 Hello and welcome to today's webinar Why Most Strategic Plans Don't Work Creating Strategic Awareness in Your Organization My name is Sarah, I am an employee of Redback Conference in and I'll be your facilitator for today's session. Today we will be uncovering practical tips and advice that will assist you all in dealing with those at staff and board levels. So welcome. So let's get started. I would like to welcome our presenter for today, Stephen Bowman. Stephen is an internationally recognized governance, strategy, risk and leadership advisor to organizations worldwide. And no doubt many of you online are very aware of him. He will also be joined by Ivan Swartz, who is the Managing Director of Component. So over to you gentlemen. Thanks for that Sarah, welcome everyone. I hope we have a really interesting conversation over the next 55 or so minutes. So one of the things that I wanted to do today with all of you who are involved in this is to not only maybe present some different ideas that we haven't come across before, but also tap into your wisdom as well too. So please have the questions coming through, make use of the text questions and we'll also be doing some polling as the session goes on. So it gives us an idea of where to take the conversation as the session progresses. So really the first thing that I wanted to kick off here is this whole notion of what are we actually talking about in terms of strategic planning and strategic awareness. And we've got a poll that's just about to come up that's going to ask you some questions in there that will help us. And that poll is asking you, how many of you feel that your board spent an appropriate time actually being strategic at board meetings? Not whether or not you receive reports on strategy, but actually being strategic. And the interesting thing would be then what the heck do we mean by being strategic and how can we actually facilitate that. Some boards do this exceptionally well and others really don't do it terribly well at all. So as we go through here, if you'd like to share some of your ideas about what your board does to actually be strategic and what some of your directors do to actually help them and others be strategic, please feel free to send that information through in terms of the questions or the comments and we'll pass that on as well. So what do we mean by being strategic? Well in all of this, when you're starting to look at this whole notion of strategy, strategic, strategic plans, there are so many different definitions out there. And those definitions can be very boring, very long, or actually get to the point. And one of the things that I like to talk about is when we're actually talking about what do we mean by being strategic? Maybe a slightly different view of it. That is being strategic is when you're actually willing to look at what is happening out there now and into the future in your sector. What's actually happening out there, both now but also maybe into the future? What then does that mean to us in our organization or in our sector? And then what, if ending, do we need to do about it? So this whole notion of being strategic is very much looking at not just what's happening right here and now, but what could be maybe perhaps happening out into the future. And in particular, what does it mean to us? Because some of this stuff may not mean anything to us. And then what, if anything, do we need to do about it? And that's really where we start to be strategic. And we can build that into our board meetings and we'll actually talk about that as the morning goes on. One of the interesting things here is that before we can actually have this happening, we need to look at what are our personal attributes plus to actually be strategic. And some of these attributes are very cool because what they enable us to do is to start to build our muscle, build our own internal strength of that being strategic. And they're a lot easier than what most people think. I just want to cover a couple of these here. One of the great things, and you'll notice this in any of your directors that are actually being strategic, is those that are truly being strategic, are those that are willing to be the question, are those who actually function from a sense of curiosity. And it's very interesting when you start to talk about what do we mean by being the question. Because being the question doesn't necessarily mean you have to ask questions. It does mean that you want to function from that sense of curiosity. So anyone who's actually being strategic is that in a sense of curiosity, what's happening out there? What does it mean? What else haven't we talked about? What are the issues that we need to talk about? And so being the question is something we can actually help our directors be as well too. And we'll talk about that when we talk about structuring engenders and so on. So it's very much about the notion of curiosity and looking to see what could be, what might be, what is happening out there, and then the curiosity to know what might that mean to us. And once we're being that sense of curiosity, then we can actually start to ask questions. And we'll talk about some really, really cool questions that really change conversations around the board table. So the first attribute is for us to actually be the question. And we can help our directors to be the question as well too, by actually providing them with some questions that might actually assist them in their conversation. The second key attribute really is looking at everything as just an interesting point of view. Not right, not wrong, just interesting. And the cool thing about this is if you're able to look at everything as just an interesting point of view, it's not right, it's not wrong, it's not good, it's not bad, it's just interesting. Then you can actually start to receive information you wouldn't otherwise receive. And the really interesting thing about this is the opposite of interesting point of view is what we call a sixth point of view. Now just reflect on those people that you know have sixth points of view. And reflect on what it is that starts to happen to conversations when those sixth points of view are actually there. So you know that when someone's got a sixth point of view, when they always bring it back to that point of view, and no matter what you say, they always try to prove the rightness of their point of view. And the issue with that is when they have a particular sixth point of view on something, nothing that does not meet that point of view actually can exist for them. So what they do is they'll twist and they'll turn everything that's said until it meets that point of view, or they'll continually bring it back to that point of view. We had one just recently where I was over in New Zealand working with a major trust over there and one of their directors had such a strong sixth point of view on something that even though the board had moved on to other issues, she would always bring it back to that particular point of view. Board meeting after board meeting after board meeting. So knowing when someone's got a sixth point of view is a very cool thing for you to be aware of because you know that once it's sixth, it's sixth. How do you know it's sixth? Well, they're not going to change it. How do you know they're not going