Dave Does Directorships

Becoming a director sounds impressive. The title changes, the email signature gets longer and, if you're lucky, the biscuits improve. What often doesn't happen is anyone sitting you down and explaining what being a director actually means.

Dave Does Directorships is a practical, straight-talking guide to what directors are really there for, the legal duties they cannot simply delegate away, and the awkward situations that arise when boards, managers, founders and senior leaders all start assuming somebody else is dealing with it.

Written in the same irreverent style as Nobody Told Dave, this is not a dry corporate-governance textbook. It looks at what happens in real boardrooms: directors approving things they don't fully understand, founders forgetting which hat they are wearing, senior managers drifting into de facto or shadow-director territory, boards relying too heavily on one dominant executive, finances getting tighter, people problems being dismissed as "operational", and everyone suddenly becoming very interested in the minutes after something has gone wrong.

Along the way, Alan Pavey explains directors' duties in plain English and shows how to approach decisions using the simple DAVE framework: Duty, Ask, Verify and Evidence.

You'll also explore board dynamics, conflicts of interest, shareholders, cash, insolvency, whistleblowing, risk, cyber security, AI, health and safety, acquisitions, succession, crisis management and the difficult question of when a director should challenge, refuse, seek advice or walk away.

Serious subjects, sensible advice, occasional bad language and plenty of examples of how perfectly intelligent people can still cock up the boardroom.

Because the question is not simply whether the Board approved it.

The better question is whether it should have.