Have you addressed the nuances of your digital director needs?

• Author: Hanson, Lee
• Position: DIRECTOR RECRUITING

With the demand for board-level digital expertise outstripping supply, the pressure is building to acquire it wherever it might be found. Boards can do the following:

* Be clear about what kind of digital leader you should consider. Its not only critical to know which segment of the digital world you should look to for expertise, but also what specific business skills and leadership qualities you are looking for in a digital leader. Do you need an entrepreneur, perhaps someone who can bring a greater appetite for risk to the company or who can provide invaluable insight as your company embarks on bold new ventures or businesses? On the other hand, scope, size, and efficiency may be more important in your digital calculations than risk, in which case you might need someone whose expertise lies in operations or who has scaled a business. In any case, avoid the trap of assuming that any successful digital CEO will automatically possess the business skills and leadership experience you need.

* Assess the place of digital in the company's strategy. Are you contemplating a business transformation, new distribution, new ways to connect with customers, seeking a new generation of customers, expanding into global e-commerce, new forms of retailing, or any one of many other strategies in which digital has obvious application? With overseeing strategy second only to fiduciary duty among the board's responsibilities, such assessment is incumbent upon almost any board in the digital age.

* Understand the market structure of digital expertise. A taxonomy of all of the domains that fall under "digital" would...