to change it? Because you ask them a series of questions and those questions might be something like, well, what information would you need to get you to look at this slightly differently? Or what are the other two or three options you think we might want to look at that would give us a similar sort of result? And if they keep coming back to, no, my way is the right way and until you agree with me that you're by definition wrong, then at least you know they've got a sixth point of view and you can move around them. Now the interesting thing to me, and this is again about being strategic, we also ourselves have sixth points of view on things and sometimes we don't even know what they are. So just happy to know how you're feeling and how your body is reacting when someone says something. And if you start to find yourself getting into a sort of a proficient mode or you start feeling, I mean the technical term really is pissed off with something, if you start to feel that then just recognise that someone has said something or done something that does not meet what you've already decided should have been said or done. And the interesting thing about that is that once you find yourself getting into that space then you're not willing to look at other points of view and you're not willing to look at the likely different ways of doing it. The point behind this is if you actually need to be strategic, you've got to be aware of everything that's out there, not just what you want to be aware of. And first thing that's an interesting point of view is actually a really cool and quite simple way of doing it. But one of the tools that I use all the time, particularly useful, is I will say to myself, interesting point of view, I have this interesting point of view. And what it does is takes the charge out of whatever anyone's saying or me saying, me thinking to myself, oh no, that can't be, that's too hard or that's too difficult or that will never happen. Just say to yourself, interesting point of view, I have this interesting point of view. And then just see whether or not you're willing to receive that information in a slightly more open way. So the first one is being the question, that sense of innate curiosity. And I can't expect anyone to be curious unless I'm willing to be curious. So it all starts with you as the individual. And then everything is an interesting point of view and understanding when you've got a fixed point of view on something. And then just be willing to change that. How do you change the fixed point of view? Well, you just change it. You just say, okay, well what if that wasn't so, what would that look like? And then the third one is very cool, is how you see life. You seem to see it through the lens of scarcity or through the lens of prosperity. Because this has a huge, huge impact on your willingness to actually be strategic. Now, when you think of the word scarcity, often what people describe is the sense of lack, the sense of not enough. And you put that into the board meeting context or senior executive meeting context and it manifests like we don't have enough time. It's not in the budget. We don't have enough staff to do that. We're already stretched at the moment that that would be too hard. These are scarcity viewpoints. Because what they do is they start to look at the reasons why we can't do something rather than the infinite ways we can do something. It's just different than what we'd already decided. And one of the things I found really helps, and we use this a lot in strategic planning. I do 45, 50 strategic plans for solicitations a year. And a lot of what we're talking about there is getting people out of their scarcity way of looking at things into a prosperity or abundance way of looking at it. And it's really, really simple to do if you're willing to look at it this way. Scarcity has three lives attached to it. The first lie is there's not enough. We don't have enough money. There's not enough government funding. There's not enough staff. There's not enough time. There's not enough talent and volunteers. There's not enough good directors out there. And it goes on and on and on. And there's not enough dot, dot, dot fill in the blanks. So the first life scarcity is there's not enough. The second life scarcity is that not only is there not enough, but hey, guess what? It's hard. And it's getting even harder. You thought it was hard this year. You wait till the NDIS comes in and all the things that we've got to do to comply with that. Or you thought it was hard this year. You wait till next year where we get even more audit. Or the whole notion of membership is changing now. You thought it was hard this year. You wait until this whole membership model breaks down next year. It's hard and it's getting harder. That's the second life scarcity. And the third life scarcity is actually a person's favorite of mine. Because the third life scarcity makes the other two invisible. So not only is there not enough out there, not only is it quite hard, but guess what? That's just the way it is. That's just the way it is because after all, we're just a nonprofit. Or because after all, that's what the government sees. Or because after all, that's what the contract sees. Or that's just the way it is because that's what the sector is like. Everyone's feeling the pain. And we buy into that. We don't even challenge the original first two lines of scarcity. Now it's interesting. Don't judge it as that. Just be aware of when it happens, particularly in yourself. Because you can actually change it quite easily. Any time that you or anyone comes up with it's not enough of, not enough money out. Then just change the conversation around. Someone says it's not in our budget. My first question would be, well, whose budget is it in? And my next question would probably be, and what if it didn't have to be in our budget? And then often when I ask that question, people will say, what do you mean? Strategic alliances? My comment would probably be, maybe. What would that look like? All of those are challenges and assumptions. So what if there was plenty out there? Who's got it? Where is it? What if it looked totally different to what we'd already decided it should look like? And other times we're really strategic to money, for example, or strategic discussions. Oh, we can't do that. We don't have the money for it. And then typically that's the end of the conversation. Whereas what I'd like to do is to encourage people to turn around and say, well, who does have the money? What are the 14 different ways that we could actually create the money for this? Even if it didn't have to be our money, nor in our bank account? What would that look like? Now you're starting to get in some strategic options that are available. And then you know the difference between easy and hard. You've heard this before. Now if you think it's hard, then what we put in place to prove that point of view? All the evidence to prove it's hard. If you think it's easy, what are you putting in place to prove that it's easy? All the evidence to prove that it's easy. So if anyone says, oh, that's going to be hard, then the next question will be, well, what if it was easy? What would need to change? And then all of a sudden you get people into creative mode. And then the third one, that's just the way it