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"Boards That Dare" offers actionable solutions to help board directors, chairs and CEOs move away from outmoded thinking and practices.

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In today´s world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (increasingly referred to as ´VUCA´), change is constant, meaning that cause-and-effect thinking at executive level will no longer move the needle; boards need to become more proactive and collaborative in their approach to organisational strategy.

While many boards across the globe continue to direct their companies and interpret their own strategic role based on 20th century models, Marc Stitger and Sir Cary Cooper show how these outdated methods place severe restrictions on how well a business can perform, or even survive at all, in a modern VUCA world. "Boards that Dare" explores how organisations can create boards that have the strategic capability, the desire and the sheer guts to identify and deliver successful strategic change in a fast-moving and disruptive environment:

- what the ´ideal´ board looks like
- how boards can engage in high-value dialogue and decision-making
- improving a board´s cognitive understanding to unlock essential insights about their environment
- the growing need for boards to make difficult strategic decisions.

Based on the authors´ first-hand experiences, as well as their own research and interviews with board members and chairs of international private, public and not-for-profit organisations, this highly practical and accessible book delivers the necessary answers as to how boards can and should contribute to organisational strategy.

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CARY COOPER is Professor of Organizational Psychology and Health, Lancaster University Management School and Pro Vice Chancellor (External Relations) at Lancaster University. He is the author of over 100 books (on occupational stress, women at work and industrial and organizational psychology), has written over 400 scholarly articles, and is a frequent contributor to national newspapers, TV and radio. He is a Fellow of the British Academy of Management and also of the Academy of Management (having also won the 1998 Distinguished Service Award). In 2001 he was awarded a CBE in the Queen´s Birthday Honours List for his contribution to organizational health. He is Chair of The Sunningdale Institute, a think tank on management/organizational issues, in the National School of Government. He was also the lead scientist to the UK Government Office for Science on their Foresight programme on Mental Capital and Well Being (2007-2008), and was appointed a member of the expert group on establishing guidance for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence on ´promoting mental wellbeing through productive and healthy working conditions´, 2009. He is Chair of the UK´s Academy of Social Sciences. Professor Cooper is also the President of the Institute of Welfare, President of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, a national Ambassador of The Samaritans, a Patron of the Anxiety UK, and Patron of the National Bullying Helpline. HR Magazine named him the 6th Most Influential Thinker in HR in 2009.

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