The Boardman International Blog shares insights from Boardman Members. In this post, Caroline Bondier shares what resilient boards do particularly well.

Resilience has become a defining trait of successful companies. But resilience is not just about weathering crises—it’s about adapting with purpose, learning continuously, and evolving ahead of the curve. And that journey starts at the very top: with the board.

Caroline Bondier is the founder of Arcticana Oy and a Boardman Member.

Too often, operational excellence is misunderstood as an internal, efficiency-driven concept—something relegated to manufacturing floors or back-office functions. But in reality, true operational excellence is a leadership discipline. It touches strategy, culture, customer value, employee experience, sustainability, and ultimately, long-term competitiveness. It’s not “operations excellence”—it’s organizational excellence.

The Board’s Role in a Resilient Culture

Boards are uniquely positioned to shape the conditions in which excellence can thrive. They don’t need to know the nuts and bolts of process mapping or Lean Six Sigma. What they do need is a systems-level view of how improvement connects to strategy, governance, and value creation—and a willingness to ask the right questions.

Resilient boards do three things particularly well:

1. Embed improvement into purpose and strategy.
   They ensure that excellence is not a project, but a way of thinking. It’s not about short-term optimization, but long-term relevance.
2. Foster a culture of learning and credibility.
   Boards that value real-world experience and curiosity support leaders who don’t just drive change, but live it.
3. Treat improvement as a relationship.
   One CEO I recently met described continuous improvement as a romance: “You need to keep the relationship alive throughout the marriage.” That means consistency, trust, and emotional investment—even (and especially) during hard times.

Excellence as a Competitive Advantage

I want to share with you a perfect example of thought leadership on the topic, from a recent conversation with the CEO of a leading multi-billions revenue generating Finnish company. His belief, and so is mine, is that companies that successfully embed continuous improvement into their culture don’t talk about “OpEx” or “Lean” as buzzwords. They translate expectations into everyday behaviors, making improvement accessible and natural across all functions and levels. It’s no longer about a center of excellence delivering KPIs—it’s about making excellence everyone’s business.

Executive and non-executive boards that internalize this mindset aren’t just better prepared for uncertainty. They’re better positioned to lead organizations that can anticipate, adapt, and grow. And you can bet that this shows in their results in ways that create lasting impact for their customers, their employees, and society at large.

A Call to Action for Boards

If your board hasn’t yet explored operational excellence beyond the operational silo, now is the time. Not because of a trend, but because excellence is a muscle that gets stronger with use—and because resilience is built in the everyday, not just during crises. Start small. Ask better questions. And recognize that your role in shaping a resilient, high-performing organization is not just strategic, it’s cultural.

Read More

Continue reading on the future of operational excellence in “Today’s good to great: Next-generation operational excellence”; January 19, 2024 article by McKinsey & Company https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/todays-good-to-great-next-generation-operational-excellence

About the Author

Caroline Bondier is a French business advisor with 20 years of experience driving operational excellence and transformation across global companies headquartered in Finland. She is the founder of Arcticana Oy and the OpEx Trail community and currently serves as a board member at Skanio Oy. Bondier is a Boardman Member.

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