Experienced NEDs aren’t immune to drift. Here’s how to stay sharp, valuable, and truly strategic at board level.
Even the most seasoned Non-Executive Directors can find themselves reacting rather than leading. Time in role brings experience and insight but it can also bring blind spots, routine thinking, and a subtle pull towards consensus.
Strategic drift doesn’t always announce itself. It can look like efficiency or harmony. But over time, it creates boards that avoid tension, settle into patterns, and lose their edge just when the organisation needs clarity most.
This article explores how established NEDs can refresh their perspective, renew their challenge, and remain strategically anchored…even after years in the boardroom.
Recognising Strategic Drift
Boardroom drift is rarely dramatic. It happens quietly. Here are four common warning signs:
1. Risk gets treated as routine
When conversations around risk become familiar and formulaic, it’s a sign the board may be ticking boxes rather than reassessing its true exposure. Strong boards revisit risk appetite regularly , weak ones default to the past.
2. Strategy doesn’t evolve
If strategy documents read the same year after year, it could mean the organisation is over-relying on outdated assumptions. Continuity is not the same as progress.
3. Agreement comes too easily
Consensus can be comforting. But when there’s little challenge or dissent, it may indicate groupthink or disengagement. Effective boards create space for difference.
4. The outside world is ignored
Boards that fail to bring in cross-sector insight risk becoming too inward-looking. Market shifts, geopolitical trends, and consumer behaviours all impact long-term strategy. They need to be part of the board’s thinking.
How Established NEDs Stay Anchored
High-performing NEDs don’t settle. They continuously interrogate their own contribution and stay outward-facing. Here’s how:
Reassess your value
Even with tenure, your role isn’t static. Revisit the question: What do I bring to this board today – and is it still what the business needs next?
Look beyond functional skills. Consider your challenge profile, your network, and the way you help shape long-term thinking.
Build in external stimulus
Curate new sources of insight – cross-industry panels, regulatory briefings, or strategy forums. Step outside your sector to see patterns forming elsewhere. Strategic freshness often comes from unexpected comparisons.
Stay future-focused
Dedicate time for horizon scanning. Suggest a future-only session with no operational updates or KPIs. Explore emerging risks, disruptive trends, and structural shifts. Boards should be asking “What if?” far more often.
Ask better questions
Experienced directors don’t need to speak more, but they do need to challenge better. Frame questions that reveal blind spots and test resilience.
A few to try:
Challenging Without Destabilising
Experienced NEDs often hold back from voicing dissent for fear of disrupting board cohesion. But silence isn’t neutral, and constructive challenge is part of the job.
- Partner with the Chair. Propose a process for more structured dissent – even a “devil’s advocate” role in key decisions.
- Use questions, not conclusions. Raise uncertainty without positioning yourself in opposition.
- Set the tone early. The longer dissent is withheld, the harder it becomes to introduce it productively.
Complacency is Quiet
Credibility is earned over time but it can also become a cushion. Established NEDs must resist the comfort of assumed value and instead recommit to fresh thinking, bold challenge, and long-term stewardship.
A board that avoids drift isn’t louder, flashier, or more forceful. It’s more self-aware. It asks better questions. It brings in different voices. And above all, it keeps moving – anchored not in past performance, but in clear, courageous thinking about what’s next.
Want the latest NED opportunities, insights and intelligence delivered directly to your inbox – for FREE?
Join The NED EDIT now – because board roles shouldn’t come with a price tag.
