A new book by Peter Burchardt
The Director’s Craft
Governance, stewardship, and the real work of the board.
A field guide for directors, chairs, senior executives, and company secretaries — written from thirty years in boardrooms across Europe, the GCC, North America, and Asia. Fifty-eight chapters; four parts; one practitioner’s working knowledge, set down while it is still useful. Now with a structured Director Development Course.
Pre-order
Available 30 June 2026.
The Director’s Craft is now open for Kindle pre-order on Amazon, with the paperback releasing the same day. Pre-orders are delivered automatically to your Kindle the moment the book goes live.
Contents
Four parts. Fifty-eight chapters. Seven appendices.
Approx. 128,000 words / 425–450 printed pages. Each chapter is broadly self-contained; readers can engage with the parts most relevant to the moment.
- IChapters 1–14
What Governance Is (and Why It Matters)
The architecture of corporate governance — definition, history, codes, policies, and the principal stakeholder relationships. The foundation; readers new to the field should start here.
- IIChapters 15–29
The Board
The board itself: role and limits, directors' duties and liability, composition, the chair, the lead independent director, committees, working practices, and the institutional discipline that distinguishes effective boards.
- IIIChapters 30–42
Strategic Leadership
The work the board does in governing the company: strategy, performance, executive evaluation and compensation, risk in its various forms, and the integration of corporate responsibility into the strategic frame.
- IVChapters 43–58
Financial Stewardship & Leading Change
Financial reporting, capital structure, capital allocation, audit and assurance, the control environment, and the institutional discipline of governance change. Closes with the chapter on building the network that supports the director's continuing development.
Appendices: A. Reading Shelf · B. Sample Board Charter · C. Code of Ethics · D. Audit Committee Terms of Reference · E. Writing Your Board Biography · F. Glossary · G. Index.
Now available
The Director Development Course
A comprehensive programme built on the Hawkamah Director Development Program and the material in The Director’s Craft. Structured for learning, tested for understanding, certified on completion.
- 1
Governance Foundations
Definition, history, codes, policies, and the principal stakeholder relationships.
- 2
The Board
Directors' duties, composition, the chair, committees, and effective board practice.
- 3
Strategic Leadership
Strategy governance, risk, executive evaluation, compensation, and corporate responsibility.
- 4
Financial Stewardship & Change
Financial reporting, capital structure, audit, the control environment, and governance change.
What’s included
- ✓16 structured modules with teaching content, frameworks, and case studies
- ✓Skill test after every module — 70% pass rate required
- ✓Certificate of Completion when all 16 modules are passed
- ✓Downloadable board documents: charter, code of ethics, audit committee TOR, and more
- ✓110,000 words of practitioner content — the full book as further reading
- ✓Lifetime access — one payment, learn at your own pace
Sample chapter
Read Chapter 1 and the Foreword.
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About the author
Peter Burchardt
Peter Burchardt has spent thirty years in leading financial roles and on boards across Europe, the GCC, North America, and Asia. In turn a chief financial officer, a chief executive, a non-executive director, and a chair, he has served on listed and unlisted, family-controlled and state-controlled, financial and industrial, founder-led and institutional companies.
The book grew out of his work with the Director Development Program of the Hawkamah Institute for Corporate Governance in Dubai, and from the boards on which he has sat. It is the practitioner’s view: written in his own voice, with his own examples, drawing on the experience of doing the work rather than describing it from the outside.
“Corporate governance is a craft. You learn it slowly, mostly by doing it.”
Endorsements
What directors are saying.
“Recognisably the voice in the room. Serious about the codes without being captured by any single one of them.”
Bechara Tony Raad
Senior Advisor, Audi Capital — from the Foreword