is. Well, I mean, you've all heard the phrase, your point of view creates your reality. And it's actually true. If you think it's hard, you actually make it hard. Now why is it that one organization, for example, in Public Works, for example? Susanna, if you're online, hi. Public Works. What happens if one organization in Public Works sees that the work they do is really difficult, very, very, very hard. And we only just manage to scrape by. And it's always difficult each year to make sure we don't have a quality order. And another organization in exactly the same space, fine, but it's actually really easy. And the auditors that they work with find them that they'd like to work with. And the funders find them really good to get on with. The difference you can put in the evidence to prove either one of those points of view. So just be aware of scarcity versus prosperity. Prosperity is turning everything on its head and saying, well, there's plenty out there. I wonder what it looks like. Who's got it? Where do I go? Who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to talk to? It's also, it's actually easy. And I'll put in place things to make it even easier. And then the third one is, and it's the way that I want it to be, given that there are certain constraints out there. But within that, how I choose to interpret is what it is that makes my organization what it is. So they're the three personal attributes that you can actually encourage both in yourself and also your staff to actually be strategic. And then we can get into some of the tools to actually get some of this information. But without those personal attributes, you're really working up hill in terms of being strategic. One of the things I want to cover, we're about to go to another poll. So the second poll is going to ask us, do your board members know how to ask really powerful strategic questions? Because this sense of innate curiosity doesn't necessarily manifest in terms of the questions. I mean, we know that a lot of questions can be used as weapons. They're often statements with rising inflection at the end of it. And it's interesting coming through here. A lot of people do not know how to ask really good questions. Those that do know how to ask just are like breaths of fresh air. The number of, you know, we do a lot of governance reviews and strategic governance evaluations. And one of the questions we always ask in here is, how well do your directors actually use questions to unlock strategic opportunity? And the really good boards are the ones where they say, look, the culture of the board is to actually ask really good questions, really good questions. And that's what makes such a huge difference around board meetings. I mean, one of the things we often say is the gift of your directors, the gift that your directors are to your organisation are not the statements that they make, but it's the questions that they're willing to ask. And in fact, when you start to look at questions, what a really good question does is it unlocks the possibilities that we wouldn't have otherwise considered. One of my favourite quotes, as all of you know have heard, is one of my favourite quotes that comes from Einstein. In fact, he's got two that I think are brilliant. The first one he says, you know, his definition of insanity pretty much fits a lot of situations that he sometimes power-crossed. And his definition of insanity was, if you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result, you're insane. Doesn't work that way. So doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is a surefire way of creating insanity. The other great quote that he had was he said about questions. He said, if you give me an hour to sort out a problem, to solve a problem of some sort, I'll spend the first 55 minutes looking at the questions. Because once I understand the questions, actually solving the problem is not that difficult. He then went on and said, too many people spend too much time looking for the answers without even looking at what the question should be. And this is really cool when we start to get into some practical stuff that you can do with your board, to actually assist them to be the question and ask the sort of questions that really make a difference. Now it was interesting with the poll results that came out there that the vast majority of people find that their directors really don't know how to ask questions. And so one of the things that we can do is to help them. And there are some really cool things that we can do to actually help them ask the sort of questions that will make a difference in their deliberations and in their decision making. So for example, when you're putting papers to the board, you're putting things for the board to consider, one of the great things that you can do is to give them at least two or three strategically feasible options, each one of them with a finance analysis and a risk analysis and a business decision analysis and how does it fit within our strategic plan and vision statement analysis, all the analysis stuff that you do. But at least two or three options. And then a preferred option with the reasons why. And then one of the things I found really useful in my own board and all the boards that we work with is to then give them one or two really cool strategic questions to consider. So the format would be option one analysis, option two analysis, option three analysis, preferred option, reasons for the preference. Now here's one or two really powerful strategic questions for you to consider as a board. And it's interesting if you give them those sorts of questions, if they don't have the culture of questions, it starts to change the culture of the board because then they start to focus on the questions that need to be asked rather than trying to prove something wrong. And some of the questions you could ask for example might be how will our funding bodies see this and what impact might that have in ten years time when we're positioning ourselves. Or another strategic question might be so how will this impact on existing perception out in the marketplace. I don't know the answer but it's well worth having a discussion around. And what some boards have said is that once they've done that for a couple of years they actually don't need to do it anymore because all of a sudden the culture of the board has really started to change towards focusing on the questions rather than focusing on the statements that the directors are making. So here's some other great questions for you. And these, if you get a chance please write these ones down because these can fundamentally change conversations. One of my favourites and I use it shamelessly is the question so what's the strategic issue behind that? It's a great question. What's the strategic issue behind what it is that you've just said? What's the strategic issue behind this comment that you've just made? Because what that does is it invites the person that's made that comment to actually step up to a different level to look at what the bigger issue is behind that. And it's a much, much nicer way than saying well so what? So what's the strategic issue behind dot dot dot dot whatever that I just said? Now I used to be really tough on this one. I used to, you all know people in your board meetings who as soon