Simon Small
Former AI Founder and Diligent Exec
Key Messages from Simon’s sessions:
Leading AI Change in the boardroom: Simon pointed out that the last big technology change in the boardroom was the introduction of the Board Portal. That was largely lead by the Secretariat. A board portal was completely unknown 17 years ago when he launched the first board portal into the UK & EMEA (Diligent). Today is similar when it comes to AI. Company Secretaries can gradually build capability around AI and play a critical role in how AI will be used within the Secretariat that serves the boardroom (which upskills Directors). Co Secs are also in a privileged position to foster an AI Centre of Excellence.
Knowing Your AI from Your Generative AI: Simon’s mission is to upskill the Secretariat so that there is an understanding of how AI and Generative AI actually works in practice. When the Secretariat understand the principles behind AI and have a framework for understanding the rapid pace of AI tools (such as Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI) and exactly how it can be used both in the boardroom and by Company Secretaries themselves, then there is a confidence and empowerment that takes place. From the 40 minute AI Keynote session at the CGI Annual Conference participants ranked themselves before and after the event, showing a significant leap in confidence.
Specific Use-Cases (examples) for AI within the Company Secretariat: Simon’s research had identified that the number one area the Secretariat believed AI could make a difference was in minute taking. At the CGI conference Simon had a fireside chat onstage with a leading Financial Services firm’s company secretary, who had spent 15 months perfecting AI-enabled minute writing. This demonstrated that it was possible to use AI and not breach the sanctity of the boardroom (no recordings and transcriptions were permitted). It reduced the Co Sec time by 88%. The Chairman commented that the minutes were of a standard significantly greater than the previous minutes (without knowing that the high-quality minutes were AI-enabled).
The Deception Around AI: Simon also pointed out the difference between Consumer and Enterprise. Although there was an explosion of popularity around Apple’s iPhone when it launched, many corporations banned Apple devices. Blackberry reigned supreme. Apple was deemed consumer until the board portal was available on the iPad, then Non-Exec Directors were choosing an iPad for their board papers. Enterprise IT teams had to accept Apple devices onto the network. Apple became Enterprise. Right now most AI we see in the media announcements is “consumer AI”. Enterprise Generative AI is in its infancy. At the heart of the adoption issue is data: accuracy, provenance, IP, leakage. So the deception is that AI-enabled minutes might sound easy. But there is a jungle to get through for each Secretariat and board around legal, ethics, risk and technology.
Why an AI Centre Of Excellence is the access-point for AI: Simon says that every organisation of scale should establish its own proprietary AI Centre of Excellence that brings together the intent of the company (driven by the CEO and Board), representatives of Legal, Ethics, Risk and Technology as well as the end users (key staff members). This strengthens the internal conversation around AI (against the noise in the consumer market). It also makes the challenge of deploying AI simpler and more efficient. Simon used a picture to illustrate the process of getting AI-enabled minutes live: it was a room of lasers similar to what Tom Cruise might navigate on a Mission Impossible. The job of an AI Centre of Excellence is to deactivate these lasers, reduce the hoops and hurdles, while staying true to the core values of the organisation.
We caught up with Simon after spending 2 days with 600 Company Secretariat members at the CGI conference and he shared these nuggets:
“I wanted everyone to come on an AI Journey at this event. I had planned to show the direct connection between implementing a board portal and implementing AI. People really stepped up their understanding of AI after my keynote on Day One. On Day Two I had lunch with three Company Secretaries (quite randomly, as happens at conferences) and I was amazed by the sophisticated conversation we had around AI. They had really leapt forward and oozed confidence and clarity. The impact was way beyond what I thought they might take from the event.”
“A question from the audience during a Microsoft session I co-hosted was whether the role of the Co Sec will be automated fully by AI. The good news is that the Company Secretary will be the last role standing when it comes to AI. For the simple reason that the sanctity of the boardroom (typically) does not permit recording of meetings. So there is no training data. If there is no training data, then there is no AI model with any efficacy to automate the Company Secretary role. Co Secs are one of the safest professions from AI.”
Skills
Being prepared for AI adoption is investing in capability that gives your organisation an advantage in the future. To become ready for AI, it is important to raise the level of knowledge and instigate the types of conversations that will move things forward.
Importantly asking the questions:
- How much do we really understand AI, Generative AI and LLMs in the Secretariat and at the board level?
- Is the AI conversation around the board table in a healthy state? If not, how can we shift the conversation to being constructive around AI?
- How joined-up is the conversation around AI within the whole organisation? How easy or hard is it to instigate and deploy an AI initiative?
- Would we benefit from an AI Centre of Excellence?
Taking some action & further information:
Simon Small trains and speaks to Co Secs and Boards about AI. He offers lunch ‘n’ learns and Director’s briefings.
His AI training company is Kegai.io which stands for Knowledge Elevator Generative AI.
Simon was the founding Managing Director for Diligent when it first entered UK & EMEA in 2007 and introduced the board portal he co-founded the unicorn Arria NLG, a world leader in Natural Language Generation (the early form of Enterprise Generative AI).
Find out more
If you would like to subscribe to our CGPro newsletter, you can contact Equiniti via our website at Register To Receive Our Monthly CGPro Network Updates or e mail us at CGPronetwork@equiniti.com. Given the speed of change in this area, it’s something that we will be revisiting as the regulations start to come into place.