Mark Goyder is a senior advisor to the Board Intelligence Think Tank. He’s the founder of Tomorrow’s Company and co-author with Ong Boon Hwee of Entrusted: Stewardship for Responsible Wealth Creation.
It started on a high altitude skiing expedition. Scientist and doctor Tim Spector found that he was rapidly losing his sight. The cause turned to be a small stroke. This prompted him to focus his research on the causes of strokes. In particular, he began to analyse his own diet. To help him, he had the twins’ database that he and his research team had accumulated at the Department of Twin Research at Kings College London.
The result of the research was the discovery of the importance of the microbiome, the community of microbes that live in our gut, skin and body. He sums up his conclusions in these words:
“I believe that diversity, both in the food that we eat and the microbes we feed is the key. The trillions of microbes in our gut play an important part in digesting food and producing a number of chemicals vital for a strong immune system. We know that the greater the number of different types of microbe the healthier we can be.”
Spector warns people against the “diet industry” — books and articles which promote neat formulae for a healthy diet. The (false) assumption is that we are all the same and that it is possible or safe to generalise about diet. What Spector has found from the twin research is that even identical twins differ in their response to food. The only generalisation he offers is that we need to expose ourselves to the widest possible sources of plant-based nutrition. Beyond that, it is a question of getting into individual analysis of the make-up of each individual.
I couldn’t help applying his challenge to the world of corporate governance. We have an array of guidance, codes, and experts who confidently tell us about the governance practices that will guarantee robustness in companies. Some allowance is made in terms of company size. Otherwise, the underlying assumption is that we have now identified the key constituents of good governance.
All companies will be better governed, we are told, if they separate the role of CEO and chair, follow the guidance on minimum numbers of independent NEDs on boards and board subcommittees, and judge the independence of directors in large part by the number of years they have served.
In response, the annual reports of listed companies contain many bland statements like this one:
“Together the balance of skills, experience and personal characteristics of the non-executive Directors result in a diversity of views and opinions to support the executive Directors and provide excellent advice and judgement on the formation and implementation of the Group’s strategy. The Chairman encourages open and honest debate in the spirit of constructive challenge, which results in high quality decision making in all areas of strategy, performance, responsibility and accountability.”
I could have chosen such a statement from many companies. In fact, it comes from the construction company Persimmon in 2012, the year its board accepted the recommendation of its Remuneration Committee to introduce an uncapped Long Term Incentive Plan which resulted in a contractual obligation to pay around £75m to its chief executive. By all the standards of the day, the Persimmon Remuneration Committee was properly constituted. It was chaired by a NED — and there were two other NEDs on the committee.
These standards have not changed very much since. They are as dated and unsatisfactory as the books about diet that Professor Spector has been criticising. Surely, by now, companies should be expecting questions like these:
These are all things that are relatively easy to compare across companies but are not yet interrogated by the FRC. Now, let us assume that, as in the case of human beings, the DNA of companies varies significantly. This would suggest that there are many criteria of good governance that can only be judged in the context of a single company:
None of these criteria figures among the way the Financial Reporting Council treats these indicators as measures of its success in promoting good governance.
Without consulting Tim Spector, I suspect that, were he studying corporate governance and we had the benefit of his insights, he might say:
I believe that diversity, both in the kinds of people we employ and the voices we listen to — is the key. The many individual people and relationships that together make up our company’s culture and behaviours — let’s call it the company’s gut — play an important part in affecting the company’s ability to function effectively; to earn trust and receive, understand and respond to external information and anticipate external risks and opportunities. There are few generalisations we can make about what constitutes a well-governed company. All we can say is that a well-governed company is one that exposes itself to the widest possible sources of information and experience. Beyond that, it is a question of getting into individual analysis of the make-up of each individual company and the values that underlie its decision-making.”