The ninth edition of “Perspective – Stepping into the Boardroom” was successfully conducted on 20^th September 2019 at Hotel Taj City Centre, two dozen CXOs discussed and debated the opportunity and the role of an independent director in corporate governance.

Once the participants got acquainted with each other the discussion started with the composition & role of the board in corporate governance. The members of the board coming with domain expertise add value to the board and provide proper direction to the company.  The Chairman plays a very important part in ensuring proper composition of the board as well as the executive team. The best boards have separate position of the Chairman and CEO to bring maximum efficiency in functioning of the board as well as the company.

The responsibility of the board is to identify the process of suggesting solutions and let the executive team implement the same. The vision statement or document needs to be communicated every member of the company whether executive or non-executive. The mature member of the boards will ensure the real issues are raised for discussion and resolved with substance rather than politicking on them. The most important thing to note is that the board functions as group and not as an individual and together they can even decide to change the composition of the executive team and even the CEO in the interest of Company and its business.

Continuation to be part of the board is an individual decision and one has decide his course of action, ideally when one believes that he has ceased to contribute value to the board or the board continuously ignores your suggestions without any merit or the practices on boards are no longer ethical, one should resign and exit the board.

The statute now provides for the role of an independent director, professional ethics should of an individual member is key to a successful corporate board.