As corporate complexity multiplies into 2026, the board chair will have to grapple with the upheaval on the corporate landscape. Historically centered on governance stewardship, strategic guidance, and CEO partnership, the chair is increasingly becoming the architect of enterprise risk governance and – in real-time – the chief navigator for continuous strategic revision. With regulatory divergence, trade policy U-turns, AI’s threat to classic operating models, climate, and cyber risks mounting, corporate governance has rarely been this complex. Risk management can no longer be a subset of oversight, but the defining lens through which strategy, execution, and enterprise value must be evaluated.
Key takeaways:
- The board chair must be chief risk integrator. In 2026, risk will transcend committee-level review. The chair will be responsible for ensuring that geopolitical, trade, regulatory, technology, sustainability, and operational risks are integrated into every strategic discussion.
- Strategic revision over strategic review. Strategic oversight will have to shift from periodic review to continuous revision. Annual strategy off-sites and quarterly updates will not match the pace of risk mitigation and value-capture opportunities. Scenario planning, stress-testing, and rapid course correction will need to be part of the board’s regular operating rhythm.
- Chair effectiveness will be measured by resilience. The defining performance metric for board chairs will move from procedural excellence to organizational resilience. The board’s ability to anticipate disruption, adapt strategy, and respond decisively before risks crystallize into value-destroying events.
- Board leadership and succession will need to prioritize risk literacy and adaptive judgment. Chairs of the future will need deep fluency in emerging risk domains (e.g., AI, cyber, geopolitics, climate, trade, regulation) and the judgement to guide boards through uncertainty.
Overcoming the board chair effectiveness gap
According to the latest research, the strongest performance signal for the CEO is the correlation between perceived board support and the chair relationship. 83% of CEOs who report having effective board support also reported an excellent relationship with the board chair. Furthermore, CEOs who had explicit expectation-setting discussions with the chair were more likely to feel supported (68% vs. 50% without such discussions).
Furthermore, 2025 surveys suggest chair effectiveness is increasingly assessed through the lens of closing the perceptions gap, especially in risk management. 43% of boards still meet CEOs on the same formal quarterly schedule even as market and geopolitical volatility accelerate; this poses a structural issue that, in practice, is often owned by the chair’s agenda and design.
Risk integration and strategy revision in practice
Global companies with high capital exposure to this new tranche of latent risks – geopolitical, climate, cyber, critical minerals, energy security – have adopted new models of risk management, integration, and strategy revision led by board chairs.
- Microsoft’s answer to cyber with Secure Future Initiative. Launched in 2023 to ensure faster strategic revision loops and governance, especially on cybersecurity, to more quickly course correct, improve accountability, help convert “security” from a diffuse responsibility into managed oversight. The organization allocated tens of thousands of engineering resources, which meant tradeoffs for other engineering and product priorities.
- Boeing emphasizes board-level safety governance. Faced with a number of safety crises, Boeing created a standing aerospace safety committee at the board level and implemented structural changes intended to strengthen safety oversight and reporting lines. Thereby, safety oversight shifted from “one of many” audit topics to a standing governance priority.
- Meta expands risk committee to include privacy and product compliance. Meta’s governance materials reflect board committee restructuring that cover a breadth of risk oversight as well as privacy and product compliance. With a dedicated board committee, the board chair created a clearer governance “home” for repeat review and iterative controls. With a $190 million settlement tied to shareholder allegations of privacy oversight failures, the cost of a more ad hoc approach to risk integration became tangible.
- Starbucks improves risk visibility more broadly. Starbucks announced its intent to establish a new board committee focused on Environmental, Partner, and Community Impact oversight, framed as an evolved and integrated governance approach. A central focus was to elevate topics that would otherwise land inconsistently across committees and ensure clear accountability. This was found especially to be the case as stakeholder demands increase on questions of workforce, environment, community impact.
- Shell architects robust scenario planning system. Faced with greater investor and legal pressure, Shell publishes scenario work (“what if?” futures) designed to stress-test decision-making rather than forecast outcomes. To make the scenario planning more accessible to shareholders, Shell institutionalized an advisory vote mechanism to inform scenario readiness, especially with regard to its Energy Transition Strategy. These scenarios forced leadership and boards to define signposts, trade-offs, and “if/then” actions across uncertain futures with a host of interconnected and independent risks.
What happens next?
As shown from these examples, board chairs have stepped up to the challenges of a broader risk landscape. Benefits tend to cluster around faster escalation, clearer accountability, and elevated enterprise resilience. Challenges, on the other hand, cluster around cultural change, governance complexity, and execution gaps (that the best laid plans can’t account for).
In 2026, effective board chairs will not be defined by how well they preside, but by how well they anticipate, integrate, and revise.
The chair’s most important contribution is no longer overseeing process but ensuring that the board stays ahead of risk while strategy is still malleable.
Actions board chairs can take:
- Rewire the board agenda to address risk and strategic revision. Redesign agendas so that enterprise risk and strategy are considered together, with strategic decisions – capital allocation, M&A, market entry – explicitly evaluated through a downside risk lens.
- Cadence reconsidered. Move from static quarterly reporting to standing “revision checkpoints” at each meeting to understand where high-value decisions stand and the divergent and often contradictory risk calculus.
- Break down risk silos across committees. Ensure audit, compensation, technology, nominating and governance, and sustainability discussions are connected by a shared risk narrative and embedded into committee charters.
- Leverage chair’s convening power. Boards will have to synthesize and connect risks across committees and leverage her convening power to do so. Instead of relying on management, 2026 will require hands-on participation from all board members.
- Establish board and board chair thresholds and triggers. Define a dynamic, board-level risk appetite linked to growth, resilience, and downside tolerance, and establish clear triggers for immediate board action.
- Elevate risk fluency across the board. Prioritize continuous education on emerging risks – climate, sustainability, trade, AI governance, cyber resilience, geopolitics. Use external briefings to challenge management assumptions. Leverage third-party training to bring in the latest research and findings.
Questions for the boardroom:
- Risk integration. Are enterprise risk insights integrated into every major strategic discussion, not isolated within audit or risk committee?
- Revision rhythm. Do our board agendas and information flows support real-time strategic revision rather than annual check-ins?
- Metrics and insights. Are risk and performance dashboards updated with forward-looking indicators that drive board decisions? How will board chairs and directors be held for organization resilience?
- Board skill set. Does the board composition reflect competencies aligned with emerging risk vectors (e.g., AI, geopolitics, cyber, climate risk, trade, regulatory complexity)?
- Scenario planning. Are we stress-testing our strategy against plausible macro risk scenarios at every board meeting, with actionable management responses?
Additional Telesto resources:
- BoardCollective by Telesto is where current and aspiring corporate directors learn to lead on sustainability
- Telesto Executive Briefing: 2025 energy Reality check – What Telesto got right and wrong
- Board Series: Markets moving faster than board skills – Facing the hard reality of AI, ESG, supply chain, and cyber
- Board Series: The Kitchen Sink Committee – AI, Cyber, ESG, and now tariffs. Are Audit Committees ready?
- Board Series: The CEO Confidence gap – How can boards step up in a context of global uncertainty
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