as they open their mouth you know, oh my god here comes a story. This is going to take forever. We were that close to finishing that board meeting. What I used to do with those people is just as soon as I opened their mouth I would often say to them so what's the strategic issue behind what you're about to tell us? Now it's become a little bit gentler. So I wait for them to get 10 systems taken into their story and then ask the question so what's the strategic issue behind? It's just an amazingly good question. Some of you may have heard this story because I tell this when I was sitting in a board meeting a few years back and one of the directors stuck a hand up at the end of the board meeting. There's a large organization, you know, sort of 35.000 over based in Victoria and Australia and it was in the health field, in the youth field. And the director put a hand up. Now I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where someone sticks a hand up and the collective temperature in the room drops about 10 degrees. When you see people watching you just thinking, oh god, we're that close. Here we go. So anyway, she stuck a hand up and the chairman, he and I had had a conversation beforehand. We knew different ways of dealing with sort of the operation. Things that often his directors would ask. So Mary will call it Mary stuck a hand up in the air and said, look director, the chairman threw you if I may. I didn't quite know where to put this thing. It was just before the end of the board meeting I decided to raise. I really, really don't like the beige curtains in our board room. And you can hear the collective sigh from the rest of the directors. So what the chairman did is he said, okay, Mary, so what's the strategic issue behind you not liking the beige curtains in the board room? Now, he told me after the event, he said that I thought would actually keep a quiet or stitcher up. He was using it as a bit of a weapon so it's not the best way of using it. But what I think next was absolutely fascinating. I was there and I watched it. Because what happened is that Mary, the director, had asked the question, look down at your agenda. And on her agenda was the vision statement. And this is one of the things we'll talk about later on. But another vision statement on her room because it reminds people why the heck we're there. So on her board agenda was the vision statement. And you could see the light go on in her universe. You could see the kangaroos were no longer loose in the top paddock. It was fabulous. She had all of the sandwiches for a full picnic now. Everything had just clicked. Because what she did is she took the agenda up and she put three of her notes here. A vision statement says, and she read it from the agenda, a vision statement says, we're a young, dynamic organization dedicated towards creating the next future generation of young leaders. She said, and I'm surrounded by effing beige. You might be surrounded by beige. The rooms are filthy. The seats were sitting on. I've got chewing gum everywhere. You walk in the front of the organization. It's like you're walking into a derelict building. She said, we're not walking the talk. And then they had the most fantastic conversation of that vision alignment. She said, we're not walking the talk. And then they had the most fantastic conversation of that vision alignment. Because she was then able to actually reflect on what the strategic issue was behind. Now it doesn't always work that way, but this is just a brilliant example of the sort of conversation that can be had. When you or one of your fellow directors ask, what's the strategic issue behind? It just opens up the conversation and changes the parameters behind it. So there's one question, please. If you use nothing else, that's just a powerful question to use. Now another great question that I find really, really powerful and particularly useful in strategic planning and strategic reviews is a very simple question. And it's this one. So what's not working here and what do we need to do about it? So what's not working here and what do we need to do about it? And the reason I like that as a question is it's not saying, this is not working with screw that. But it is acknowledging that something's not working. But what I'm doing is asking my team, either my senior execs or my board. So what's not working here? From your points of view. Because this one will have a slightly different point of view. And then the second part is, and what do we need to do about it? So it's both acknowledgement without judgment. What's not working here. So what's not working here. And then creative. And what do we need to do about it? It's just an incredibly powerful question and one that I would really encourage you to use. When something's feeling a bit salty or something's going up the rails a little bit. Or even when a conversation's becoming bomb down. It's a great one to use when a conversation's become too convoluted that you've actually forgotten what it is in the first place. And what's not working here. And what do we need to do about it? First the second one. The third one that is just powerful and in fact even simpler. And these are really powerful strategic questions. The third one is simply this one. Okay. So what are we missing here? That question however has to be asked from a sense of curiosity. So what are we missing here? Let's say that we are missing anything but if we were missing what would that be? So what are we missing here? And it's a great one for those of you that are chairs after a particularly complex conversation or a robust conversation and people have agreed okay we want to go forward on this one. Here's what we agree to do. Okay. So what are we missing here? And the interesting thing about that one is that you will get one or two responses either. No, I think we've nailed it. Good conversation. I think we've covered the key issues here. Or I think we might be missing whatever it is. You can't lose either way. Really, really powerful question. Now what's that got to do with strategy being strategic, strategic planning? Let me give you a really good example of how to use this. Every year one of the things that I suggest that every organisation does is actually have an annual review of that strategic plan and it usually takes two and a half to three hours. You don't need a facilitator. You can do this one yourself. I'll do a few of these. I need to show them how to do it and then they can do it themselves. But you can do it yourself. It's so simple to do it. And so what you do is you get your seniors, your seniors staff and your board together for about two and a half to three hours and you run through a series of questions. Here are the questions. First question. So what's working in strategy number one? So it's an update. So what's working with strategy one? What do you think the second question is? So what's not working with strategy one and what do we need to do about it? And then the third question, so what are we missing in strategy one? And then the fourth question is, so what do we agree to put into strategy one? What do we agree to take out of strategy one? So the five questions are this. Number one, what's working here? Number two, what's not working here? What do we need to do about it? Number three, so what are we missing