Arrive Curious, Not Conclusive

The most common mistake new board members make, in Asad Shamim's view, is arriving with answers. A new director has usually been appointed precisely because of a strong track record, and the temptation to demonstrate value in the first meeting is enormous. He resists it deliberately. His rule for the first ninety days on any board, whether chairing the Advisory Board at OM International, serving as Vice President of IFA7 for the UK and UAE, or advising private organisations, is that credibility is built by the quality of your questions long before it is built by the quality of your opinions.

That does not mean passivity. It means structured curiosity: reading two years of minutes before the first meeting, understanding the financial trajectory rather than the latest quarter, and asking management what they wish the board understood better. The answers to that last question are almost always illuminating.

There is also a quieter reason for restraint. Every board has a memory, and a new director's early interventions are interpreted against history the newcomer cannot yet see. A suggestion that sounds fresh to you may be the third attempt at an idea the board rejected twice for reasons that were never minuted. Until you know that history, confidence is indistinguishable from carelessness. The first ninety days exist precisely to close that gap between what you know and what the room knows.

Map the Real Decision-Making System

Every organisation has two structures: the one on the organisation chart and the one through which decisions actually flow. The first thirty days, he suggests, should be spent quietly mapping the second. Who does the chief executive call before a big call is made? Which committee's recommendations are always accepted, and which are routinely reopened? Where does information slow down on its way to the board?

This mapping is done mostly through one-to-one conversations, with fellow directors, with senior management, and where appropriate with external advisors and auditors. Asad Shamim treats these early conversations as the foundation of everything that follows. A director who understands how the machine really works can intervene precisely; one who does not will pull levers connected to nothing. An overview of how he approaches this kind of advisory engagement is set out on the services page.

Days 30–60: Find the One Thing

By the second month, patterns emerge. Rather than commenting on everything, he looks for the single issue where his background gives the board something it genuinely lacks. Sometimes that is commercial: his experience founding and scaling Furniture in Fashion from a standing start into one of the UK's largest online furniture retailers gives him an operator's eye for unit economics and customer behaviour that pure-governance directors often lack. Sometimes it is cross-border: his advisory work spanning the UK, UAE, and Pakistan means he can pressure-test international assumptions that look tidy on paper.

Choosing one lane first is not modesty for its own sake. It is sequencing. A new director who is demonstrably excellent on one issue earns the standing to be heard on all of them.

Days 60–90: Earn the Right to Challenge

The final month of the induction period is where restraint converts into contribution. By now the relationships exist, the context is real, and challenge lands as engagement rather than grandstanding. Asad Shamim's preferred first challenge is almost never a criticism of a past decision, relitigating history antagonises everyone and changes nothing. Instead, he raises a forward-looking question the board has been circling but not naming: a succession gap, a concentration risk, a market shift nobody owns.

He also uses this period to agree expectations explicitly with the chair: how often they should speak between meetings, what kind of dissent is welcome in the room, and how his advisory network, built over years of work in commerce, sport, and diplomacy, can be put at the organisation's disposal. Recent examples of that work appear regularly in the news section.

A Note on Humility

Ninety days is a discipline, not a formula. Some boards are in crisis and need a new director to move faster; some are so well-run that the induction becomes a masterclass to absorb. The constant, he argues, is humility about what you do not yet know. Boards remember how you arrived. Directors who arrive listening are trusted for years; directors who arrive broadcasting spend years recovering.

For organisations considering how an experienced advisor might strengthen their own board, an introduction can be made through the contact section.