AICD's Australian Governance Summit 2025 insights

I aim to practice what I preach, and I made the space physically and mentally last week to focus on my professional development and attended AICD’s Australian Governance Summit 2025, as I am an AICD member and want to ensure I remain current of what is happening in this space.

I've attended this summit in previous years, and it is one which always is filled with topics that are front of mind for boards presently, led by great speakers, and this year did not disappoint. I took many notes, but some of my key takeaways I am thinking about include:

The importance of boards being futurists, looking for patterns/trends in advance, not doing more of the same even when things are going well, having the agility to make rapid pivots, and ensuring complacency doesn’t set in.

Detailed scenario testing for disaster recovery exercises - including considering financial solvency with the impact of decisions. Seems like an obvious one but sometimes in these exercises this level of detail is not always considered.

There really is no such thing as a dumb question. If you have a diverse board it is understandable to have a variety of expertise that not everyone knows everything (and we all talk in our own expert jargon!), and directors have an obligation to ask and ensure they understand to limit organisational risk.

When thinking about AI and risk, considering that one of the biggest risks is to not embrace the technology. Consider how AI can be aligned with an organisation’s purpose and strategy and deliver customer outcomes.

Reassuring discussion in several sessions over the two days about DEI which has featured a lot in the media recently - and that even though the terminology may be phasing out in some patches; in Australia it seems that companies who have imbedded diversity and equality into their operational practices will thrive regardless (which I’ve always believed should be the long game of DEI initiatives anyway).

Leaning into my expertise of HR and people, it was great to see a whole session dedicated to discussing current workplace relations issues and themes. What popped up as part of this discussion is that while I know HR expertise is under-represented at board level, hearing that only 1% of board members have specialised HR expertise was alarming. 

Hmmm…perhaps I better put actively sourcing a board position as priority on my to-do-list to support organisations as considering the volume of workplace relations changes currently occurring (which aren’t seemingly subsiding), the people impact of AI which isn’t yet being spoken about enough (and I’m not talking about machines replacing jobs), and the importance of culture; tell me boards could really benefit from having people like me with HR, business and governance expertise. This is aligned with another session which talked about how the skills matrix of boards has needed to evolve to keep in step with current times.

Overall, it was an informative and a great two days. I’d be happy to discuss more, if this is something you are interested in, get in touch.