here? Number four, what do we agree to put in? What do we agree to put in? It's a very, very cool way of actually doing a formal review of your strategic plan so that you can actually give directors an update. You can also work out what might not be working and do something about it. You can also say what might we have missed and then collectively we agree what to put in and what to take out. Now one of the cool things about this is to me one of the best times you can do this is as soon as possible after your AGM before your first board meeting. Because imagine it's the first introduction and you direct the host to your organisation and your board. It's two and a half hours to three hours with the fellow directors and the senior executives which all of a sudden start to tell them that it's a clean approach. It's not a control approach. And they instantly get an update of what's working. They also give the opportunity from their point of view as new directors to say what they think might not be working. They also as a new director get the opportunity to input into what they think we might have missed and then they start to understand that even though I have my personal views it's a collective that then agrees what we put in and it's the collective that agrees what we take out. It starts to totally change and shape the culture of the board just from that one process. It's one of the most powerful things you can do as part of your introduction to new directors to involve them in an annual strategic plan review. Very, very good. Thank you for interrupting for a minute, Stephen. They're asking if you'd like some advice. I'm just going to restart those now just so everyone else can see them. I'm seeing lots of comments here. Still can't see anything. Me either. Still can't see anything. Lots of visuals. So that should be better now. Now please, folks, you know that I'll grab it on forever and ever unless you ask me some questions. So please, as we go through this, ask questions. Because I'm constantly looking down there to see if there are any questions in there. And if you do ask them, I'll respond to them. So we're talking about strategic questions here and the sort of questions that you can really ask. The first one is, so what's the strategic issue behind? The second one is, so what's not working here and what do we need to do about it? The third one is really powerful is, so what are we missing? And then the next one is a question that you ask when you don't know what question to ask. And I love this one. It's a pretty interesting one because have you ever been in a situation where you knew you should ask the question but you weren't quite sure how to formulate the question and by the time you did figure out what the question was the conversation had moved on anyway. So one of the best possible questions you can ask is this one. So what question should we ask about this? What's the question we haven't asked about this? What question should we ask that we did ask would give us clarity on this? So what you can do is actually ask the question about the question. Now, someone is, Jim, thank you, Jim. As I said, asking questions is a good idea. Okay, yeah, cool. Are there any strategies for managing the answers? Absolutely, because the answers to those ones, if someone is coming back with their point of view, that's what you're after, their point of view on something, if they're coming back with what they think is the answer to that, then you can actually challenge with other people to the rest of the group. So what are the other options that we've got? So if someone who comes back says, we have to do it this way, then you can change that language into, well, that's one of our options. What are the other options? Because we know there's many, many ways of doing it. So let's explore what the two or three key options are. The other thing is that if someone comes back with a long story about what they think, and you know people who get into these stories, then you can ask, again, a question. So what's the strategic issue behind? And then when someone comes back with a response to a particular question, then you can then ask other questions. Like, well, how does this help us achieve the tree element in our vision statement? Or how does this actually have an impact on our existing relationship? So as the chair, you can actually ask the sort of questions that will get people contributing to the discussion from their point of view. And that's the only reason we have directors, by the way. The only reason we have directors is so they can make the choices that actually create the future for the communities that they serve. And for them to make those choices, then they will ask questions based on their particular life experiences, their background. And from amongst those questions, we'll then get some of the information we need to then collectively agree, well, this is the way we think is going to make the biggest difference. But the fact that it's a choice, we know that we'll be monitoring whether or not that's still the right sort of choice, and therefore our focus as a board is going to be on monitoring the outcomes of this choice, not exactly how the staff are doing it. Another question that's been asked, Stephanie, thank you for that one. How important is staff input to strategic meetings? Absolutely. Because to my mind, it's an interesting conversation to have. To my mind, the leadership team of your organization is both the board and the senior executives. It's not just the board and the CEO. I've seen some boards where they don't want the CEO involved because it's their organization. I mean, what, rubbish? Sorry. It's a misunderstanding of the role of the board. The role of the board is to make the choices that create the future for the communities that serve. Nowhere in there is control. It's all about what information do we need to be able to make the choices we need to make. Now let's make sure that whatever choices we do make are actually creating a future, and let's make sure it's impacting on the communities that we actually do serve or want to serve, and everything else is a tool to help us get there. So finances are a tool, and risk is a tool, and OH&S is a tool. They're all just tools to actually help us do that. So my point of view always is, in terms of any board meeting, I would be having my senior executives as well as the CEO. Now, if there's only you and three or four other staff, then I probably wouldn't have all the staff in there, but I'd certainly have myself as the CEO. But I'll give you another couple of tools a little bit later on about how to get staff involved so that we can actually access to their strategic knowledge as well. Margaret, thank you for your question. What about the board members that want to bring low-level operational matters at the end? No, if that doesn't happen, does it? So, to me, if they want to bring in their operational matters at the end, don't forget, the person who's actually is legally responsible for the way that board meeting is managed is the chair. They don't have to allow something to be discussed at the board meeting. Now, it may piss absolutely the board member off, but if that particular board member is constantly wanting to bring up really, really low-level operational matters, then I would say it doesn't