Govern · Technology & AI Board Advisory
Technology decisions deserve an independent voice.
A long-term advisory relationship with a small number of companies — software businesses, industrial groups, family companies and portfolio companies alike — whose purpose is the quality of the decision rather than the size of the programme that follows it.
Most technology proposals reach a board already argued. They are prepared by the people who will run them, reviewed by the people who commissioned them, and supported by vendors with a position. Everyone in the chain is competent, and almost everyone has an interest in the answer being yes.
What is usually missing is a participant with no stake in the outcome, enough technical depth to read the proposal rather than the summary, enough operational experience to know what will actually happen when it meets the business, and enough distance to say that a programme should be stopped.
The most expensive technology decisions are rarely the ones that were argued about. They are the ones nobody in the room was equipped to challenge.
01
The role
What it is
- Independent judgment on technology and AI strategy
- Challenge to the assumptions a strategy is standing on
- A second reading of large technology investments before they are approved
- Evaluation of build, buy, partner and wait
- A view on where AI destroys margin and where it creates operating leverage
- A view on where automation and robotics pay, and where they are theatre
- Direct, private access between meetings
What it is not
- Implementation or delivery
- A fractional CTO, an outsourced CIO, or cover for a vacancy
- Vendor selection with a commercial interest attached
- A retained consultancy that grows with the programme it recommends
- Attendance without preparation
02
The questions a mandate actually deals with
These are the recurring ones. The specific ones are always better.
- Which AI investments deserve capital, and which are buying a productivity gain the whole market is receiving anyway?
- Where does AI destroy margin in this business, and where does it create operating leverage?
- Which technology programmes should be stopped?
- Is the technology fixing a bad process, or merely digitising it?
- Is the technology landscape enabling change, or quietly preventing it?
- Does the company have usable data, or simply a lot of data?
- Where is automation economically sensible, and where does robotics create real return rather than a demonstration?
- Which capabilities should remain internal, and which are now cheaper to rent than to own?
- Which vendors create a dependency the company could not unwind?
- Where has convenience quietly become business-critical infrastructure?
- Does the organisational structure prevent the company from getting leverage out of technology?
- How will an acquisition change the technology and the operating model?
- What technology assumptions are embedded in the current strategy, and what happens if they are wrong?
- How will technology change this company’s competitive position over three to five years?
- Is management underestimating disruption — or overestimating it, which is the more expensive error in a good business?
03
How a mandate works
The shape is agreed at the start and stays deliberately simple.
A standing relationship, not a project
Understanding a business well enough to challenge it takes time that no single engagement provides. Mandates are long-term by design.
Board, committee and management sessions
Participation where the decision is actually taken — supervisory board, board meeting, investment committee, or directly with the owner. Prepared, with the material read in advance.
Written positions on consequential decisions
Where a decision warrants it, a short written argument that can be circulated, disagreed with and kept on the record.
Access between meetings
Most valuable decisions are not taken in a meeting. Direct access matters more than a fixed cadence.
04
Limited board capacity.
A mandate only works if there is time to understand the business properly and independence is not diluted across too many rooms. A small number of additional board mandates are considered; new mandates are accepted selectively.
Requests are reviewed personally and are subject to a conflict review before anything is agreed. The criterion is otherwise simple: whether independent technology judgment can materially affect the decisions in front of this board.
Request consideration
Describe the company, the role you have in mind and the decision that prompted the request.
For CEOs, owners, boards, supervisory boards and private-equity operating partners.