Board management is an art. Your board oversees the direction of your organization, but who oversees the efficiency and effectiveness of your board? Adopting board management best practices can dramatically streamline your board’s operations and equip the board to respond to an ever-changing corporate landscape.

With risks and opportunities evolving faster than ever, boards must closely manage their activities to remain agile, capable and effective. Here, we’ll explain the board management best practices for 2025 to keep you ahead, whether you’re actively managing enterprise risk or choosing new board management software.

1. Education: Stay on top of new risks, opportunities and best practices

Keeping abreast of board management best practices is a best practice in itself. 

 need to be front of mind. And as shareholder activism goes mainstream, 

activist investors have become unlikely heroes

, driving campaigns that are “much more reflective of the world in which companies operate” and far more likely to inform board thinking than they were even a year ago.

As we look toward 2025, the world is a volatile place; digital threats are on the rise, the economy remains in flux and the regulatory landscape is shifting rapidly. But as Christine O’Donnell, Industry Analyst at Verdantix, noted in a 

 on the future of governance, risk and compliance (

) technology, good governance is a crucial underpinning for boards in an uncertain world. This good governance not only creates a strong foundation for effective global oversight but also, as she puts it, “increases resilience and competitiveness across diverse risk landscapes,” — both of which are vital to keeping pace with a changing outlook and shifting expectations as you tackle 

A need to focus on risk is one of the biggest takeaways when we assess board management and 

 and into 2025 — but the most compelling risks are constantly evolving, as are the regulatory and legislative requirements you need to comply with.

2. Keep shareholders and stakeholders top of mind, and…

Your stakeholders should be front and center when identifying and striving for board management best practices. This doesn’t just mean investors: all stakeholders are 

 about the issues they think organizations and their boards should prioritize and, as we noted, being listened to in unprecedented ways. Today, activist investors inform board discussions in ways they wouldn’t have done a few years ago.

Engage with these stakeholders: experienced non-exec director 

 believes that “interaction of the large shareholders and the board members should be more frequent” than it’s traditionally been if you’re seeking best practice stakeholder engagement.

 adopted in 2023, which empower shareholders to make their feelings known come the annual shareholder meeting. While the 

,” it also underscored the value of cultivating stakeholder relationships.

“Now, when shareholder proposals come in, they come against a background of a lot of prior work,” said KPMG BLC Senior Advisor Stephen Brown said in a 

That prior work includes engaging with investors and asset managers and voluntarily disclosing sensitive information — like emissions data. Corporations should commit to making shareholder transparency inherent in good board management.

3. …Prioritize the issues that matter to your stakeholders

Engaging with stakeholders is a critical first step. Yet, discussions aren’t enough. Board management should encourage boards to remember they serve their stakeholders. To do that, directors need to act.

 consider a company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) posture before buying shares, while an estimated 

 care about ESG. A well-managed board will respond to that focus by integrating ESG into the corporation’s strategic direction, risk management and reporting.

The need for corporate agility, which came to the fore during the Covid-19 pandemic, becomes even more vital during economic uncertainty Maria Moats 

— and the fact that “some would say in Europe they are already in recession” — as a critical driver for better governance; it’s also an impetus for an agile approach. Adapting to the prevailing conditions is a prerequisite for successful boards and businesses.

This agility is as vital within your board as across the broader organization. Boards are evolving constructs. The best boards recognize when they need external expertise, drawing on skills honed outside your sector. They keep an eye on new trends in board makeup, like the advent of board technology committees to tackle changing risks. In 2023, flexibility is one of the top board management best practices. Don’t let an inflexible approach hinder your board.

6. Challenge yourself on your diversity of thinking

The days of boards being dominated by a single demographic are changing. Businesses now realize that 

 delivers strategic advantage and is the basis of an ethically sound company, as outlined in a 

How do you structure a board? The answer is to provide a diverse range of thinking. Explore the benefits of 

 as a way to leave behind old thought processes. Question whether there are 

, and ensure your succession planning techniques enable you to 

Whether this is following best practices in 

 or ensuring a robust audit trail for your board decisions, 

best practices in governance and risk and compliance

 is a core element of this governance, ensuring timely information sharing before meetings so that decisions are made with a 360-degree vision and capturing actions to execute all compliance and board duties.

