I remember advising an agriculture value-addition company as part of my work with a client during the time the region was suffering from a locust infestation. Crops were wiped out in three weeks. Revenues tanked. The CEO panicked. And the board? They asked for a new risk register.
Let me be clear. In times of crisis, the buck stops with the board. Not management, not regulators, not nature, and you.
Too many boards hide behind management when disaster strikes, issuing press releases about “unexpected circumstances” and “restructuring plans.” That’s abdication, not oversight.
Boards are not there to clap at AGMs. They are guardians of long-term resilience. Crisis reveals if they were doing their job or just reading board packs and calling it a day.
In the agriculture value-addition case, we uncovered that no one had reviewed the disaster recovery plan in 5 years. Insurance lapsed. The CEO had raised red flags about pest monitoring budgets, but it never made it past the Finance Committee. Governance failure in plain sight.
Accountability means foresight. It means asking tough “what if” questions before the crisis, not sympathy tweets after. If the board never asked about supply chain exposure, insurance coverage, or climate-linked yield models, the crisis is on them.
Leadership challenge: In a crisis, do your instincts as a board lean toward blame or blueprint?
I recommend boards to make use of the post-crisis Accountability Map.
What signals were missed?
What policies failed?
What was the board’s role in amplifying or ignoring these?
What decisions should never have been delegated?
Remember, when shareholders, media, and regulators come knocking, they don’t ask what the CEO said in the meeting. They ask, what did the board know, and what did they do about it?
