Many boards are quietly failing.
Yours might be one of them.
B2B founders, CEOs, and chairs are sitting on boards that look fine on paper. The agenda is followed. The accounts are signed off. Then a crisis lands and nothing works the way it should.
If you have ever sat in a board meeting and wondered whether anyone in the room is going to say what actually needs to be said, you are not alone. Read on.
So who fixes this?
Built to deal with the things this page is describing.
Seerden Board Partners is a board and governance advisory practice based in Auckland, New Zealand. Founded by Andrew Seerden, it works with founders, business owners, CxOs, and chairs across New Zealand and internationally.
The practice covers three areas. Each one targets a specific point at which boards quietly fail.
Commercial Growth Oversight
Strategic and revenue counsel for B2B founders, owners and CxOs facing scale-up decisions.
Advisory Board Design and Chair Effectiveness
Charter, structure, and chairing for boards that deliver value, not just minutes.
CEO and Founder Counsel
One-on-one counsel for senior executives, CEOs/Owners handling succession, transitions, and difficult board dynamics.
Strategic governance. B2B growth.
Does any of this sound familiar?
If even three of these ring true, your board is leaving value, time, and protection on the table.
None of these are abstract. Each one is happening, right now, in boardrooms across New Zealand and Australia.
Your CEO presents 87 slides. Three hours later, you still have not discussed strategy.
45 percent of boards have no emergency CEO succession plan. The day your CEO is hit by a bus, you have nothing.
Your board has a 98 percent governance score on paper. When a real crisis lands, it freezes.
Your advisors are old friends, ex-colleagues, or your existing consultants. They cannot tell you what you actually need to hear.
67 percent of boards will not raise uncomfortable issues. Yours is probably one of them.
Cyber. AI. Geopolitics. Climate. Every one is on next month’s agenda. Your board has expertise in none of them.
Your management feeds the board curated good news. The reality on the ground is invisible from the boardroom.
You hit a revenue plateau two years ago. You keep doing more of the same. You keep getting the same result.
You called it an Advisory Board. The law might call it Governance. The legal exposure could cost you fifty thousand dollars and counting.
64 percent of CEOs who resign voluntarily do so because their board mismanaged them. Yours could be next.
Your last advisory meeting ended with no actions, no metrics, and no ownership. The next one will too.
Your sales team is closing at $50 a month when your strategy demanded $2,500. You will not find out for a year.
If you nodded at three of those, this page was written for you.
The price of a quiet board.
The bill arrives in pieces. None of them look like a board failure. All of them are.
A wrong hire. A missed signal. A bad acquisition. An exit at the wrong multiple. Each one bleeds money, time, or trust. Few ever get traced back to the boardroom where they began.
25%+
Discount on business value when buyers see a high-risk leadership transition.
$2M
Single mission-drift acquisition committed without proper board oversight, in a real case Andrew has seen.
$900M
Acquisition approved with unsigned due diligence reports, because the board did not push back.
75%
Of board time spent on compliance and hindsight. Almost nothing on foresight.
3 to 6 months
How long it takes to recruit a new senior CEO externally. Time you do not have when there is no plan.
$50K+
Cost difference between Advisory and Governance Boards, when one is misclassified as the other.
None of these are theoretical. Every one is in the case files.
Book the call.
If three of those just landed, you already have your answer.
Forty-five minutes by phone, video or over a coffee (our shout!). No charge. No obligation. We agree whether the problem is worth solving and what it might take.
Who we work with.
Three kinds of B2B leaders. Three different chapters. The same need for sharper counsel.
Whether you are scaling, restructuring, or planning your exit, the structural challenge is the same. Top-table conversations are too thin, too political, or too late. We fix that.
Founders
Preparing to scale
You have product-market fit. The next chapter needs governance discipline you have not built yet. We help you put it in place without losing speed.
CEOs / MDs
Needing experienced counsel
Running the company is lonely. You need a sounding board with real commercial scars, not theory. We sit alongside you on the hard calls.
Boards
Lifting their effectiveness
Director skills, decision quality, and chair effectiveness can all be sharpened. We work with chairs and boards to lift the standard at the top table.
How we fix it.
Three offers. Each shaped to the chapter you are in and the pain you are trying to solve.
No long contracts. No mystery fees. Each engagement is built around a clear charter, with measurable outcomes, before any meetings begin.
Service 01
Growth Advisory Boards
Solves
Directionless meetings. Advisor friend-circles. No measurable output. Plateaued revenue.
We design, chair, and facilitate Advisory Boards built around your specific growth challenges. Quarterly meetings. Independent chair. Outcomes tracked against a written charter.
Service 02
Independent Director Services
Solves
Weak crisis response. Missing CEO succession plan. Governance score that collapses under pressure.
Andrew sits on governance boards as an independent director. He brings commercial growth oversight, CEO succession experience, and steady judgement under pressure.
Service 03
CEO / MD and Founder Counsel
Solves
Lonely CEO or business owner. No honest sounding board. Advisors with no skin in the game.