have to allow that to be discussed at the board meeting. It might piss the board member off, which sometimes might not be a bad thing. Or you can actually say to the person, look, this is something that you should have clarified prior to the board meeting, or can we take this outside of the board meeting and we can give you a bit of a briefing on that, but it's not something that we should be discussing at this board meeting. It's really the chair that should be doing it now. Here's what happens if you don't have a particularly good chair. This sometimes happens. And one of the things I found there is what if every director acted as if they were the chair? Interesting thought for you. What if every director actually acted as if they were the chair? Now, what do I mean by that? Well, what does a good chair do? Well, please, people focus on the vision and the strategy. Enables quite as easily heard, but also keeps relating it back to the bigger issues at home. Not sure that we're focusing on the issues and not the people. Ensuring that strategy is always top front and the key filter behind what we're doing. What if each one of our directors did that in the right way of looking at it? So, other questions that came through was... Susanna, hi, Susanna. She doesn't have senior executives. It's important to staff to me, but at a lower level, absolutely. And this is one of the things we'll talk about at the minute, how to get your staff that may be not at a senior executive level. How can they actually have input that gives the board information that they wouldn't have otherwise got? And it's not the operational stuff. I'll cover that in a sec. Someone else has said when does operational become strategic? Sometimes operational can become strategic when you start thinking about, well, what is the strategic issues behind it? I'll cover that in a sec also. How do you prevent directors? Another question from Graham. Oh, hi, Graham. How do you prevent directors focusing on the financial aspects on the operations to the detriment of any strategic discussion or future options? Five of those questions. One of the great things that I found that has helped my boards and other boards as well is when you're putting your financial statements out there, if you give them spat-out figures from myob or QuickBooks, then they'll focus on the figures because that's all you're giving them. What you've got to do, particularly with your P&L, is to give them the reasons for the variances between what we thought we'd do, which is budget year-to-date, and what we actually did with this actual year-to-date, and then the reasons for the variance, and then a little heading at the bottom of it, strategic issues related to reasons for variance. And then what you need to do is get your board members to focus on the reasons for the variance and the strategic issues related to those reasons for variance. You can set your reports up to actually do that. The first thing they don't see is just the figures. They're actually, automatically, their eyes will go to the reasons for the variance, and then what are the strategic issues related to the reasons for those variance. And that's one of the best way to get people off the figures and onto the strategic issues that the figures represent. If you just give them the traditional P&L and balance sheet, then they're going to focus on the traditional way of looking at figures, which is, what does it mean, and you waste so much time talking about stuff that doesn't need to be talked about. Okay, so coming back to powerful... And thanks for those questions. Gee, when I asked for them, I got a lot. That's great. Let me talk about some other issues in here as well. One of the things... We've got to go to another poll, poll number three. This is an interesting one. Do you use outside people or specialists to regularly inform your board of strategic issues relevant to your sector? Because this is a really, really interesting issue. The board needs to know what's happening out there now and into the future. But if they rely just on the CEO, even if they've got the world's best CEO, they'll only hear what the CEO knows about. So one of the great things that you can do is every second of the board meeting, every single third board meeting, actually bring in a peace stakeholder. And you ask them to present to the board for about 20 minutes on what they see as their top two strategic issues, what they see as their top two strategic issues in their organization or their sector, and then the most important part is in it, and what they think the implications for our organization might be. Really powerful. There are a lot of examples for this. Number one, given the time limit. Number two, tell them we don't want powerful. It's just a conversation. And we'd like you, stakeholders, to come in for about 20 minutes and have a conversation that we ask about what you see as your top two strategic issues in your sector. And what do you think the implications for our organization might be? And then as a board, you have a conversation around that. Does that change any of the implications or the assumptions behind our strategic plan? This is, you're starting to hear what's happening out there in the environment from a different perspective, but also brought back to you what do you think it might mean to us. It also means that that stakeholder will have to do a bit of research on you guys. So you're getting access to strategic information. You're also having the opportunity to hear, hearing stakeholders say, now what they think the relevance to your organization might be. And then you, as a board, can decide what opinion do we need to do with this. Pretty much guaranteed if you don't do this and you start doing it, it's going to really raise the tone of your board meetings and start focusing your board on why they're there in the first place. That's a very cool thing to do. So the poll that came back is some do this really well. A lot of it do ad hoc. But pretty much when you're doing it ad hoc what I'm finding is that you ask in a stakeholder, but they often talk about what their sector is and you miss out on the really interesting conversation is and what do you think the implications for our organization might be about what you think are your key issues in your sector. So it's just a great way. Now I keep doing that every second or third board meeting and regularly schedule it. Have an outside stakeholder come in. What are the top two strategic issues in your sector, in your organization? What do you think the implications for us might be? And then a conversation about does that challenge any of our assumptions. We're starting to manage that key stakeholders as well too because they will start to look at you guys as really strategic by the very fact you've asked them. So something you can do, this is really cool, and Susanna, this goes part towards answering your question as well too, is I would, every second or third board meeting, I'd bring in a staff member and I'd bring in that staff member who's in charge of a particular area and I'd ask them to come into the board meeting and have a 20-minute conversation with the board about what they see as the top two strategic issues in their area of responsibility. And then what they think the implications for us over the next 10 years