Costs go up but how much can you make up for it in your prices to your customers without hurting their view of you? This is one of the current concerns at board level in many industry groups, as a result of the recent emergence of inflation.
Claus Gregersen is CEO of Danish investment company Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker. Speaking on Thursday, he listed current board-room topics under three categories by how long they have been hot: Always, Recent years, and Today.
Evergreens are leadership, ethics/values, strategy, and checks & balances. Recent-years climbers are digitalisation, ESG and the supply chains implications not least from the Covid-19 crisis. Then, urgent subjects right now include inflation and recession risk, geopolitics and geographic sourcing, and cybersecurity.
Transparency becomes core
The question of whether to keep business with Russia is one of the ones that can deserve a lot of discussion in today’s board rooms. Not only is it a question about how to act, it even goes back to principles: should we be guided by ethical or financial objectives?
Another example of dilemmas is in solar electric power. We need it for the environmental transition, but it builds predominantly on Chinese production, which brings geopolitical delicacy.
So is there any action board members can seek to take generally, among all these dilemmas? Yes, according to Claus Gregersen, much is one if the business operations are designed for transparency.
“The worst thing we can have is darkness and guessing.”
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