Boardroom persuasion, climate risk and being the outlier, with Julie Baddeley, Chair, Chapter Zero Alliance

"If you're an outlier, it's not a very comfortable place to be.”

This week's guest on the Boardroom Confidential podcast, powered by Sherpany, is Julie Baddeley, Chair of the Chapter Zero Alliance.

Julie has sat on boards in executive and non-executive roles for 25 years across consumer, retail, financial services, and professional services. 

She shares the boardroom stories that have shaped her career, including what it was really like to be inside the boardroom of a mortgage lender as the 2008 financial crisis unfolded. How she watched complex financial instruments get waved through by people who'd been in banking for decades, and decided to push back.

She also shares the lesson she learned the hard way at a major food chain, where she pushed too early for vegetarian and healthy options, and why framing climate as business strategy, not activism, is what makes the difference.

Boardroom Confidential is brought to you by Sherpany, a leading meeting management solution, designed to meet the unique needs of the board, board committee, and executive meetings. 

Chapters

(00:00) Introduction 

(04:24) Challenging Groupthink 

(09:07) Reframing Climate as Strategy 

(13:05) When Dynamics Break Down 

(18:56) Taking a Company Private

Key takeaways

Challenge groupthink with evidence, not conviction

(03:26)

It was a real lesson for me that being a long-term member of an industry doesn't necessarily mean you know the right things for the future. It's very easy for a board to slip into groupthink where everybody's reinforcing everybody else's thinking. If you're an outlier, it's not a very comfortable place to be.

What I've learned is that it's no good using rhetoric on any of these subjects, whether it's climate, nature, AI or financial risk. It's no good sounding like a campaigner. You're a board member and you're part of the collective decision-making to make that organisation successful. [...] It's got to be anchored in facts, business strategy and commercial reality.

Make climate part of business strategy, not a separate agenda

(07:43)

This can only be tackled by business, and it can only be tackled by boards if it's going to be tackled by business, because it's such a big issue that you need board support. [...] The problem with any change programme is that you set the ambition, but then you hit the barriers when you start working out how to make that change.

The overarching approach is that this is a business commercial issue. We explore resilience, adaptation and opportunities. [...] The way we deal with boards is to frame the conversation around the normal board discussion. It's about business strategy. It's about building resilience and a sustainable business that won't be knocked off course because its supply chain has collapsed. It's about looking at risk in a much more intelligent way. [...] It is the business strategy.

Good ideas still depend on good timing

(11:05)

Timing is absolutely crucial, especially in the boardroom, because if you don't get the conversation going at the right time, you can really go adrift.

I had my own experience with a big food chain where I was very enthusiastic about vegetarian food and healthy salads. I thought that was a really important part of the offer. You want to be ahead of the competition, but not so far ahead that you misstep and trip over. In this case, I was, without any doubt, too far ahead of the customer. As a result, we had lots of wasted product because people just didn't buy it.

The timing point is really illustrated by the fact that I stepped off the board and, within two years, the vegan sausage roll was the best-selling product for that company at Christmas. It was probably good to raise it early because it got people thinking, but it was too early in terms of pushing forward at speed.

The chair creates the conditions for meaningful challenge

(13:35)

I joined a board where the board evaluation had given flying colours to every aspect. [...] Within literally two meetings, it was obvious that they wanted to get rid of the chief executive, and secondly the chair was basically not letting anybody have a discussion. Every discussion point was damped down.

[...] I cannot emphasise enough how important the role of the chair is. If you're someone who's trying to present an alternative point of view or challenge the status quo, you need the chair to give you the airtime to do that and not drown you out with the voices of people who've been in the sector for the last 20 years and think everything's going to keep going the way it always has, because it isn't. Everything is changing.

Ask questions thoughtfully and pick your battles

(17:18)

I would always share with the chair in advance if I was going to raise a point that had an element of challenge, because I think the chair needs to be able to prepare for that. I don't think you get any advantage from blindsiding anyone. Maybe you've misunderstood because they're deep specialists and you're not. I've certainly had experiences where the chief executive has explained it and the point has gone away.

If I think there's going to be a difficult topic and not much time, I'll actually plan those questions in advance.

[...] If I could go back to my first board meeting, I'd tell myself to pick my battles carefully, be really clear about the priorities, use the right questions, and do it through a commercial lens with a good fact base to support those questions. You want people to see you as credible and knowledgeable, but also challenging and supportive at the same time.