5 Ways Executives Can Manage Conflict with the Board

Harvard Business Review (Apr 15, 2024) by Sabina Nawaz urges executives to make covert disagreements with the board overt and to actively foster healthy dialogue. The central image is the executive as the room's thermostat — raising tough topics and pushing productive conversations rather than absorbing tension silently. Context: routine internal pressures are amplified today by macroeconomic scarcity, global conflict and technological disruption. For SEA mid-market CEO/CFOs whose chairs were once mentors, the framework offers a script for confronting board drift without rupturing the relationship.