2025 board priorities: reinvesting for the future

This webcast will highlight focus areas for boards as they balance important priorities, including overseeing strategic portfolio planning and guiding management in navigating the upside and downside of technology transformation.

Join the EY Center for Board Matters on Thursday, February 13, at 3:00 p.m. ET for another episode in our webcast series, Better Questions for Boards, designed to provide directors with insights and questions to consider as they engage with management on a variety of complex boardroom issues.

EY research shows that CEOs are optimistic about growth and investment opportunities in 2025. Our panel members will talk about how successful boards can support the reshaping of portfolios to reinvest for the future, including investments in technology. They will also address how boardroom discussions are moving beyond the basics of technology and relevant use cases to more strategic conversations about how to scale technologies for competitive advantage while addressing rising cybersecurity risks. Finally, they will explore the areas in which boards want to focus more time and resources as they consider their connected and sometimes competing priorities.

This 60-minute CPE-eligible webcast will be moderated by Robyn Bew from the EY Americas Center for Board Matters.

Panelists will include:

• Jim Doucette, Global EY Parthenon Consumer Products & Retail Leader, Ernst & Young LLP
• Beatriz Sanz Sáiz, EY Global AI and Data Leader
• Brian DePersiis, EY Americas Cybersecurity Strategy Leader, Ernst & Young LLP
• Yvette Kanouff, Board Member, Sprinklr, Entegris, Amdocs, and Science Applications International
• Tracey Doi, Board Member at Pentair PLC and Quest Diagnostics Inc.

Key takeaways

• Directors and executives are feeling cautiously optimistic about 2025. The outlook for the deal market is positive given the decreasing cost of capital and a more favorable regulatory environment, and economies around the world are stable and growing. However, geopolitical uncertainty continues. Directors can set the tone that the ongoing uncertainty also provides opportunity for transformation, big bets, disruption and differentiation. Boards can ask about what opportunities the company has, whether management is taking appropriate risk and whether the company has the right culture for change.
• Board members can challenge the rigor of the company’s strategic portfolio review process. Companies need an unbiased quantitative way of looking at and comparing their business units to make decisions on whether to accelerate, grow, sustain or fix parts of the business – and that rigorous assessment needs to be communicated to the board. Directors should ask about the framework that management is using to evaluate each part of the portfolio under different scenarios (e.g., changes in interest rates or tariffs).
• As the market moves to agentic artificial intelligence (AI) and applying AI at scale, boards’ guidance to management should include questions about what agentic AI will mean for the business and the workforce, and whether the company ought to be incremental or disruptive in its approach to AI transformation. Board members should also ask questions about data quality and infrastructure, the effectiveness of change management as the technology transforms work processes, and how investments in AI are prioritized.
• Boards need to actively engage with management in setting the risk appetite regarding AI and cybersecurity. These discussions should also consider the risk of inaction (i.e., being slow to embrace AI) and residual cybersecurity risk. With that clarity, the board is better positioned to understand where the company should invest. It is also important to define the categories of risk, because the risk appetite may vary across the portfolio.
• Generative AI (GenAI) is enabling growing cybersecurity threats, but leading companies are harnessing the power of AI for cybersecurity defense and response. Board members should seek to understand how their companies are using AI to enable threat intelligence feeds, detect malicious activity sooner, streamline reporting to stakeholders and provide simulated training exercises that yield better outcomes.
• Directors can enhance their engagement with the company’s CISO by asking about the potential impact on the business from top cybersecurity risks, how the company’s most critical assets are being protected and how effectively metrics are being used. They might ask questions like: What is our most valuable data, and how much are we willing to lose? How long can we afford for our systems to be disrupted or inoperable? What are the financial and nonfinancial implications of a cyber disruption to the business?
• Directors want to spend more time on and are seeking more information about innovation and evolving technologies. Some boards are accomplishing that by setting up a dedicated technology committee or subcommittee, allowing them to deepen their engagement and clarity where it is needed for as long as it is needed. Through crisp and frequent updates, the committee can involve the full board in its work. When the company reaches a different level of maturity, that committee or subcommittee may be phased out.
• Board members can take a few steps to effectively address new and emerging topics that are competing for space on boardroom agendas in the face of time and resource constraints, including:
  • Consider a separate committee (permanent or temporary) to go deeper on certain topics.
  • Extend the meeting time to allow for strategy-focused discussions.
  • Have the CEO spend time with individual board members to confirm alignment on the company’s priorities.
  • Hold a board dinner with senior leadership the night before a board meeting to discuss the agenda and enable meeting efficiency.
  • Define what the board wants in materials from management and in what format.
  • Have the CEO provide written comments ahead of the meeting capturing the key priorities and issues, which board members can reference where they want to go deeper.
  • Conduct an executive session at the beginning of the board meeting to discuss what the board needs to get out of the meeting, which helps to drive more focus.
  • Continue to seek insights, educational opportunities and hands-on experiences, especially with emerging technologies.
• Uncertainty can lead to transformation, and board members should set high expectations around the rigor of the company’s strategic planning process. They can ask management about the opportunities and whether there is a risk of not being aggressive enough. Now might be the time to be disruptive and look for differentiation – and determine if the right culture is in place to lead and drive growth.

What we heard from the audience