Fortune pulled together a group of prominent members of corporate boards yesterday, in partnership with Diligent, to discuss the boards’ role in dealing what Walgreens CEO Rosalind Brewer referred to in yesterday’s newsletter as “the Great Rephrasing” of the corporation—a massive change in business attitudes and actions brought about by the confluence of a technological revolution, a pandemic, a mental health crisis, a racial and social justice crisis, a climate crisis and a rethinking of where and when work occurs. Former Unilever CEO Paul Polman posed the challenge for the group in particularly stark terms:

“This is going very, very fast… When you have this enormous scale of change—bigger than the Industrial Revolution—boards struggle with that. They’re just not equipped to deal with today’s challenges. It might sound harsh but that is the reality. They don’t reflect the real world anymore. They grew up at a different time and did an outstanding job, but then the world has moved on.

“And, frankly, many of the boards have not moved on—be it in digital knowledge, in ESG [environmental, social, and governance] knowledge, in fair representation of the population… We do have a problem that, frankly, with the urgency that we need to act right now, that boards might become a bottleneck.”

Gabrielle Sulzberger, who sits on the boards of Eli Lilly and Mastercard, among other companies, put it this way:

“It’s almost been a perfect storm of, you know, factors that have made us as board members focus on ESG. Between the pandemic, social justice issues, climate, conversations around recruitment and retention, salary inflation…the pace at which we are having to make these decisions and really look in a fundamental way at how we are approaching and engaging with our employees…It is really very challenging.”

And Amy Chang, board member at Disney and Procter & Gamble, offered this:

“The thing that I am so excited about, and that kind of lights me up, is the fact that we have employees pushing so hard on CEOs. If we look at it in the U.S., we’re already at 25% of the population is Gen Z, and they have $150 billion dollars in purchasing power. So, you can’t really afford to ignore them…I can’t even think of a CEO I work with that doesn’t think about that on an almost weekly or monthly basis.”

Brian Stafford, CEO of Diligent added this insight:

“ESG is the single most frequently asked question we get from our 750,000 board member users. Literally the single most frequently asked question. But it’s still super high level.”

For more on the rapidly evolving role of the corporate board, sign up for The Modern Board newsletter here. Other news below.

Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com

TOP NEWS

Car chips

Ford and GM are getting into the chipmaking business. In Ford's case, it's through a strategic agreement with GlobalFoundries; in GM's it's a tie-up with Qualcomm and NXP. It's a big move, prompted by a global semiconductor crunch that has affected all manner of industries, but also by the need to innovate on the feature front. Wall Street Journal

Compulsory vaccination

Austria will become the first western country (Indonesia, Turkmenistan and Micronesia have already done it) to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory across the board. Facing spiraling infections, the Austria government is also taking the country into its fourth full lockdown, as of Monday. Neighboring Germany may yet follow. The COVID situation in Europe is rapidly deteriorating. Fortune

London falling

Ryanair has become the first major company to formally notify its departure from the London Stock Exchange with Brexit as its explicit reason. The airline is fed up with the red tape—it's been struggling to achieve over-50% EU-based ownership, as EU-based carriers must, and would like investors to focus on its Dublin listing. "The volume of trading of the shares on the London Stock Exchange does not justify the costs," it said. Bloomberg

Instagram probe

Ten state attorneys-general have opened an investigation into Meta and its promotion of Instagram to children and teens, despite knowing about potential damage to their mental health and body image. The bipartisan probe follows the revelations of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen; it will look for possible consumer-protection violations. CNN

AROUND THE WATER COOLER

Peng Shuai

The disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, after she accused former Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault, is threatening the Women's Tennis Association's lucrative long-term deal with the country. WTA CEO Steve Simon was not convinced by an I'm-OK email, purportedly written by Peng and distributed via Chinese state media, and the organization could relocate 10 events next year that are scheduled to take place in China. Fortune  

Electric cars

Taxing combustion-engine cars is a good way to encourage their phaseout, but what happens when the job is going well? In Norway, where more than three-quarters of new car sales are electrics, the result is a drying-up of tax revenue, and policy changes to remove incentives for buying an EV. Wired

Non-crypto constitution

The cryptocurrency collective ConstitutionDAO was outbid on its quest to buy one of the 13 surviving copies of the U.S. Constitution. The group's final bid was $40 million; the unidentified winner bid $41 million. ConstitutionDAO has promised to refund those who contributed to the fund. Fortune

Crypto froth

A survey shows a whopping 59% of Generation Z people in the U.S. think cryptocurrencies can make them millionaires. And Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Matt Comyn think financial institutions face "bigger risks in not participating" in the digital-asset boom than they do from the scene's volatility and speculative nature. Fortune

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.