Ethel Cofie writes: You need board experience to get board experience

There is a slightly ridiculous problem with getting your first serious board role.

You need board experience to be considered for many board opportunities. But somebody has to give you your first board experience.

I have been thinking about this problem a lot while designing the Boardroom Fellowship.

Partly because I have accumulated quite a bit of experience designing curricula. As Chair of the ICT Sector Skills Board, I have been leading the team in designing Ghana's first AI curriculum. I have worked on redesigning Computer Science and digital certification curricula for technical universities.

And most recently, I have been chairing the Technical Working Group working on Ghana's micro-credential framework.

That last piece of work has reinforced something for me. Professional development cannot simply be about acquiring more knowledge.

At different stages of a career, people need ways to build, demonstrate and have new capabilities recognised while continuing to work. And I think we have a version of that problem at the very senior end of the career ladder. You can spend 20 years becoming excellent at what you do.

You can run businesses, own a P&L, lead large teams, navigate regulators, build products and lead transformation.
None of that automatically gives you evidence that you can operate effectively in a boardroom.

And another governance certificate, useful as it may be, doesn't entirely solve that problem either.

So when I started designing the Boardroom Fellowship, I didn't start with: What should we teach?
I started with: What would an already accomplished executive need to learn, practise and experience to become materially more ready for a board role? That changed the programme.

There is structured governance learning. There are experienced board mentors. There is practical application. And Board Observation: the opportunity to spend time observing a real board at work.Not a simulation.

Not another case study. Actual exposure to how governance happens when the papers are real, the decisions matter, and there isn't always an obvious answer.

The first Boardroom Fellowship will have just 15 Fellows. It is designed for experienced executives, founders and senior functional leaders who are beginning to make the transition from executive leadership into board service.

Applications open 27 October. If that sounds like the stage of your career you are approaching, register your interest now. https://lnkd.in/d_tnJH8Z.

Authored by Ethel Cofie.

Pan-African Board Chair & Institutional Adviser | Former Head of Commercial Solutions, Vodafone | Financial Systems, Technology & Public Policy | Digital Public Infrastructure | President Barack Obama YALI Fellow

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DISCLAIMER: The Views, Comments, Opinions, Contributions and Statements made by Readers and Contributors on this platform do not necessarily represent the views or policy of Multimedia Group Limited.