A field manual for first-time and early-stage directors on GCC private, family, and nonprofit boards — written by a practitioner, for the practitioners who replace her one meeting from now.
However you find us — book in hand, chairman's recommendation in ear, company secretary sitting next to you — there is a path written for the meeting you are walking into next.
Verify your copy and open the full vault: 38 chapter-linked artifacts, board-pack triage checklists, question banks by committee, and the tools most readers use before their next meeting.
Unlock the vaultRead the first chapter. Download the Boardroom Question Bank sampler. Take the Director Readiness Scorecard — and decide whether the rest of the work is for you.
Read the first chapterEnterprise licensing, director induction programmes, diagnostic engagements, and cohort-based development for company secretaries, chairs, and nominations committees.
Talk to the teamA first board seat doesn't come with an onboarding pathway. This book is the one a senior colleague would quietly post to you the week of your appointment — calibrated to UAE SCA, Saudi CMA, and the private-board reality you actually sit on.
Six disciplines the useful director returns to — not to pass an exam, but to make the next meeting better than the last. Each letter is a chapter. Each chapter ships with tools.
Compliance is the floor, not the ceiling. The directors who shape the room are not the ones who know the code best — they are the ones who ask the question the room has been avoiding.
Forty questions, indexed by committee and agenda item, calibrated to the GCC code. The sample most new directors print and put in the front of their board folder.
Download the samplerA twelve-minute self-assessment across the six A.C.T.I.V.E. disciplines. Your result arrives with a written diagnosis of what to read first.
Take the scorecardThe second chapter, released as a complimentary preview: the triage discipline behind finding the twenty pages that matter before your first meeting.
Read the chapterThe A.C.T.I.V.E. Director Practice is a six-module, self-paced course calibrated for a director who does not have five residential days to spare. Built around real GCC board-pack scenarios, graded artifacts, and a weekly live teaching session with Maali.
For company secretaries, chairs, and nominations committees professionalising director onboarding, board evaluation, or committee work across a GCC portfolio.
The full vault and course, tagged and reportable, for every director and committee member.
A written A.C.T.I.V.E. diagnosis of the board's current practice, delivered as a board paper.
Quiet, retained counsel for the chair on the matters a chair cannot raise at the board itself.
Not one of them is in the code. All three are in the meeting.
A kindness with unintended consequences — and four alternatives.
Six questions the audit committee should be asking — and the one the CIO has been waiting to be asked.
The first edition ships in May. Pre-order now and you'll receive the first chapter by email the day after you order — and the vault access code the day the book ships.
For directors who refuse to sit quietly through a meeting they could have changed. A field manual for the question nobody asked, the objection nobody raised, and the motion that did not need to be passed.
ChatGPT plus chair mentoring plus Leblanc's Handbook is the default. It is free, familiar, and wrong for the region. The GCC code is not a translation problem — it is a jurisdictional one.
A post-nominal does not ask a better question. A better question does. The work is the practice of asking them — not the credential of being allowed to.
The first board meeting is not a test of the director. It is a test of whether the director believes the first objection belongs to her — or to the chair who appointed her.
Not a textbook. Not a credential. A short, useful, regional reading that puts the A.C.T.I.V.E. practice in a director's hands in the week of her appointment — calibrated for the UAE SCA, Saudi CMA, QFC, and the private-board reality no incumbent curriculum admits exists.
The boardroom does not reward the best briefed. It rewards the best question. Every credential in the room is already equal. Every question is not.
Forty questions, indexed by committee and agenda item, calibrated to the GCC code. Download, print, put it at the front of your board folder.
Twelve audit-specific artifacts — the meeting-prep checklist, the auditor engagement questionnaire, the internal controls redux, the ESG disclosure audit.
A twelve-minute self-assessment across the six A.C.T.I.V.E. disciplines. Written diagnosis arrives by email within one business day.
After the book, the A.C.T.I.V.E. Director Practice. Six modules. Sixteen weeks. Self-paced core plus weekly live teaching with Maali. Built around real GCC board-pack scenarios. For directors who are past being impressed by their own CVs.
Enterprise licensing for company secretaries, chairs, and nominations committees who want their directors reading, practising, and asking sharper questions — not collecting certificates.
Diagnostic engagements deliver a written A.C.T.I.V.E. audit of your board's current practice. Cohort programmes fit a year's director development into sixteen well-sequenced weeks. Chair-level advisory is retained, quiet, and off the books.
Request a pilot →Pre-order the book, take the scorecard, open the vault. The work begins one meeting from now — and the first chapter is in your inbox the morning after you buy.
A practice, not a credential. A small library of tools, a careful course, and a book written for the director who has taken the seat and needs to know what to do with it — starting with the first agenda.
Most governance programs sell you the top rung. We built a practice — from the first free checklist to the seat on your board — because directorship isn't a credential you buy, it's something you grow into.
Written in the register of a letter from an older colleague: direct, unhurried, and honest about what the job actually requires. Built on three years of fieldwork with private-company boards across the region — the kind of boards most governance books don't write about.
Most new directors don't need another framework. They need to know what to do on Tuesday, when the pack lands, and they haven't yet earned the room.
A small number of engagements each year, taken personally. Designed for private boards preparing for institutionalization, family enterprises preparing for succession, and institutions that need a governance review that is more than a tick-box exercise.
Enquiries are reviewed personally. Expect a short call to understand the context, a written proposal if there's a fit, and a clear answer either way within five working days.
The signs of a board pack that has been assembled with the director's attention in mind — and the signs of one that has not. With a short review checklist.
A private board in the second year of institutionalization, a founding chair, and the conversation that finally moved the board from advisory to oversight.
Why the certificate course is the wrong starting point for the first-time GCC director — and what the right starting point looks like instead.
Free resources now. The book in May. The course after. No rush — directorship is a practice.