New Book on Board Design by Prof Keil and Dr Marianna Zangrillo
Boards are facing one of the most challenging moments in corporate history. They must navigate a combination of short-term pressures related to oversight, compliance, risk, and crisis management, while safeguarding the organization’s long-term future amid the geopolitical reset and technological discontinuities such as AI. The Next Board by Professor Thomas Keil and Dr Marianna Zangrillo shows how boards can rise to this dual challenge.
At the heart of the book is the Board Diamond, a practical, unified framework that helps directors design boards that are effective today and capable of leading into tomorrow. It highlights five levers of board effectiveness:
- Purpose and Roles – clarifying what the board must focus on and why.
- People – building the right mix of capabilities, personalities, and cognitive diversity.
- Structures and Processes – ensuring agendas, committees, and decision practices support oversight and strategy.
- Leadership – strengthening the chair’s role and the chair–CEO interface.
- Evaluation and Development – embedding renewal, succession, and continuous improvement.
The book challenges a widespread flaw in corporate governance: the belief that generic “best practice” works everywhere. Drawing on extensive global research, the authors demonstrate how effective board design must reflect each organisation’s ownership structure, strategic situation, and governance environment. The Next Board shows how governance must be tailored rather than copy-pasted.
The book closes by outlining what future-fit governance looks like: efficient, agile, and resilient boards that embrace cognitive diversity, experiment with new formats, and deploy emerging tools, including AI, to improve performance without losing strategic focus.