Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level. Your stories, your experience, your insights and your perspectives will have impact.
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
Miranda Naiman came on my podcast and shared how she built a board for her own company where she and her co-founders were deliberately outnumbered.
Every entrepreneur asks her the same thing: why would you do that to yourself?
Her answer: because we could only take the business so far on our own conviction. And conviction without challenge becomes blindness.
Plus numerous other gems, for example about her bringing supreme value to a company by also thinking as a board director while being a client. Or about the risks of a chair being too close to the CEO.
7 Sept 2026
Make Boards Work - With Anna Lecat
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
Anna Lecat sat down with me on the podcast and dismantled boardroom polite culture in one sentence:
"Every conversation you do not have is a decision you haven't made."
We spent decades watching directors lean on pre-board dinners to build trust. Good wine, easy small talk, zero friction.
But pleasant dinners do nothing when hard trade-offs hit the agenda the next morning. Everyone smiles, nobody challenges the forecast, and polite silence gets mistaken for consensus.
Boards often blame an aggressive CEO or a difficult founder for messy governance. In practice, the real breakdown sits with directors who hesitate to enforce boundaries the moment a conversation feels uncomfortable.
The most effective board members do not dodge tension. They step right into it with one direct question:
"What are we actively avoiding naming in this room?"
Anna wrote the book on navigating high-stakes disagreement (Loving Conflict). In this episode, we unpacked how to stop postponing friction and turn candid pushback into actual governance leverage.
17 Aug 2026
Make Boards Work - With Andrew Smith
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
Says Andrew: "When Tiger Global invested in 2011, I was convinced someone would walk in and take control. They didn't. For years, our 'board meetings' were an email update and a reply that said 'looks good, keep going.' I thought that was wonderful. It wasn't."
We talked about all of this . The full arc. From having no real board, to the investor who changed everything by saying "if we're going to sell this company, it has to be bigger than Shane and Andrew."
How that one sentence shifted how they operated. How Andrew kept slipping into "please mark my homework and give me an A" mode instead of using the board as a genuine resource. And how they eventually sold Yuppie Chef for a result none of them expected.
If you're a founder figuring out what a board should actually be, or a board member wondering how to be genuinely useful, this one might resonate.
28 Jul 2026
Make Boards Work - With Gordon Rapkin
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
Gordon's phone rang. It was the lead investor. First words: "Please don't quit."
Gordon Rapkin sat down with Marc O.Stöckli on the Make Boards Work podcast and told that full story, including what happened next, which turned out to be the smartest thing anyone ever recommended to him.
They separated the rearview mirror from the forward look. Changed who spoke when. Set ground rules that should have existed from day one.That company went on to sell for 2.5 to 3x the typical multiples in our space.
We also talked about why Gordon believes every board needs an independent chair, why he treats the board as a competitive weapon and not a reporting obligation, and why the executive session, the part most CEOs resist, might be the most valuable fifteen minutes of the quarter.Worth a listen if you've ever walked out of a board meeting feeling worse than when you walked in.
6 Jul 2026
Make Boards Work - With Alejandra Martinez
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.Alejandra has been an independent board director for almost two decades now. Across large banks, fintechs, family businesses in Mexico and Latin America. And if there's one thing she has learned, it's this: your conviction is your reputation.
A chairman of a large family-owned company once invited her to lunch. He told her, "Whenever we need to build reserves, we'll do it. But not now." Alejandra told him her recommendation was to build reserves the way the authorities require. Otherwise she couldn't stay on the board.
They built the reserves.
Alejandra and I sat down on the MakeBoards podcast and we talked about moments like that. The courage it takes to speak up when you know it won't be popular. The times she has been invalidated, rejected, shut down in board meetings. And why she kept speaking up anyway.
We also got into the difference between serving on large bank boards versus fintech boards. Why she finds fintechs more satisfying. How risk management isn't just a technical function but something that lives inside every board decision. And why a board that looks the same thinks the same, and a board that thinks the same misses everything.
