Reverting to a "business-as-usual" mindset is at our own peril.

Instead, we have to reframe our approaches both for short-term survival and to create a better future as #Buildbackbetter and similar sentiments are on all our minds.

Every organisation has been challenged to think and act more creatively than perhaps ever before in our working lives.

Many boards are finding themselves in uncharted waters, alongside the traditional responsibility for risk and assurance, they must also boldly imagine a new future.

Dr David Peterson, director of leadership and coaching at Google, talks about managing in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) and says that leaders comfortable with stress, strife and change are needed because there's going to be more of it.

Boards need to ask themselves now if they have the best-equipped people around the table to envisage the necessary transformational change.

The World Economic Forum stated in its Future of Jobs report that the top three valuable skills of the future were complex problem solving, critical thinking and creativity - all skills which are more likely to be enhanced by having diverse perspectives.

While endorsing the need for diversity of age, gender, demography and upbringing, we propose another consideration: recruiting creatives.

Leaders from the arts and creative industries possess the imagination, savvy commercial ingenuity, resourcefulness and EQ that will allow boards to adapt to new conditions and even revolutionise their organisations.

Surely creativity is one of the key competencies all board members and leaders need now to imagine new paradigms and unshackle the restraints of the past and old ways of doing things.

Both divergent and critical thinking is needed to solve difficult challenges, and creatives are well-placed because they have the innate ability to think outside the box and challenge convention. They intuitively look for ideas from the depths of the unconscious and work at the edge of potential.

So-called "soft skills" naturally reside in many of us to one degree or another, but they are very often well-honed in creatives. Artists comfortably inhabit the world of VUCA and are accustomed to making sense out of chaos. Because their careers are often in the least-funded and most challenging environments, they have learned to not only lead with acute resourcefulness (aka the smell of an oily rag), but create beauty while often challenging assumptions.

There are five practical steps for any board to consider:

• Awareness: Raise awareness around the diversity of thought and the contributions creatives can provide
• Pathways: Identify smart methods to find qualified candidates beyond shoulder-tapping and traditional recruitment
• Training: Provide training for those new to boards to give a greater chance of success
• Listening: Actively listening to others perspectives fosters open-mindedness
• Culture: Take responsibility for shaping the board culture to be one which is willing to challenge convention and embrace blue sky thinking

Individuals with a foundation in the creative arts bring imagination and diversity of thought to the board table. If the governance culture is in place to embrace their perspective, then the discussions will be far richer and the decisions more deeply nuanced and successful.

If we want boards which are not just focused on being risk managers but instead are vision-casters, then making creatives welcome will be a big stride in the right direction.

• Anne Rodda is the founder of Voyager Advisory - Te Kaiarahi. Steven Moe is a Partner at Parry Field Lawyers.
• First published in Stuff. Republished with permission of the authors.
• Please read Anne and Stephen's White Paper: "Tomorrow's Board Diversity: the Role of Creatives"

You can find it at The Wuerl Record. *

This is the sort of action we usually see being taken by a Chairman of the Board, or a CEO, or a politician, and that's very telling; it exposes a mindset that is geared toward management and administration, with a less-than-optimal pastoral sensibility on display.

It's all too much of the world.

I'm being kind, okay?

Here's the truth: Too many of our bishops are men who have not heard someone talk straight to them in decades.

They're beyond insulated — they never hear anyone say "no" to them, or give them a hard time.

You need a little friction in life to keep you grounded — without it you just become slick, and start to spin.

All day yesterday, as Catholics read the devastating and sickening Grand Jury report out of Pennsylvania, Catholics on social media repeatedly asked: "What can we do? How do we begin?

What are the first steps to restoring trust and rebuilding our Church?"

Good questions which we need to answer because it actually is our Church — the People of God's.

Management or ministry?

One noteworthy line in The Wuerl Record may answer "How to begin?"

While I served as Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, and as our understanding of child sexual abuse increased, the Diocese worked to strengthen our response and repeatedly amended the Diocese's safeguards and policies. The Diocese worked to meet or exceed the requirements of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the reporting requirements of Pennsylvania law.

Emphasis mine, because it's important; this is the language of the boardroom, where Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are cited to help assess failures or successes, and to produce subsequent values.

Within context, they are all about the measure of management, not ministry.

And that's where The Wuerl Record has unwittingly shown where we might look to "begin to effect change" — and it is a change that isn't even contingent upon a Papal action; the bishops can voluntarily take this up tomorrow if they are sincere about finding ways to restore trust within the American church.

Priests or executives?

It's quite simple: Currently, most of our bishops are more executives than priests, so let's get them out of the boardrooms, entirely.

In one part of the grievous Grand Jury Report, Cardinal Wuerl is reported to have have presided over the funeral of an abusive priest — one member of a horrific and perverse group who gave gold crosses to altar boys meant to signal that the boys "were optimal targets for further victimization".

At the Mass Wuerl "stated, among other things, that ‘a priest is a priest. Once he is ordained, he is a priest forever.'"

Well, if so, then let our bishops and cardinals act like priests, not elite executives.

It's very clear that too many bishops and cardinals have shown themselves to be untrustworthy overseers; they need to learn how to be priests again.

And there is no better way to do that than to toss them out of the cushy offices, greatly reduce the number of personal assistants, end the entourage, discourage the gold cuff links and the bespoke shirts and the limos.

Send them forth with a pair of good shoes and a working phone, into the mission territory of their parishes.

Let each bishop acquire a diocesan administrative team of trustworthy, capable professional lay people who have no disordered attachment to ideas of protectionism or clericalism.

That removes the prelate from management concerns and permits him to become reacquainted with the real and practical ministry for which he was ordained and should be at the very core of his priesthood.

• Make the course of their day all about ministry and service, bishops reconnecting to their priesthood not through careerist networks but by spending their time actually working and praying with the people of their diocese they're supposed to be serving.
• Get them into the outreach offices, helping families with strained economies — learning about what their daily lives, joys, and struggles involve.
• Get them into the soup kitchens, serving hungry people, and maybe even sitting with them and hearing their stories, learning their names.
• Let them show up at parish RCIA classes and participate in adult formation; let them bless houses, and meet with the bereavement groups and the local Knights, and the Biker's Club, and the Venturing crew. Let them take a seat at a choir practice, once in a while.
• Let them become pastors who talk to their sheep not at them — who are not hidden in a posh house with layers of filtering office staff keeping the flock at a preferred distance, only connecting them with the bishop when matters absolutely demand it.

Starting is not complicated

People ask, "Where do we start?

How do we make the bishops accountable?

How do we dismantle this systemic and shameful infrastructure that has been permitted to grow like a cancer within our church?"

Most of the answers are complicated; this one is not. Continue reading

* The Archdiocese has pulled The Wuerl Record and carries their well-done explanation.

• Elizabeth Scalia is Editor-at-Large at Aleteia and the award-winning author of Strange Gods, Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life and Little Sins Mean a Lot: Kicking Our Bad Habits Before They Kick You.