than minutes that show unanimity.
You have acquired and not yet integrated
Two cultures, two sets of practice, one set of numbers. Integration is where the value in a deal is realised or quietly lost, and it belongs on the board agenda.
Four responsibilities, held rather than advised on
Challenge, On The Record
Testing the strategy, the numbers behind it and the assumptions nobody has revisited: in the meeting, minuted, and early enough to change the decision rather than review it.
Governance & Risk
Whether the controls match the size of the business, whether the risk register describes the risks the business actually runs, and whether the board sees what it needs to see.
People At The Top
Executive succession, how the leadership team is paid and measured, and the conversation about performance at the very top that has no natural owner inside the business.
Investors & Transactions
An independent voice in the room through a raise, a sale or an integration, where the executive team is necessarily invested in the outcome and somebody should not be.
The job is to say it, and still be useful in the room afterwards
Most non-executive appointments are sold on the network: the contacts, the doors, the introductions. Those are real and they are not why boards fail. Boards fail because a decision everyone privately doubted was taken unanimously, and nobody was willing to be the person who held it up.
That takes someone who has been on the executive side of that table and knows what the answer is going to cost the people giving it. It also takes someone who can disagree in March and still be the person the CEO rings in April. Independence that arrives as hostility is no more useful than agreement.
Before you appoint anybody
Is this a director, or an advisor?
Ask whether they will be appointed to the board and named at Companies House. If not, they carry no duty, which may be exactly what you want, but you should be choosing it rather than discovering it.
When did your board last change its mind?
If nobody can remember a decision that went into the room one way and came out another, the board is ratifying rather than deciding, and one more voice will not fix it on its own.
What do they gain if you take their advice?
An independent director who also sells you delivery is not independent. Ask what else they would like to sell you, and what happens to it if they disagree with the executive team.
Have they ever been on the wrong end of this?
Someone who has run a business through a bad quarter knows what a hard board question costs to answer. It makes them better at asking, and better at knowing when not to.
Where this sits
Who would take the seat
Thirty-seven years in the games industry, most of a decade at Sumo Digital, and director-level roles at SEGA and Codemasters before it.
See the peopleWhen you need it done, not overseen
Where the gap is execution rather than oversight, the answer is somebody inside the business rather than on the board.
See the fractional rolesHow we work
Quoted and governed separately from delivery, for the reason this page spends most of its time on.
Read our ApproachTake an assessment
Six scored assessments, seven areas each, a rating on screen, and a PDF if you want it.
See the assessmentsIf your board has never changed its mind
A first outside voice, an investor director who now needs balancing, or a board that has outgrown the governance it was built with. A direct conversation about what the seat would actually be for.