As corporations face risk from all sides — cybersecurity, fraud and climate change, among others — boards must develop a more integrated view of risk. Rather than waiting until risks arise, successful board management will push directors to identify risk and the opportunities it can present proactively.

 can more clearly define risk-related roles and responsibilities and make more strategic decisions that protect the organization from costly threats.

9. Integrate technology to enhance board management efficiency

, “Business is in a third wave of corporate governance evolution.” The Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts spurred new strategic challenges many boards have struggled to surmount. In recent years, however, technology has made a difference.

Consider Aegon, an insurance, pension and asset-management provider headquartered in The Netherlands. Managing over 475 billion of their own and their customers’ investments, Aegon quickly amassed a daunting number of weekly and quarterly board meetings. Preparing for them required long working days and hundreds of pages of print board books with complicated security and versioning protocols.

“At one point, we put materials online using a basic tool, but that did not replace the need for hard copies,” said Henk Snijders, Deputy Company Secretary for Aegon.

Enterprise board management technology from Diligent

 saved Aegon’s company secretariat a week’s worth of labor over an entire year of board meetings by centralizing the data and collaboration in a single platform.

“It took [the board] a few months to watch everyone else using the iPad-based solution before they were ready to adopt Diligent Boards themselves,” Snijders said. “They never asked for paper again.”

10. Proactively learn and adopt artificial intelligence (AI) tools

Workplace technology expert at Harvard Business School Karim R. Lakhani said that AI can be applied 

. In recent years, Generative AI has only increased its foothold in the boardroom, and many CEOs are preparing for radical change.

 say generative AI will significantly change how their companies create value over the next three years. That means effective board management must harness AI. What can that look like in the boardroom?

As PwC share in their recent report, board management 

 to both oversee emerging technologies to safeguard the company 

influence how the board executes on strategic opportunities. To meet both needs, boards should educate themselves about AI’s opportunities and limitations and tap into internal specialists and external resources to keep AI on the board's agenda.

can be used to shave time off board meeting preparation as well as in-meeting tasks, enabling the CoSec to take a more strategic role. They can use AI as a tool to support the agenda creation process as well as instantly creating meeting minutes. It can even able directors to ask the right questions ahead of meetings!

, a purpose-built AI and secure solution, can support your board management processes. 

11. Explore how board management software boosts effectiveness

This discipline in running board meetings doesn’t just benefit your governance processes. Boards of directors are busy people, balancing their board responsibilities with the other challenges of their role.

Board meetings and the business that follows them need to be carried out most efficiently to maximize effectiveness and best use of board members’ time. This is why introducing the right technology makes our board management best practices list. 

 facilitates collaboration, streamlines meeting organization and bolsters security — saving directors’ time and driving better data-driven decisions.

Implement best practices to accelerate your board management

Board management is an evolving craft; however rigorous your approach, occasionally revisiting best practices is a good discipline. The eleven board management best practices above provide a good baseline for any board wanting to challenge itself. Yet, no board management approach would be complete without technology.

Technology is the single best tool boards have to stay afloat amid the rapid tides of change. Growing numbers of boards recognize the benefits of both AI and technology in streamlining and future-proofing their board management. While it’s true that not all board management software is created equal, 

 can transform your boardroom for the better.

, and how it can help you run your board confidently, minimize admin and manual processes and create a more secure, robust environment for your board.

11 board management best practices to adopt for 2025

Governance is increasingly becoming an exercise in risk management. Achieving effective governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) requires leveraging the right technology to provide leaders with clear insights. At Elevate 2024, over 650 attendees are diving into how cutting-edge solutions can empower their organizations to thrive in an escalating risk landscape.

Here are the top highlights from day two of the event, including strategies for upholding good governance, leveraging innovative technology to navigate evolving risks, and key trends shaping governance practices for 2025 and beyond.

Wirecard: A tale of fraud, whistleblowing, scandal and lessons learned

Dr. Anastassia Lauterbach Lang, CEO AI Edutainment, Professor of AI and Cybersecurity, AI Edutainment GmbH

Pav Gill, Founder & CEO, Confide Platform

Moderated by Felix Salmon, Chief financial correspondent at Axios

One question I always ask when counselling board members is, are you sure that the people you serve with have the spine to act and do the right thing? When things go south, you need to have people on the board who can manage a crisis. — Dr. Anastassia Lauterbach Lang

How does a global payments company go from outpacing industry growth trends to becoming the center of one of the largest financial scandals in history? This panel gave firsthand accounts from the two insiders, including a whistleblower who exposed Wirecard's massive fraud while facing intense retaliation, legal threats and personal risks. The session highlighted systemic failures, the resilience of whistleblowers, and the broader lessons on governance and accountability.

