Professor Norton travels the length and breadth of the country, talking to directors about how to prepare for e-business. The US is more open to new ideas and much more economically rational. Small business in the UK assumes that getting a website built and hosting it will cost much more than it does. Directors need to have a basic familiarity with new technology. It's absolutely imperative that every single member of the board should have been helped to use the internet, have bought something on it and visited competitors' websites.
People are embarrassed about being shown up among their peers.
It affects every function around that board table. Boards need to thrash out how e-business will change what their company does. This strategic planning may need the help of a facilitator, but not a management consultant, he argues. The technique has to be to make the board answer these questions collectively. If you're making a major transformation, you might want to appoint to the board whoever is in charge of implementation.