June 2023
Chris Clark conducts interviews with leading corporate directors and subject matter experts for Stuart Levine & Associates, a global consulting and leadership development company. The Planet Governance™ interview series features the views of corporate directors, chief executives, and governance experts on timely issues from succession planning, board refreshment, and board composition to cyber-resiliency to stakeholder activism.
This technology industry executive and highly engaged board director says employees remain one of the weakest links in securing the organization…
Carol Meyers, experienced board director and go-to-market executive, is the Chairman of the Board at Crunchr. Meyers brings decades of experience in the tech industry, including C-suite and executive leadership roles at Rapid7, LogMeIn, Shiva Corporation, and Unica Corporation. She helped grow these four venture-backed companies from early-stage to successful IPOs, creating billions of dollars in value for investors and employees. In addition to Crunchr, Meyers serves on the boards of Markforged (NYSE: MKFG) and Rewind, Inc., and is a partner at Glasswing Ventures.
Carol Meyers
Chris: How does tone at the top enhance proper cyber hygiene throughout a company?
Carol: If the CEO and the Board demonstrate a commitment to reducing cybersecurity risk, employees will as well. Unfortunately, cybersecurity measures are often seen as obstacles to innovation and creativity. It is crucial for CEOs and boards to strike the right balance. They should allocate adequate funding to cybersecurity and IT teams and mandate the search for solutions that enhance cybersecurity resilience while allowing the business to continue innovating.
Regrettably, employees remain one of the weakest links in securing the organization, especially with the rise of remote work, making them prime targets for cybercriminals. Cybersecurity training tends to be tedious and burdensome. I believe that cybersecurity teams should seek assistance from the strategy and marketing teams to develop more effective communications and training programs. With robust support from the CEO and the company culture, employees will become more diligent and comprehend the value that good cybersecurity practices bring to the organization and themselves.
Chris: As our country is facing tectonic changes in the workforce, what’s your advice to other board members on coping with these dramatic shifts?
Carol: In 2021, the services sector accounted for 78% of the U.S. GDP, while the software industry contributed 9%. Both sectors heavily rely on their workforce to generate value. Although service providers may possess other assets, it is the people within these businesses who have the greatest impact on the company’s brand, reputation, and customer loyalty. The same holds true for the software industry. While a software company may possess valuable intellectual property developed by its founders, its ability to innovate, grow, and compete hinges on its leadership and employees.
Boards must comprehend their company’s culture and assess whether it enhances or detracts from the organization’s competitiveness in the market and its ability to deliver long-term value to shareholders and stakeholders. They should consider employee risk as part of their governance and consider how societal and technological shifts might affect workforce dynamics. Boards need to ask: How will AI impact the industry? What skills and capabilities will be required to thrive in an AI-driven world? How does remote work influence our industry and company? How might these dramatic shifts evolve in the next one to five years? What is the impact on our people strategy, and our risk profile?
We need to assess our preparedness by asking: Are we investing in the appropriate skills and people analytics technologies to facilitate data-informed decisions? What are the leading indicators we are watching to identify new trends, opportunities, and threats? How is our organization preparing for these changes?
These questions are crucial for boards to address and closely monitor. People risks, climate risks, cybersecurity risks, competitive risks, supply chain risks, and economic risks all fall within the board’s purview.
Chris: Given your Chair role at Crunchr, how do responsible corporate directors create cultures of innovation and creativity for the workforce?
Carol: Research from around the world links employee engagement to greater innovation, productivity, and profits. According to Willis Towers Watson, “companies with above average employee engagement achieved profit margins five points higher than their sectors’ typical results. By comparison, companies with below average employee engagement faired 13 points lower.”*
Taking into account the impact on corporate performance, culture and engagement are board level issues and are critical to sustained growth and success.
Boards should be measuring and discussing workplace engagement, as well as the people related risks we were just discussing. They should encourage their executive teams to invest in robust workplace analytics to enable fine-grained measurement of engagement, provide critical information on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and drive improvements in performance management, employee development and training, succession planning, and more.
Considering the dramatic technological, social, and workforce shifts that are occurring, boards must require better insights about people operations. People strategy teams should have access to analytics that are as robust as those used by their peers in sales, marketing, and operations.
(*Willis Towers Watson, “Why is Employee Engagement Important,” By Angela Paul and Stephen Young | May 2021)
Chris: You serve on both public and private venture-backed company boards, sometimes as the only independent board director. How does your role differ between the two?
Carol: In both cases, the board has a duty of care to the shareholders. However, in a venture-backed company, the shareholder base is tightly concentrated. The largest shareholders, which are usually the CEO and the venture capital firms, are represented on the board. The venture firm partners who serve on the board have a fiduciary duty to the limited partners of their venture funds. This can create tensions.
As an independent board member, I do not have this conflict. I consider all the shareholders, including the employees and early investors. As an independent board director for a venture-backed company, I am often the only board member with significant operational experience. That means, the board and executive team are relying on me to bring my operational experience and knowledge to boardroom discussions, and I am often more involved with the leadership teams of the private companies on strategy.
I have been quite fortunate to serve on boards where the venture partner board members do a masterful job of representing their limited partners as well as the interests of all shareholders, as is the duty of a board director. The good news is those interests often align well. Most of the board members I have served with understand the board’s evolving role in serving all stakeholders – shareholders, employees, and community. They care about the culture of their companies, they care about their social and environmental impact, and they execute well the duty of care they owe to their limited partners.
Chris: Carol, it’s great getting reconnected, and thank you for a most compelling conversation.
Carol Meyers, experienced board director and go-to-market executive, is the Chairman of the Board at Crunchr. Meyers brings decades of experience in the tech industry, including C-suite and executive leadership roles at Rapid7, LogMeIn, Shiva Corporation, and Unica Corporation. She helped grow these four venture-backed companies from early-stage to successful IPOs, creating billions of dollars in value for investors and employees. In addition to Crunchr, Meyers serves on the boards of Markforged (NYSE: MKFG) and Rewind, Inc., and is a partner at Glasswing Ventures.
Chris Clark joined Stuart Levine & Associates as a senior consultant after a distinguished career at the National Association of Corporate Directors. His expertise ranges across a variety of disciplines including corporate governance (with data-driven board assessments and cyber risk diagnostics as cornerstones), strategic communications, conference management, and digital content creation.