: Short sellers flagged irregularities as early as 2010, but Wirecard continued to conceal the fraud. Pav Gill, a key whistleblower, discovered more red flags when he joined in 2017, such as manipulated financial results and shady transfers.

: Pav reported issues internally but faced significant pushback and was subjected to threats and personal attacks, ultimately being forced out of the company for refusing to cover up fraudulent activities.

: Dr. Anastassia Lauterbach joined Wirecard’s board in 2018 and immediately noticed governance issues, such as missing minutes from critical meetings and insufficient oversight. She emphasized the importance of having board members capable of handling a crisis, which Wirecard lacked.

: After internal escalation failed, Pav took the information to the Financial Times. This external exposure led to regulatory action in Singapore, including raids on Wirecard’s offices, highlighting the vital role of the press in bringing accountability.

: Both Pav and Anastassia emphasized the need for individuals in control positions to act on their suspicions and maintain confidence in doing the right thing. For board members, crisis competency and ethical integrity are crucial to preventing future scandals.

Product innovations: Navigate through evolving risk

Presented by Adam Bailey, SVP & Global Head of Product, Diligent

Governance is increasingly an exercise in strategic risk management. With a risk landscape that is constantly evolving, point solutions just don’t give you what you need — a connected platform is more important than ever before. — Adam Bailey, SVP & Global Head of Product at Diligent

Managing risk in silos with point solutions delivers information that's fragmented, complicated and outdated by the time it reaches leadership. A more comprehensive risk management strategy is needed that helps you gather and organize information faster, so you can establish a view of risk that's timely, clear and complete. Joined by industry luminaries in cybersecurity and AI, Adam discussed the risks facing every organization, and how Diligent is innovating to keep its customers a step ahead of an expanding and accelerating risk landscape.

: Successful organizations need a comprehensive, unified approach to risk management. Point solutions are no longer sufficient. A single platform, powered by AI, is critical to navigating today’s complex risk landscape.

: AI is transformative in governance, risk, and compliance (GRC). Through Diligent AI, Diligent has introduced AI tools to help organizations enhance stakeholder communication and better understand risk, such as AI Inspector, which flags risk areas in board materials, and the AI Meeting Minutes tool, which automates meeting documentation.

: As AI becomes more integrated, organizations must implement ethical frameworks for its use. Establishing an AI council or framework ensures responsible AI usage and helps mitigate associated risks.

: Cyber threats, especially with attackers using AI, are evolving. Phil Venables, Chief Information Security Officer at Google Cloud, joined Adam onstage to emphasize that investing in technology modernization, not just cybersecurity, is key to building resilience and managing interconnected risks.

: Diligent’s AI-driven tools are designed to streamline workflows and drive efficiency. For example, Diligent’sBoard Book Summary tool summarizes board materials with the click of a button, compares and highlights changes to previous reports and categorizes parts of the document relevant to your background. As another example, Diligent’s CFO Experience Dashboard streamlines workflows by summarizing complex documents and pulling relevant financial data, helping leaders focus on strategic decision-making.

The future of risk management: Cyber, AI and GRC governance

Phil Venables, Chief Information Security Officer, Google Cloud

Tom Faraday, Senior Director, Product Management, Diligent

A common mistake with risk management strategies is there’s too much investment in risk analysis instead of controls. — Phil Venables, Chief Information Security Officer, Google Cloud

As global risks increase; we will continue to see the CISO role be elevated within organizations. — Charlie Lewis, Partner, McKinsey

This session covered the latest trends, challenges and best practices in cyber risk management, AI applications and GRC software vendor consolidation. Panelists discussed strategies for navigating the evolving cyberthreat landscape, harnessing AI for risk prediction and mitigation, and optimizing GRC software to streamline compliance efforts amidst vendor consolidation.

Risk is increasing globally and security breaches happen all the time – it’s not a question of when or if anymore, it’s how often.