might be. The interesting thing with that is that you're not asking them to talk about their program. You can do that in different forms. You're not asking them to come in and talk about their overwork on their own or that sort of stuff. What you are asking them to do is to talk into their specialist knowledge about what they see as the top two strategic issues in their area of responsibility and what they think the implications for us over the next 10 years might be. So you might take, for example, someone in charge of all your education or your professional development program. What are the top two strategic issues in professional development and education in membership-based organisations? And what do you think the implications for us over the next 10 years might be? That's really, really cool. So you probably have to mentor them because often when you tell a staff member to come into a board meeting to do a report, they'll fuss over it, they'll get all sorts of hints and whatnot. Again, the same thing here. No PowerPoint, conversation, some dot points, top two strategic issues. What do you think the implications for us over the next 10 years might be? And the beauty of that is that they get, the staff member all of a sudden starts to think about strategic issues from their own operational perspective and their expertise. The board get to hear strategic operational issues or they might be operational and strategic issues. And the board get to hear for someone other than CEO. And the staff member gets to know that the board is actually interested in a future, not just what's happening today, but with no downside to this one. So we've got a slide up now that says creating a cultural strategic awareness which you've sort of got into. I have some issues here which is remember what Stuart told you about the vision statement? Please, on everything that you put out, your board agenda in particular, how do you have a vision statement up there? Because that's our reason to do it. The distance that we want to make is our vision. And so therefore we should be using it as our pre-filter in everything that we do. So one of the great questions always that any person could ask is, how is that going to help us achieve our vision? Okay, let's have a conversation around that. Upside stakeholders we mentioned that we're talking about their board meetings and we need to do the board meeting. Top two strategic issues, staff we've mentioned about. I love this one. You see the one there that says strategic gossip. Every board meeting finishes at some stage or other. And usually there's an item on that board agenda which is commonly called other business. Please get rid of it. Other business has no right being there. Or general business which is just as great. Because what you're going to get is the general crap that people didn't otherwise get a chance to bring up. And they bring up under general business. So call it something like changes to strategic environment. Or my personal favorite is this one called strategic gossip. And the whole notion behind strategic gossip is what have you heard out there and what do you think it might mean to us in these five or 10 years? So you're actually inviting people to look and the big thing with our directors in particular is they're out there in the community often or the sector or the profession and they hear stuff. Where else would they bring that stuff they've heard back to the board table if it wasn't a complaint about something? Where else would they bring it back? So strategic gossip is great. And there's a great example of that where we had one with again another non-profit organization under strategic gossip. One of the directors was a rural community. And he said, look, I was at my auntie's Mrs. Uncle's barbecue on the weekend. It doesn't get much more costly than that. And my niece said to me, had I heard that the sale yards opposite our health center might be coming up for tender in the next 12 months. Through you, Mr. Chair, would that have anything to do with strategy number three, get ourselves out of our landmark position? Hell yes. The directors of that may go into status with the local council. That's what I'm talking about in terms of strategic gossip. What have you heard and what do you think it might mean to us in terms of our strategy and everything? The other thing is that with this strategic plan, make your board agenda actually reflect the strategic plan. I saw a great one the other day where they actually started off strategic discussions and then short reports on operational health. You can actually set up your agenda that it actually reflects the strategic plan. What I don't like to see, and I've seen it too often, is item number 54, report on strategic plan from CEO. And it's right at the end of the agenda. And it gives out all the wrong messages. Then we've talked about it in Europe and in the world as well. So some other questions we had in here. How do you prevent... Oh, Graham, I've already answered yours. What's the best way to do linear between strategic issues and those that are really operational issues as the line can be blurred and contentious? Absolutely. It's that very fuzzy line between strategic and operational. Look, when the FH1 team hits the fan, we've got to be operational, but otherwise we should be more strategic. One of the great things you can do, however, is to make sure that you're giving information to the board so that they have comfort that the operational health of the organization is really where it needs to be. And this is where things like dashboard reporting can be really, really cool. For those of you who want, if you send me an email, I can send you a couple of things that are very cool. One of them is a really good article on developing up dashboard reports for nonprofits that demystifies it and makes it really easy for you to be able to actually develop dashboard reports, particularly on key operational areas, but also looks at other ways to actually use dashboard reports. So I'm happy to send that to you if you email me. The other one that's really good if you want, I can send you a copy of what a strategic board agenda might look like with some ideas around that. So my email address is Steven conscious hyphen governance dot com and I'm typing it as I do that and I think with any luck that she come up on the questions I do that. Sorry folks. Okay, so there it goes. So this is my email address please. I'm very happy to send it up here. The other component in here too, which is up on this one is we've got another poll coming up and this one's one of my favorite polls. I like this one. This one says, are there any specific sections in your board agenda that directly approach strategic issues? So be interested in your views on this one. So any minute now that poll is going to come up and if not then we'll just, there it is. Fantastic, okay. And I'm going to run this one. The first one is well no, but if only we had it would be great. Yes, there's a report from the CEO on the strategic plan or yes, your agenda primary follows the strategic plan or this one is yes, it's clear delineation between strategy and operation section but in different ways and the other one is well sometimes when we think about it. And the issue behind this is that if you have your CEO reporting just on