197: Collective Intelligence | Jennifer Sundberg

The Leadership Enigma

Jennifer Sundberg is the co-Chief Executive of Board Intelligence a technology company helping thousands of businesses make better decisions. Jennifer was originally a strategy consultant, and her light bulb moment came when she was asked to be a ‘fly on the wall’ during a client’s board meeting. The client was riding high, but the storm clouds were gathering as regards future challenges. During the three hours she observed the board, they never got to the heart of the matter. It wasn’t based on the wrong people being on the board, she realised it was because they simply didn’t have the right information in front of them within the reams of paperwork. All the information they had was backward looking. Jennifer realised that all boards are drowning in information partially based on habit and convention, much of which doesn’t matter, so they struggle to find the signal through the noise. Together with her business partner, Pippa, she started Board Intelligence to try and help boards leverage better and more appropriate information on which to base their strategic and critical decision making. Jennifer is genuinely bemused as to how she became a successful entrepreneur as she in her own words ‘doesn’t fit the stereotype’. However, she also realises that her intellect and insatiable curiosity drove her to choose this path. Jennifer is motivated to promote and empower women on boards. She outlines that we have seen great changes. From 5% of women on boards to 40% and from half the FTSE 100 boards being male only to none today. Jennifer’s first client was EasyJet which propelled her business into numerous discussions with boards. At this point they had no idea of the technology angle that they were set to embark on. Board Intelligence moved from a very analogue and paper driven approach to a business that today is a fully developed technology business. This change in business model was based on the realisation that very similar questions were being asked by CEO’s and Boards. They started to build up a question bank and then using technology packaged them up into a technology platform called ‘Lucia’. This created the ‘Question Driven Insight Model’ Today, Board Intelligence is helping executive teams and boards focus on the conversations that matter, avoid wasted time and effort and do less harm with the right data and information. Badly informed boards make bad decisions. Board Intelligence will help people manage the big audacious and knotty problems all businesses now face. Jennifer’s new book ‘Collective Intelligence’ is based on her desire to help more and more people leverage the collective in making better decisions and cascade it through entire organisations by building three critical capabilities. In this episode, Jennifer explains those capabilities/habits that are necessary. They are. 1. Critical thinking: 2. Clear communication: 3. Focus: It is every leader’s responsibility to empower the level below them. As one CEO told Jennifer, ‘The important decisions are not made in my boardroom’ as he was aware that it was his people working day to day who were making the most critical decisions. Too much power concentrated in one person makes us stupid. www.boardintelligence.com Collective Intelligence is available on Amazon

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