If you sit on boards, build companies, or work with independent directors, I think this one's worth your time.
23 Jun 2026
Make Boards Work - With Jan Dzulko
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
When Jan started Everphone ten years ago, he didn't think he'd still be the CEO.
But here he is. Eight funding rounds. North of 100 million in revenues. And a board that's changed so completely from year one to year ten that it barely resembles the same institution.
We sat down and we talked about that full arc.
There was a specific meeting where Jan finally said, can we take fifteen minutes and talk about why none of us are enjoying this board thing? That conversation changed everything.
We also got into something Jan thinks about a lot: boards can be too toxic or too nice, and both are equally dangerous. The sweet spot, clear, kind, direct, is harder than most people think.
Worth a listen if you're a founder figuring out your board, or a board member wondering why the CEO seems guarded.
9 Jun 2026
Make Boards Work - With Manuel Hinz
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
Manuel has been running a PE-backed roll-up in education. Capital was the easy part.
He scaled from around 50 people to nearly 250 in two years. The deals weren't the bottleneck. The money wasn't either.
The people were.
26 May 2026
Make Boards Work - With Joanna Ling
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
We got into something Joanna does not usually talk about publicly. What it's actually like running a family business where the board is your cousins, your siblings, your parents, your uncles, and your in-laws.
In a family board, the most important thing isn't the numbers.
The most important thing is that everybody's happy. That's the good and the bad of it, all wrapped into one.
We also talked about the other end of the spectrum - sitting on a venture-backed startup board where people shout at each other, the company almost runs out of money month to month, and everyone in the room has their own capital on the line.
Two completely different worlds. Joanna has learned from both. And so can you:
If you're in a family business, working with investors, or trying to figure out what a board should actually do for you, I think this one's worth a listen.
12 May 2026
Make Boards Work - With Ritesh Doshi
Make Boards Work aspires to be the number one business podcast for all those who aim to take their board work to the next level.
Ritesh Doshi served on someone else's board for 7 years before he built his own.
7 years in someone else's room, noticing what worked and what didn't.
When he eventually resigned from that seat to focus on his business, he asked the person he'd been advising to join his own board instead.
The board he then built around himself is the board he wished he had served on.
We went deep on intentional composition, finite terms, skip-level access, and the question every family-business board should answer first.
1 May 2026
Make Boards Work - With Charles "Chuck" Bender
We covered a lot of ground - what the Navy taught Chuck about running a company, why he builds his advisory boards specifically around his blind spots, and the difference between healthy ego and toxic ego in the boardroom.
One thing we kept coming back to: the worst place to be as a CEO isn't uncertainty. It's being absolutely certain and absolutely wrong.
That's where a good board earns its keep.
10 Apr 2026
Make Boards Work - With Stefan Kirchhofer
We got into something I don't think gets discussed enough, how governance actually works (and often doesn't) in family businesses. The unwritten rules. The baggage. The sibling who was bad at math now running finance.
We also talked about what Stefan has come to believe is the crowning moment of entrepreneurship: knowing when to let go. When you're no longer the best owner.
And a line Stefan emphasizes: sunlight is the best disinfectant. Conflicts of interest handled at the start are rarely a big deal. Handled late, they destroy trust.
If you work with family businesses, sit on boards, or are thinking about bringing in outside capital, I think you'll find this one useful.
24 Mar 2026
Make Boards Work - With Henri Kuehnert
We talked about what actually happens inside boardrooms when things go wrong. The ego games. The power imbalances. The moments where trust breaks and nobody recovers.
Henri shared a line he has been saying for years: there are only two ways to have a real voice on a board. As chairperson. Or as the one board member closest to the founder.
Everything else is decoration.
We also got into the prisoner's dilemma that plays out when a company is dying. Why investors send associates instead of partners, and what that really signals. And why IQ is massively overrated in the boardroom.
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