the strategic plan that can be quite good. The issue behind it though is that it often gets across to the CEO who's responsible for the strategic plan and it's really put right at the end of the agenda. Or if you do it really well, and I've seen it done really well, is where most of the board agenda is actually based around the CEO's report because they're actually reporting against the strategic plan. But then again, why should that be in the CEO's report if that's the main reason for the board to meet to be anyway. So I'm not going to get rid of it but just understand why you do CEO's reports. I've seen some really good one where the agenda actually primarily follows the strategic plan and I've seen others where they've got part of the agenda looks at strategic discussions, the other part looks at operational reports but it's just something to look at that you might want to consider. So that was interesting. Now just to finish this one off what do we do with directors that actually refuse to be strategic? So that's an interesting one there because some of them will not. And this is where your willingness to be strategic in your own right actually makes a difference. Remember I've said before, what if every one of our directors was willing to be the chair? And when people refuse to be strategic, what they want usually it's because they've got such a six point of view on something or they've got such a pet project that if it doesn't meet their pet project they're just not wanting to. Or the only reason they're on the board is because they're interested in the operations and deep down they know they could do it better than anyone else. So the way to deal with that is again to make sure that you have strategic questions for board members to consider to always insist, this is a good one, always insist that if there's any issues for clarification to ask those clarifications prior to the board meeting you never want to hear it a board meeting the following phrase. Oh, so what did you mean by always insist your directors ask those questions prior to the board meeting but then make sure you send out all the directors what the clarification was and what the issue was that needed to be clarified so that that can cut down on that. And the other one is just ask questions, anyone who wants to bring it back into the operational side of things, just ask them the questions like what is the strategic time or in fact you can even be one of the sometimes people and say look that's an operational issue really let's take it outside of this. Okay, now we've had some really good questions in there, I'd like to hand over if I could to Ivan because Ivan wants to talk a little bit about technology and how to improve communications and decision making with technology. Ivan, right, over to you. Thank you Steve, it's been a real pleasure listening to your very straight and no nonsense way of dealing with a lot of issues that are often very complex. I think if I may make a comment about boards, real strategic boards are those that listen to that which is happening within their organizations and sounds like a very sort of obvious statement but old cliches like operating from glass external to the operation of the business where they come from are really boards that are not in touch with their organizations and a lot of what we are about at Confinet and working very closely with Redback is to open up those channels through online communities and through webinars just like what we're doing through to webcasting where we can really deliver live video and connect people wherever they may be and ultimately to continue the conversations through logically set up groups that exist within organizations and really opening up the flow and dealing with, I'm sure you come across this Steve with the next question of bad news and having the gumption to ensure that you are open whether it be within your organization with your customers or your members in the case of associations to take bad news on the chin and there have been some wonderful case studies of organizations that have turned bad news into good news by being intelligent and active listeners and I think that's really a measure of unfortunately we don't see enough of that out there but certainly to me that is a great example of an organization that is being strategic and one that really has right through the organization to the board itself is listening to the heartbeat of that which is happening and that then leads right the way through to the obvious position again which is once you've got that news, good, bad or indifferent, there's one thing worse than bad news and that's no news so once you have that news then having the mechanisms within the organization to respond to stop the bleeding where it happens and it does happen from time to time and I think what really impresses people out there is when an organization has made a genuine mistake honestly fessing up to that and then dealing with that in a way that is honest, genuine and meaningful into the future and then last but not least having some sort of quantifiable way to measure how really listening to the organization and to the customers and to the processes and the flows really having some sort of metrics in place that can be measured at a point into the future and ongoingly to measure the heartbeat of the business again or the organization to ensure that the right decisions that were thought to be the right decisions back three or six or twelve months ago were actually the right decisions and if they're not the right decisions then having the fortitude to change those decisions in a way that is going to deliver outcomes into the future so that's really my key four points in contributing to the strategic board discussion and really just about having the mechanisms to listen to the organization in every facet of the way that it operates Thanks for that Ivan One of you who are listening one of the things that Ivan and Confinite are setting up are these social tools to enable private networks to actually be created so it would be worthwhile having a look at now just to finish this off if I can please we've stuck some resources up there for those of you who have seen our website consciousgovernments.com there's so much stuff on there you can spend a week just reading all those if it's free so please get on there because in the end if we can get our directors then actually having a strategic plan makes sense if our directors are not willing to be strategic then a strategic plan is less than useful so let's focus on getting our directors to be strategic then they can actually then deliver against the promise of the vision of the organization through the work of the directors folks I hope you found this very interesting thanks very much for staying with us and get out there and help your organizations change the world thank you both Ivan and Steven thank you for a very enlightening hour thanks for everyone for joining once again you'll now be redirected to an exit survey please provide us with your feedback and upon completion we'll then make sure you receive the webinar recording follow-up documents and some other links within 48 hours so thank you once again for joining please feel free to contact us directly should you have any questions whatsoever and enjoy the rest of your day thank you