The tools for building board connections

People think gaining a board appointment is a journey. It is not. It is a very clear process. At its core, there are three things you must be clear about and have the tools to build board connections. 

The process

The first is which organisations you both want and could be appointed to. Without this clarity, you will not only lose focus, but you are in danger of losing your motivation and will find yourself disgruntled and frustrated that all your hard work is not resulting in a board appointment.

The second thing to do is ensure that you have a strongly articulated and compelling reason for you to be appointed. That means having: A NED CV, application document, a ‘water cooler’ pitch, and an answer to the first question you will be asked in an interview: ‘Why should we appoint you?’.

Finally, on the assumption that you have the first two elements in place, you need to know how you will be appointed. It is only going to happen one of four ways.

1. In response to an advertisement
2. Through a search firm
3. By directly approaching one of your target companies or
4. Via a personal connection.

Over 65% of all board appointments occur via personal connections. However, it is not the people you know well and see regularly that are the most powerful. Instead, it is the people you meet rarely or infrequently or are yet to meet who are the most important. Indeed, 50% of all board appointments occur through these ‘weak ties’. So, who are they, and how do you connect with them?

Weak Ties

Whilst it is kind of true that almost anyone might have access to a board appointment opportunity, it is overwhelming to approach this process that way. Not only is the number of people you need to connect with overwhelming, but the vast majority of them will not value a conversation with you, or you may not want to have a conversation with them. So, it is important we narrow that list down – it is weak ties that count.

Here’s what you need to do

Firstly, develop a list of 12 organisations – the organisations or companies that you believe you both want to be appointed to and would likely appoint you. Then research and create a spreadsheet of who the current and past NEDs are of that company. That’s it to begin with. However, you can go further. You can also list the past and current NEDs of the stakeholder organisations working with your targets, the stakeholder organisations too and even past NEDs of your targets’ competitors. In the end, you should have a list of a minimum of ~20 current and past NEDs for each of your 12 targets – though it could easily be 30 or 40.

Once you have created your list of ‘weak ties’. You then need to find a way to connect with them. This is not a cold-calling exercise. Instead, it is about creating a connection with them. The reason these people are on your list is because of the target companies you chose – organisations that reflect your background, passion and experience and that you believe in. The NEDs of these companies and those who work with the organisations have something in common with you as a result. That makes them much more susceptible to engaging in conversations with you. 

Why connect?

You are connecting with the people for two reasons. The first reason is to gain information about your target company. Information and connections that you can use to position yourself for any upcoming board appointments. Approximately 15% of people are appointed this way. However, a more important reason is that these ‘weak ties’ are NEDs of other companies too. They might sit on one other board or perhaps six. They may also have sat on a number of boards in the past. These people are important because a study was done recently that found that over 50% of organisations with boards recruited a new board member in the past 12 months. So, by connecting with these people, you are connecting with people who have access or knowledge of board vacancies. What makes this more compelling is that the vast majority of these vacancies are filled via ‘informal application processes’.

How do you connect?

With your list in hand, you now need to find ways to reach these weak ties. There are two resources I recommend. 

LinkedIn is one of them. We, and our clients, use this all of the time with great effect. It is a really appropriate way to connect with NEDs. You can reach out via InMails or just connect initially with a friendly note to introduce yourself.

The second way we find the contact details of these weak ties is via an amazing piece of technology – Contact Out. This tool is the solution to the problem of missing email addresses in your existing database, as well as building a list of very specific contacts from scratch. This tool features a lightweight and easy-to-use Chrome extension that finds the email addresses of anyone on the aforementioned sites. The extension provides you with your prospect’s personal and work email addresses whilst giving you the option to search for their emails using their company’s domain. It also has a couple of interesting features, namely a dashboard that lets you save and organise your leads and a search portal that provides you with a very comprehensive way to find the email addresses of your people who have a LinkedIn account. We use this all of the time on behalf of our clients.

In summary

If you are serious about your board career, then you must take the statistics seriously. If 80% of people are appointed to boards ‘informally’ but you spend all of your time waiting for recruiters to call you or just responding to advertised opportunities, then you are doing yourself a disservice. The good news is that finding and connecting with ‘weak ties’ who will really power your board appointment aspirations is one of the easiest things to do. Tools like ContactOut and LinkedIn make it easier than ever. 

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