One-on-one trusted counsel for CEOs and founders. Focused on the calls only you can make. Confidential. Direct. Commercial.
Each one starts the same way. A forty-five minute scoping conversation.
Why Seerden Board Partners.
Many advisors have read the books. Few have run the businesses. The difference shows in the boardroom.
“Andrew is not your typical consultant standing at the top of the hole that you and your business are in and telling you what to do; he jumps into the hole with you and helps you climb out of it.” Privately-held Business Owner
30 years of senior commercial leadership at IBM, Compaq, and Hewlett-Packard across New Zealand and The Netherlands.
11 years as Chair of a national not-for-profit board, including founder-CEO succession, financial restructuring, and national expansion.
Engaged by listed, privately-owned and large-scale clients incl. Air New Zealand, Vodafone NZ, Spark NZ, Service Foods, Fonterra, Datacom, Enviro NZ, Fletcher Building, Fairfax Media, Southern Cross Health Insurance, 2degrees – and many more.
Director and co-founder of Menu Compass AI, a food production analytics venture.
Member of a global multi-country advisory network through Virtual Advisory Board.
MBA, Newport University, Utrecht. Continuous learning across AI governance, climate disclosure, and modern board oversight.
Theory has its place. Experience has the room.
About
Meet Andrew Seerden.
Independent Director | Growth Advisory Chair | B2B Commercial Strategy
Andrew is an independent director and Growth Advisory Board chair based in Auckland. He brings 30 years of senior commercial leadership in B2B businesses, with senior roles at Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, and IBM across New Zealand and The Netherlands.
As Chair of the Board of Trustees at StarJam for 11 years, he guided a national charity through scale, financial restructuring, and founder-CEO succession. Through Seerden Board Partners and Fresh Perspectives, Andrew advises founders, business owners, CxOs, and boards on commercial growth, board effectiveness, and revenue strategy.
He holds an MBA from Newport University, Utrecht.
Based in Auckland. Available for select board engagements.
What good looks like.
The same research that exposes the failures shows what works.
Companies with active, well-built Advisory Boards do not just avoid the pain. They outperform their peers across revenue, productivity, and strategic confidence.
24%
Higher annual sales
18%
Productivity gain
77%
Of organisations report positive outcomes
15%
Uplift in financial results
30%
Increase in business confidence
Sources: Advisory Board Centre, BDC research, Boardstream white paper.
These are not aspirations. They are the standard outcomes of a well-built board.
How it works.
No long contracts. No mystery fees. No theatre.
Each engagement is built around your purpose, your stage, and your priorities. Same four steps, every time.
Scoping session
Forty-five minutes by phone or video. No charge. We agree the problem worth solving.
Charter and structure
We document the purpose, cadence, measurement, and exclusions before any meetings begin.
Quarterly meetings
Typically four to six per year, with on-call access between meetings when you need it.
Annual review
We test the value created against the charter and reset for the year ahead.
Typical investment
NZD $40,000 to $70,000 per year
Initial term: six to twelve months.
Rolling thereafter on monthly notice.
Clear scope. Clear cadence. Clear cost. From day one.
Recent insights.
Practical commentary, written for directors, founders, and chairs.
Plain-spoken articles on governance, advisory boards, and B2B growth. Read on LinkedIn and here, weekly.
The same thinking, behind the boardroom door.
Frequently asked.
Straight answers to the questions most clients ask before they engage.
What does an Advisory Board actually cost?
Most engagements run between NZD $40,000 and $70,000 per year. That covers the chair fee, four to six structured meetings, on-call access between meetings, and a written annual review against your charter. The cost is typically 50 to 70 percent less than recruiting an equivalent full-time executive.
Advisory Board or Governance Board. Which do I need?
An Advisory Board offers counsel without legal duties or fiduciary responsibility. A Governance Board carries statutory accountability and director liability. Most growth-stage firms benefit from the lighter, more agile Advisory model first. We help you classify the structure correctly so you avoid both under-protecting and over-engineering.
How long is the typical engagement?
Initial term is six to twelve months, depending on the charter. Most engagements continue beyond that on a rolling basis with one month notice on either side. We do not lock you in.
Do you only work with technology businesses?
No. The methodology is rooted in B2B commercial leadership and applies across aviation / transportation, IT services & solutions, AgTech, engineering and professional services, manufacturing, food and beverage (FMCG), Telco and infrastructure, media and news, construction & building materials, insurance and financial services, and not-for-profit. Andrew has chaired and advised across all of them.
What happens in the scoping session?
Forty-five minutes by phone or video. We discuss your stage, your priorities, and what is keeping you up at night. By the end you will have a clear view on whether an Advisory Board, Governance Board, or one-on-one counsel fits, and whether we are the right partner. There is no charge and no obligation.
Still have questions? Bring them to a scoping call.
Strategic Governance. B2B Growth.
Auckland, New Zealand
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