No Minutes Taken: What the CoSec Knows - Melbourne

About this event

The Chair–CEO relationship sits at the heart of good governance — and few people have a clearer, more consistent view of it than the Company Secretary. Across successive Chairs, CEOs and board cycles, the CoSec often sees the relationship at its most candid: the early friction, the quiet realignments, the moments when support tips into overreach. Yet this vantage point is rarely drawn on directly.

This roundtable brings together experienced Company Secretaries to reflect — in hindsight, and off the record — on what they've learned about the Chair–CEO dynamic and the board–management relationship more broadly. Conversation will move from the two-person relationship at the top, out to how that dynamic plays out across the whole board, and finish with candid war stories and the one structural change participants would make if they could.

The past-tense, reflective framing is deliberate: it allows for real candour, without asking anyone to comment on a live or sensitive situation.

What we'll cover

• What does a healthy Chair–CEO relationship look like, and what are the early signs when it isn't working — including where the CoSec's support tips into overreach?

• How has the CoSec shaped the board–management relationship — information flow, access and tone — and where has management "managed the board" in ways that concerned them? 

• What role can the CoSec play in protecting the board's independence of thought without becoming adversarial to management, and how does this shift through a Chair or CEO transition? 

• What moments have changed how experienced CoSecs approach the role — and what would they tell their earlier selves? 

• If they could change one structural thing about how Chairs, CEOs and boards relate to one another, what would it be?