ICSAN Board Dynamics study plan

Map each statutory and fiduciary duty of a director (care, skill, diligence, good faith, loyalty, disclosure of interest, avoidance of conflicts) to at least two concrete board behaviours you have observed or can find in public governance reports

Draft a one-page decision tree for handling a declared conflict of interest, from declaration through recusal to minute recording, and test it against three hypothetical scenarios

Distinguish the legal duties of a director from those of a non-executive chair and a company secretary, writing a short comparison table with the source of each obligation noted

Build a personal glossary of 25 key governance terms in English with one-line working definitions, flagging any term you cannot yet define without notes

Explain how fiduciary duties interact with risk oversight, articulating the board's risk appetite role versus management's risk-owning role in under 400 words

Analyse two published enforcement or sanction decisions (any jurisdiction) and extract the specific director conduct that triggered liability

Outline an ethics and compliance escalation route from employee to board audit committee, identifying the three points where it most often breaks

Self-test on Domain 1 and Domain 8 using 40 recall questions you write yourself, then re-study every item you answered wrongly

Design an ideal board composition for a mid-sized listed company, justifying each seat against strategy, sector knowledge, independence and diversity criteria

Differentiate independence, objectivity and absence of conflicts using three worked examples where a director is one but not the others

Draft committee terms of reference for audit, risk and remuneration committees, specifying membership, quorum, meeting frequency and reporting lines

Distinguish reserved-to-board matters from delegated authority by producing a two-column delegation schedule with at least 12 items

Construct a model board agenda for a quarterly meeting that allocates time to strategy, risk, performance and compliance in defensible proportions

Identify five behavioural traps in board decision-making (groupthink, anchoring, deference to the chair, sunken-cost escalation, premature consensus) and write a countermeasure for each

Design a board pack standard: what a paper must contain, maximum length, how recommendations are framed, and the deadline for circulation

Practice minuting a difficult discussion by writing minutes for a hypothetical conflicted debate, capturing decisions and dissent without attributing blame

Build a board evaluation framework covering individual director review, committee review and full-board review, with the criteria and rating scale for each

Write 15 behavioural questions a chair could ask in a peer review conversation, avoiding questions that invite a yes/no answer

Design a 90-minute director induction and a rolling continuing-professional-development plan mapped to identified skill gaps

Draft an action-tracking template that converts evaluation findings into owners, deadlines and follow-up reporting to the board

Map the legitimate interests and information needs of five stakeholder groups, and state the board's engagement mechanism and frequency for each

Articulate the board-management boundary: where oversight ends and executive decision-making begins, using three worked scenarios

Draft a one-page protocol for a chair and CEO relationship, covering one-to-one cadence, escalation and disagreement handling

Prepare talking points for a board responding to a hostile shareholder question at an annual general meeting, keeping to disclosure constraints

Revisit the weakest three topics from your week 2 and week 5 self-tests and close each gap with written notes and a worked example

Complete a full timed mock under exam conditions, then classify every error as knowledge, comprehension or application failure

Practise ten scenario questions aloud, structuring each answer as issue, principle, application, conclusion within 90 seconds

Summarise the entire syllabus onto six revision cards, one per page, with no more than 12 bullet points each

Run a second timed mock and target a measurable improvement over the week 7 score

Drill your weakest 30 recall items daily until each is answered correctly three times without notes

Rehearse application-style answers on group dynamics and stakeholder conflict, the two areas most often answered generically

Finalise an exam-day plan covering time allocation per question, order of attempt and a strategy for questions you cannot fully answer