James Sutherland’s #1 rule for the CEO-chair playbook

James Sutherland, CEO of Golf Australia, says a policy of "no surprises" between the CEO and board chair builds the trust and transparency the relationship depends on.

Across a 35-year career in sport, including as a chief executive in cricket and now golf, Sutherland estimates he has worked alongside 150 to 200 directors and served as a director and chair himself along the way. He says one relationship matters above all others.

"The most important relationship in an organisation is between the CEO and the chair. Everything else, from the board's cohesion, its effectiveness and its ability to back management through difficult periods, tends to flow from how well that pairing functions."

However, he's quick to add that no two chairs are alike.

Over the years, Sutherland has worked closely with eight chairs, each bringing "their own unique experiences, professional background, and their own preferences and priorities".

His practice with every new chair is to start not with the transactional agenda, but with a genuine conversation about their aspirations for the organisation and how they see their own role, particularly given that chair tenures in sport are often fixed to a term of a few years.

"Getting aligned on that bigger picture matters more than diving straight into the mechanics of the job," says Sutherland.

The other principle he holds to is simple – no surprises.

"It's not always practically achievable, but it is important that the chair hears about emerging issues from me, rather than from somewhere else," he says.

He expects the same in return. If there's noise building about an issue, he wants to hear it from the chair directly, ahead of it surfacing in a formal board setting or through another stakeholder. It's a small discipline, he suggests, but one that builds the trust a strong chair-CEO relationship depends on.

Look ahead and see around corners

Sutherland values a well-constructed skills matrix for the board, and not just to reflect where an organisation has been, but "even more importantly, for where you are going".

He sees individual directors' professional backgrounds as a resource CEOs can draw on well before an issue reaches the boardroom, whether that's shaping a digital strategy or thinking through a complex commercial decision.

"That's especially true in sport, where organisations are often smaller and resource-constrained compared to the corporate world, making the specific expertise a director can offer disproportionately valuable," he says.

He's also candid about the structural limitations many sporting bodies face. Golf clubs, he points out, are often constituted so that only club members can sit on the board or committee, which, however well-intentioned, can mean "fishing in a shallow pond" for candidates.

A model that allows for one or more independent directors might add value through widening the talent pool and offering alternative perspectives, he says, but changing a club's constitution isn't a decision for a governing body to make on a club's behalf.

Big decisions deserve more than one meeting

When major strategic decisions come up with the board, Sutherland describes a philosophy of deliberate patience.

"The biggest and most important decisions are not made in a day," he says.

His preference is to socialise significant issues over several meetings, testing scenarios, taking the temperature of the board and having bilateral conversations outside the formal setting, so that by the time a decision is tabled, it feels close to a formality rather than a fresh debate.

This matters more, he says, in sport's complex stakeholder environment. National bodies and sporting clubs in Australia tend not to have shareholders. It can be challenging to juggle the interests of members, fans, commercial partners and even governments - all rightly feeling they have a genuine stake in "the game". CEOs and boards are constantly making on-balance decisions and it's simply impossible to please everyone.

Understanding those competing perspectives as a matter of process before a decision is made, rather than defending it afterwards, is core to how he operates.

Sutherland shares one particular memory from his time as CEO at Cricket Australia, when the organisation faced intense media and public scrutiny about the performance of the national men's team. It was an uncomfortable time, with calls for the CEO, coach, selectors and others to be replaced.

He recalls then-chair David Peever cutting through the debate in a board meeting by asking a single question - were they still comfortable with the strategy and direction?

Everyone said yes.

"I distinctly recall the feeling of not just being relieved, but being empowered to get on with the job," says Sutherland. "Within 15 months the team was number one in the world and had won a World Cup."

For him, that moment crystallised something about the chair's role, their relationship with the CEO and the importance of a board operating as a team. By posing that one question, the board provided clarity and conviction for the CEO when the organisation was under pressure, without becoming disconnected from stakeholder concern.

Golf's growth exposes governance gap

Sutherland is excited about the potential benefits of a new governance initiative Golf Australia has developed with the AICD, aimed at the roughly 11,000 volunteer directors and committee members across the country's 1600-plus golf clubs.

The trigger, he says, is that golf has experienced more growth and change in the past five years than at any point in its history. That growth has exposed real gaps in governance capability. Just over half of golf club administrators believe their directors clearly understand where the board's role ends and management's begins, according to the 2026 National Club Governance Report, Making Par in Golf Club Governance.

The research identified a gap between how boards rate their own effectiveness and how management perceives it.

The pilot version of the AICD program, run over the past year, produced strong results – 90% of participants would recommend it; 70% reported improved confidence as a volunteer director; and 52% said their board had gone on to implement concrete governance improvements as a result.

For Sutherland, the case for the program isn't really about compliance, but more about supporting golf clubs to deliver the best possible experience for their members and guests.

With four million adult Australians playing the game in one form or another, he argues that golf is the largest participation sport in the country.

"The sport of golf and its participants deserve the best in governance, delivered by volunteers who understand they are part of something far bigger than their own club." 

This article first appeared as 'The perfect swing' in the Oct/Nov 2026 issue of Company Director Magazine.