Boards have always offered in-depth strategic insights on how companies can use scarce resources to create competitive advantage. Today, they are navigating a shifting socio-economic landscape like no other, where the unprecedented disruption of a global pandemic turned out not to be the storm, but rather the calm before it. In doing so, the boards most successfully adapting to this constant change are not only posing fundamental questions about what their companies do or how they do it, but even why they do it at all. To capture their experiences, their response to changing stakeholder expectations and their emerging priorities, August Leadership has worked closely with over 30 global business leaders from a broad cross section of industries to unlock the wider implications of 79% believing the new way of working is here to stay, 88% aligning on talent, technology and sustainability as the biggest challenges ahead, and 90% stating that boards themselves need to make a lot more progress in becoming as diverse as the customers, companies and communities they serve. The resulting blend of purpose and critical leadership offers actionable insights in seven strategic areas, which are distilled in this new report to help other organizations challenge their own approach and to trigger much needed debate about the role of boards, their evolving responsibilities and their essential competences.