Two principals. Three decades of board work. One question we keep returning to.
How do boards actually make key decisions, and how do they know if they are getting better at it? Between us we have spent more than thirty years working with boards, as board members, advisers, advocates, and researchers. The question above is the one that has stayed with us, and it is the question MxC Advisory exists to answer.
What we believe
Three decades of governance reform have given boards more structure, more disclosure and more process than at any point in their history. They have not, on the whole, given boards a way to know whether their decisions are getting better. Governance architecture and the boardroom dynamic are now regularly assessed, but the outcomes of key decisions are not.
We think the next phase of governance is about closing that gap. The methods that worked for board composition fifteen years ago can work here too: clear measurement, honest data, change framed as a business question rather than a compliance one. We work with boards that want to assess the quality of their decisions and use that information to continuously improve.
How we work
We do not take on engagements where the brief is to confirm what the board already believes. The work we are interested in is the work that requires the board to look honestly at what it is doing, what it is missing, and what it would need to change. That requires leadership willing to engage with answers it may not want to hear. Most relationships begin with a single conversation. Some become long-standing.
The principals
Baroness Helena Morrissey
Helena founded the 30% Club in 2010, when women held under 10 per cent of FTSE 350 board seats. The campaign helped move that figure to over 40 per cent within a decade, by reframing board composition as a question of decision quality and business outcomes.
She was Chief Executive of Newton Investment Management for fifteen years and has since held multiple chair and non-executive director roles, mainly across financial services companies. She is the author of A Good Time to be a Girl and has twice been named one of the fifty most influential people in global finance by Bloomberg.
At MxC, Helena leads on culture including risk culture, governance, and board advisory work.
Niamh Corbett
Niamh was a founding Steering Committee member of the 30% Club and has spent her career on the practical architecture of how boards work. She spent a decade on the senior team at Board Intelligence, where she advised chairs, company secretaries, and executive teams on governance and board effectiveness across the FTSE and beyond. She is also a non-executive director.
At MxC, Niamh leads on decision quality assessment and improvement: the methodology, the measurement, and the framework that sits behind the Decision Intelligence practice.