Silos are breaking down as business leaders see the benefit of a cohesive and all company risk management strategy.

As a starting point, organizations should identify the core services that makes their business operate and ensure their risk management strategy protects these services up to the most extreme security events.

Continuous control monitoring is key - review your systems and processes to prevent gaps in your defence.

AI and large language models are transforming risk management and the stacked productivity benefits from the technology is removing the mundane work for risk management teams.

As more organizations embrace AI, understanding the inherent risks is important. For example, adopting AI within an organization brings with it potential data governance risk and operational risk and leaders need to think about these broad implications.

Trust through transparency: Harnessing the power of Diligent Community

Dr. R.J. Gravel, Deputy Superintendent, Glenbrook High School District 225

Jeff Schaefer, Senior Director, Continuity Brands, Diligent

Diligent Community has revolutionized how we engage with our stakeholders. From live streaming meetings with ease, to making board policies transparent and accessible, to tracking the progress of our strategic goals. It's all about building trust through technology. — Dr. R.J. Gravel, Deputy Superintendent, Glenbrook High School District 225

This session underscored the critical role of transparency in building stakeholder trust. Key insights from the session stressed the importance of enhancing transparency in decision-making processes by providing open access to meetings, information and policy development. Glenbrook High School District 225 have used key transparency features on Diligent Community to support their journey, from their public website with live streamed meetings to policy lifecycle management to goal tracking for strategic plans. The results have been greater feedback, higher participation and increased engagement in their community.

To enhance transparency in decision making, open doors and provide access to information. Open access to how decisions are made, where budgets are being spent and how policy is being developed, builds trust and clarity with stakeholders.

Reach the community where they are through your public website. This is a one-stop-shop, through a single pane of glass, for stakeholders seeking to develop their awareness of school district activities and engage with their elected officials and administrators. Increase participation and involvement by making it easy for community members to access information, agendas and supporting documents.

Structured agendas, rich in detail, organized in a manner that makes sense for community members help with transparency and trust. Use of consistent naming conventions to make it easy for the community to find things, they don’t have to go digging for it.

Streaming your meetings also helps build trust with the public. They can go to your website and see exactly what the board was saying when they discussed an item and made a decision. With Diligent Community and Livestream Manager, the split screen view allows community members to participate in a virtual meeting while simultaneously reviewing related documents and agenda items, enabling active and informed discussions.

Achieving holistic risk management through audit and risk collaboration

Tom Keaton, Director of Internal Audit, Crown Castle

Michael Rasmussen, GRC Analyst & Pundit, GRC 20/20 Research

Sumit Pal, Senior Manager, IT Compliance, Ooma

Katja Freeman, Solutions Sale Director, Diligent

Trust is the number one thing. Once you have trust that the executive teams believe in the data, believe in the risk you are identifying, you can have fulsome conversations and impact change. When you have transparency and trust, collaboration is there, that really allows you to have that impactful program. - Tom Keaton 

This session explored the transformative power of collaboration between audit and risk professionals in identifying, assessing and mitigating strategic and operational risks effectively. The panel discussed successful collaboration models, best practices for aligning objectives and working together to enhance risk visibility and strategic decision-making. The benefits of collaboration are enormous: Multiple eyes across risk and audit looking at things delivers greater awareness. Then, with the constant regulatory and legal change organizations face, audit and risk teams can become more aligned and more responsive to changing risks. Organizations can achieve better resilience, as audit will find small issues before they become large-scale risk incidents.

Audit and risk are complementary services. Risk creates the risk framework, and audit tests the framework. Risk implements it and then audit evaluates it. Look at ways to make the whole process efficient and effective so that they are not competing but complementing each other.

Make sure both audit and risk teams understand that everyone is working toward similar but different goals. Sit down and get everyone marching the same direction. It can be challenging—everyone has different viewpoints and uses different technologies. Showing common ground and how everyone can come together helps deliver holistic risk management and even drive strategic value.

There needs to be collaboration between risk and the business, vertically up and down but then also horizontally across the organization. Risk and audit are interconnected and interdependent. Collaboration helps provide audit’s perspective, and their insight across company policies and procedures help improve risk’s function.

Collaboration results in a more resilient organization and better risk intelligence. Solutions such as Diligent also help deliver better risk intelligence and better resilience as a result. 

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