Culture as the Board’s Early Warning System

The boardroom is quiet. Papers are stacked neatly. The risk register, a tool used to catalogue and monitor organisational risks, shows its reassuring grids of amber and green. Yet around the table, unease hangs in the air. Something feels off. Staff are leaving faster than they should. A customer issue has been raised more than once. A director wonders aloud why these signals never appear in the pack.

This is the blind spot every board faces. Risk registers tell you what is documented. Culture tells you what is lived. And culture whispers long before risk shouts.

If boards want foresight, they must learn to treat culture as their early warning system.

Why culture signals earlier than the register

Culture is strategy in motion. It is the behaviour people choose when no one is watching and time is short.

The evidence is strong. Workplaces built on trust are consistently more productive and healthier (Harvard Business Review). Cultures that balance care with accountability are more innovative and resilient than those that lean too far toward comfort or control (MIT Sloan Management Review). Regulators have reinforced this, urging firms to see culture not as a slogan but as a driver of outcomes (FCA Discussion Paper 18/2).

Guidance on board effectiveness makes the point clear. Directors hold responsibility for culture, not just compliance frameworks (FRC Corporate Culture Guidance). Academic studies support the link. Companies with strong ethical norms create more long-term value (The Value of Corporate Culture, Journal of Financial Economics). Behavioural science shows how norms shape honesty in financial decisions (Cohn, Fehr & Maréchal, Nature).

What risk registers miss

Risk registers are vital. They track known exposures, assign ownership, and monitor mitigation. But they are not built for the subtle.

Consider a company where quarterly board packs arrived immaculate. The registers were complete. The numbers reconciled. Everything appeared in order. Yet when a serious operational failure erupted, directors asked the inevitable question: why did no one raise this? The truth was that they did. The warning was not written in the register but in exit interviews, in the silence at town halls, and in the repeated workarounds that staff quietly created to survive clumsy processes.

The register saw stability. The culture was shouting drift.

From soft talk to hard signal

Culture only becomes a useful radar when it is made observable. Boards need indicators that carry the same weight as financial metrics.

When audit actions remain open too long, it signals complacency.

When speak-up channels, such as whistleblowing hotlines or ethics reporting systems, fall silent, it suggests fear has taken hold rather than problems vanishing.

When regretted attrition, meaning the departure of valued employees, rises in critical roles, it warns of erosion in capability.

When customer complaints repeat with the same themes, it shows cultural neglect.

When committees return the same paper multiple times, it reveals drift in management’s clarity and confidence.

None of these signals is soft. They are measurable, comparable, and predictive.

Building a culture radar the board can trust

A radar is only as useful as the clarity of its signals. To build one that boards can rely on, three ingredients are essential.

First, clarity of non-negotiables. People must know what always matters. If everything is urgent, nothing is. Resilient organisations define purpose and decision rights that remain clear even under pressure (World Economic Forum).

Second, layered listening. Surveys alone cannot capture culture. Boards need multiple channels: skip-level interviews, open forums, independent facilitation, and the Company Secretary weaving signals across committees. Internal audit can offer perspective on behaviour as well as controls (IIA Global, Auditing Culture, 2nd Edition).

Third, disciplined escalation. Cultural breaches must be treated as hazards, not HR trivia. They require quick routes upwards and visible responses downwards. Staff must see that speaking up makes the organisation stronger.

The Company Secretary’s role

The Company Secretary is often seen as a recorder of minutes. In truth, they are the board’s editor of focus. They sit at the intersection of risk, audit, people, and remuneration. They have the vantage point to see whether the story is coherent or fractured.

Their role is not only to collate but also to discern. To ask: what deserves attention? What belongs in supporting material? Where does the narrative conflict? And above all, what does the board need in order to decide with confidence?

One excerpt from my book The Secret Diary of a Company Secretary captures this well:

“Often, when a new company secretary is brought in, there’s a realisation that the previous service level was inadequate. If you’re good, CEOs frequently express surprise at the breadth of the role, saying they didn’t realise the full extent of responsibilities beyond just minuting meetings. Replacing a great company secretary is however challenging, much like replacing a CEO. The role is infused with personal traits, creativity, and values, making straightforward replacements impossible. A good company secretary learns to think like a CEO, a Non-Executive Director, and the chair all at once. Anticipating questions, staying several steps ahead, and creating value in every engagement is the real hallmark of the role.”

When the role is played well, the rhythm of the boardroom changes. Time shifts from translation to judgement. Directors move from asking “what does this mean” to debating “what should we do.”