Tech / Board View | Joanna Coles

“In this market there’s nothing else for CEOs and founders to do other than execute, execute, execute.”

Chair of unicorn consumer-tech Grover, Joanna Coles is a Director of Snap Inc. (Snapchat) and Sonos; and private companies Density and Blue Mistral. The British founder, CEO and editor moved to the U.S. in 1997 and has advised a range of tech-led companies including Klarna, Cornell Capital and Bustle Digital Media.

The former Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan, she was the first Chief Content Officer of Hearst and is also the Executive Producer of ABC Freeform’s highly acclaimed The Bold Type, now in its fifth season and inspired by her career.

Joanna shares her thoughts on how boards can help founders tune out the noise to successfully execute and why the Theranos scandal is forcing Silicon Valley’s boards into a radical rethink.

How are your boards supporting Founders and CEOs right now through huge market changes?

The most important thing a board member can do is to ask questions, and try to understand enough about the business for their questions to be relevant and helpful. These often come from the distance being a board member gives you - giving the CEO a different take on a situation that they may be over-familiar with.

One of the advantages of being slightly older is that you’ve gone through several cycles of market change. We’re now seeing the entire Tech sector being forced to reassess their cash positions and make significant cost cuts across the board. This is true from Google and Amazon down to the smallest start-ups. Understandably, this can be really scary for CEOs, so it’s useful having people who’ve been through it two or three times before, who can advise you on getting rid of anything you don’t need, that isn’t material to the growth of the business. They’re also there to tell you it’s important not to panic: eat properly, sleep properly, see your family - don’t lose your health over this. This is about managing something bigger than you and keeping staff motivated when they’re scared for their jobs. It’s also about giving them confidence to say there may be opportunities where others are retreating.

What excites you most about Chairing a growth company?

You can create special relationships and see things from an independent point of view. As Chair, it’s satisfying and also challenging to bring together the right alchemy of experience, smarts and flexibility to support a company in our current incredibly challenging markets.

It can be fun to get to know founders and watch them flourish in the early stages. When a product hits the market, it can be really exhilarating to be part of that journey.

What have you learnt from the Snap and Sonos boards that you’ve applied to your growth companies and vice versa?

Ultimately it all comes down to execution. In this market, there’s nothing else for CEOs and founders to do other than get their heads down and execute, execute, execute. One CEO I was talking to looked around the room and asked “what should we be doing?”. The only answer we could give him was “you’ve got to execute better and just carry on”.

Sometimes obvious advice can get lost in the frenzy. The news is full of doom and gloom, it’s hard to separate your own experience and what your own business is going through from the media’s coverage of the catastrophic markets. CEOs need to have a clear sight of where they’re going, shutting out the noise is incredibly important and quite hard to do.

Leaders are dealing with a changing set of workplace issues too. They have young staff who don’t want to be in an office - and managing staff remotely is more complicated - who are expecting that companies proclaim their values at every moment. This can be a distraction for management when they should be trying to cut costs, save jobs and execute more effectively to get the product out of the door.

A good Executive Leadership Team has had to change how they consider staff: a disgruntled employee could bring a whole company or management team down via Glassdoor or Twitter. All CEOs and leaders are now very mindful of the power of their employees.

Management may have one set of priorities, the board and shareholders have another - as do staff. The board’s job is to help their CEOs not to overreact. The board is there to support management and be thoughtful around the need to respond without getting caught up in the drama. You’re there to help them keep perspective.

You’ve scaled multiple industries (media, broadcasting, tech, investment), how does that industry insight help you advise your companies as they scale?

You’d have to ask them! I hope I can understand issues from all sides - from investors, shareholders and the company’s point of view. I’ve been lucky to have been involved with a variety of companies all of which have scaled ridiculously fast. That’s a very different experience to sitting the board or leading a company that is lumbering along with single digit growth.

What key lessons have helped you adapt to becoming a Chair?

I’ve had the great good fortune to work with some excellent chairs. Many of the best Chairs are quiet, attentive and listen really hard. A great Chair should make sure everyone around the table is being heard, and the people with relevant experience are able to get their expertise across.

Management doesn’t always want to listen to investors but if people have invested money, they have a right to understand how the company is run. It’s difficult, but a good Chair needs to find that balance.

I hope being a Chair has made me better at listening and thoughtful of the alchemy of the group we’ve bought together, which should cover a lot of the skill sets the company needs.

Any other tips for boards and their directors?

For boards to develop trust, I think it’s most effective to spend time together outside of the board room at a social level. Then you’re excited to see each other and you can get to know each other beyond the resumes. Also tenure is important, it takes time to get to know a company, particularly if you’re only meeting as a board four times a year - time served makes an enormous difference. It’s hard to ask questions when you don’t understand the company - you become more valuable as a board member the longer you’re there.

Since the Theranos scandal, the conversation has changed around getting only the great and the good onto your board. Sure, it’s useful to have one or two big names with great networks but you also need people who are going to do the work and dig into the company. The Theranos board didn’t see when something major was amiss, when it was an issue the board should have been all over. It’s easy to be wise after the event, but I think Silicon Valley’s “fake it til you make it” mantra has lost its appeal, for boards anyway. You need board members who are going to poke around in companies, ask questions and make sure things are what they seem.