Board Seats That Really Fit

Thinking carefully before you say yes (or stay)

By the time a board invitation lands in your inbox, you have already done a lot of things “right.”

You have a serious track record. You understand how capital moves. You have held responsibility in roles where misjudgment does not just dent a bonus, it affects pensions, policy, livelihoods and trust.

So when a board calls, especially a well-known organization or a complex fund, the invitation feels like confirmation. You are being asked to sit at the table where decisions really bite. The default assumption in your world is simple: if you are invited, you say yes.

That is exactly where you need to slow down.

The quiet tension behind a flattering invitation

Board work carries a particular mix of reward and risk that most people only glimpse from the outside.

There is status: your name on documents, invitations to dinners, your biography upgraded in a single line. There is also the genuine satisfaction of stewardship: using your judgment to guard something larger than your own career.

Alongside that, there are less glamorous realities:

• Reading loads that demand real attention, not skimming.

• Exposure to personal and professional liability, especially when things break in public.

• Political undercurrents that are never written down: who really holds power, who wants a trophy board, who wants genuine challenge.

• The subtle pressure to nod things through because everyone else seems comfortable and you do not want to be “difficult.”

If you already sit on a board, you know these tensions. If you are being invited for the first time, you may only feel a vague unease underneath the flattery.

This service exists for the hours before you say yes, before you renew, or before you resign.

Suitability runs both ways

In finance and law, you already understand suitability in technical terms: the right product for the right client, the right mandate for the right fund. Board service deserves the same scrutiny.

Two questions matter:

• Are you suitable for this board?

• Is this board suitable for you, at this point in your life?

Suitability here is not about being clever enough. You already clear that bar. The deeper questions look more like:

• What problem is this board actually trying to solve, and why are they asking you to help solve it?

• Does the mandate match your convictions about risk, responsibility and fairness, or will you be forever holding your nose?

• How many boards can you serve well before your reading, judgment and energy begin to thin out?

• Does the chair really want challenge, or a plausible signature on minutes?

• How will this seat affect the people who rely on you outside the boardroom: your family, your health, your existing work, your church or community?

These are not questions LinkedIn endorsements can answer. They need time, honesty and someone who will not be dazzled by the organisation’s logo.

What actually sits on the table

From the outside, a board pack looks like paper and screens. Inside the room, you know better.

You are being asked to sign off on things that carry real human weight:

• capital allocation under genuine uncertainty

• restructurings that change lives

• risk decisions that may not show their true nature for years

• cultural signals about what behaviour is tolerated and what is not

In calm periods, board work can feel almost routine. In stressed periods, the same seat can become a crucible. Investigations, activist pressure, regulatory scrutiny, reputational damage that moves faster than facts – all of that often arrives in the same envelope.

One of the hardest questions to face is simple: Do you actually want to be in the room when those decisions come due? Not the imagined room of tidy minutes and civil discussion. The real room, with exhausted people, incomplete information and no clean options.

That question deserves more than a reflexive “of course.”

Legacy, ego and the shortness of the second half

Most of us grow up believing that being “on boards” is how important people leave a mark. Yet if you walk through any financial district, campus or old institution, you see the truth in bronze and stone. Plaques for donors and former chairs whose names no one remembers. Portraits of grandees that people hurry past without reading the caption. Only an infinitesimally small slice of humanity is ever remembered by name, and even that memory fades.

Strangely, this can be a relief.

You can stop secretly hoping that more titles will secure your legacy. You can start asking a better question: given that your time here is short, and that the days ahead are already fewer than the days behind, what kind of life do you want this invitation to serve?

For some people, the invitation itself is the pinnacle – the clear signal that they have nothing left to prove. In that case, the wisest choice may be to say no gracefully, and spend those reclaimed evenings on work, people and places that make the remaining years feel more alive rather than more encumbered.

What we do together

Our work around board decisions is quiet, blunt, and practical.

You bring:

• the invitation, or the question about whether to renew

• the public information, and whatever private information you have

• your own history of work, health, family and faith

• your hopes and fears about what this seat might mean

I bring:

• years spent inside institutional investing, strategic asset allocation and governance discussions, where capital, regulation and politics collide

• a high regard for professional standards and codes of conduct

• a calm focus on suitability: of this role for you, and of you for this role

• an eye for hidden costs and second-order effects that will not show up in the glossy pitch

We talk one to one, under strict confidentiality, with no recording and no audience. The tone is not “you should…” but “let’s look at this clearly.” The purpose is not to push you toward yes or no. The purpose is to help you reach a decision that you can live with, and live from, for years.

Sometimes the outcome is a clear yes, with conditions and boundaries you would not have named on your own. Sometimes the outcome is a calm no that surprises you with relief. Sometimes the answer is, “Not this one, not now,” followed by a better question about what kind of board work, if any, would genuinely fit.

Why this matters to me

I built this service because senior people rarely have a truly neutral place to think about board work. Recruiters have a mandate. Chairs have an agenda. Peers have their own stories about status and fear. Families feel the impact but do not see the files.

Here, you get one person who understands both the numbers and the undercurrent, who is not impressed by your titles and not afraid of your doubts, and whose only stake is that your decision is wise for you and fair to the people who will live inside the consequences.

A board seat is not just another line on a biography. It is a long, serious promise made in public on behalf of people who may never know your name.

If you would like to talk before you sign that promise – or before you renew one that no longer feels clean – you can.