Webinar: Why most boards get induction wrong - and what high-performing boards do instead

Many new Directors meet formal requirements yet struggle in their first year, often lacking confidence, practical boardroom fluency, and judgement.

This webinar addresses the critical onboarding gap that leads to silence, overreach, and uneven contribution, helping Boards unlock capability, reduce friction, and improve early Director effectiveness from day one.

Developed from many thousands of interviews with chairs, directors and CEOs, these techniques support directors across their first 12 months on a board. It will provide insight into how boards actually operate, how decisions are shaped, and how directors can add real strategic value without overstepping into management.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:09

So, hi everybody, welcome to our webinar today, titled Why Most Boards Get Induction Wrong and What High Performing Boards Do Instead. On our panel today is the uh wonderful Stephen Bowman, Catherine Rouge, and Linda Carroll back from surgery. So welcome, Linda. My name's Sean McDonald, and I shall be your moderator for the next 40 odd minutes. Uh first, though, as usual, thank you so much for attending. We always appreciate the effort you make to be here for our live webinar events. During the session, if you have any questions, which of course we hope you will do, try and use the uh QA button on your toolbar as against chat. It just enables us to keep a track of them all as they're coming through, and we'll we'll try and answer as many of those as we have time for. And finally, if you stay through till the end, which of course we hope you will do for this riveting session, we have a short one-minute survey. It's a really short one-minute survey, I promise, at the end of the webinar. Uh, it really helps us bring relevant content to you week after week, and it enables us to position the huge team of expert presenters we have for you. So please take a moment to complete the survey uh at the end of the webinar today. Now, for those not too familiar with BoardPro, we are a board software provider, sometimes called a board portal, and we serve just over 35,000 users around the world across about 34 different countries. Some more specifics, about 4,000 boards we service around the world, and about 8,500 committees, would you believe? We enable organizations to prepare for and run their board meetings more efficiently and effectively with less time and deliver more impact and value for the organization. And as much as we are a board software provider, part of our wider mission here at BoardPro is to make the fundamentals of governance free and easy to implement for all organizations, but especially those organizations with resource constraints. And one of the many ways we do this is by providing free access to hundreds of governance templates, guides, and resources, which you will find, funnily enough, in the resources section of our website. These webinars that we host every week are also a great way of accessing great governance knowledge without the time, commitment, and costs associated with in-person events. So let me have our team introduce themselves, starting with uh let me see. Linda, yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Thank you very much, Kioda, everyone. My name is Linda Carroll. I am the CEO of Align Group. We assist organizations to align strategy, governance, culture, and performance. So when I'm not sitting on boards, of which I sit on five at the moment, I am busy running governance development workshops, undertaking board evaluations or framework reviews, or running to running strategy and foresight workshops. So I'm a Charter Fellow of the IOD and an accredited foresight practitioner through the Institute for the Future. And I've just had an eye operation. Thank you for telling us about that. Sure.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Thanks, Linda.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

I'll pass over to Stephen.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Hi everyone, Steve Bowman here from Conscious Governance. I've been working with boards and CEOs if when I wasn't a CEO or uh on a board for the last 35 years. And uh primarily helping them focus on what are the choices they've got that will actually create the future for the communities they serve. So I look forward to sharing some of our insights and some of the practical stuff around induction in the next 40 minutes or so. Catherine.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Thanks, Steve. Kyura Tina Kaito Katoa, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Uh, depending on where you are in the world, I'm Catherine Rouge joining you from the city of Utotahi, Christchurch in Dawai Panamu, the South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand. I work independently as a leadership coach and consultant specialising in communication change and culture. Got a background in aviation and strategic communications and a special interest in team dynamics because that's what lubricates your effectiveness and performance as a team in any context, whether it's governance or management. I've been involved in governance in the not-for-profit sector for a little over 30 years. Back to you, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Okay, so induction programs. Just about every organization has an induction program, and just about everyone does it not terribly well at all. And some of the common comments that we get are people feel overwhelmed or underprepared despite getting an induction pack. And these are some of the quotes. I had a couple of hours on a video conference, which was helpful, but I was still totally unprepared for directors' responsibilities. I've also had people tell us that they feel disengaged or intimidated early in their tenure because there are a couple of loud voices on the board and they didn't know what to do about that as a new director. Um, and then my personal favorite comment was someone who said, Well, what induction? So there's, yeah, everyone knows it's a great idea to have an induction program. However, typically the most common induction programs are here's the constitution in brackets, no one's gonna read it anyway. Here's the last two board minutes, but there's no context around that. And here's maybe the list of uh policies that we've got. And if you're really, really lucky, here's your login to the board portal that you've got. So, what we want to do today is to take you through how you can actually create something that's going to create lasting value even before they come to their first board meeting as a new director. So typically the sorts of documents that you get in the most uh the vast majority of induction programs are are these ones. I'm not going to go through them there. There's a list there, you could check them off against what you're providing, but this is only part of the story because documents are easy to get access to. Knowledge of how the board works is something that you should get access to, but most inductions don't cover at all. At the very most, you'll typically find that you might have a meeting with the chair as a new director, or you might have a meeting with the various business units, but it's all about historical stuff rather than here's the difference that we're trying to make, and here are some of the things that you as a new director should really have your attention on. Okay, next one, Sean. So the makeup of a good induction program, one that's actually very, very useful and helps directors, and directors have told me this that this is what they regard as the key elements of any good induction program. The first one is it's mandatory. You cannot believe how many people have said to me, look, I came on there, I knew we had an induction program, but I was too busy. I was traveling or I had this or what, yeah, whatever it might be. And and it wasn't mandatory. And the issue behind that is that if you don't put someone through an induction program and they realize that they've signed on for an induction program as soon as they were elected or appointed to that board, then you're going to set yourself up for some real problems into the future. So, first of all, mandatory. And for example, if your induction program says, oh, we will have mentors, they should be mandatory, not whether or not you want them. And they should be monitored and uh and supported. So mandatory. Secondly, formally monitored. Um you ask the governance committee if you have one of these committees or a people, culture, remuneration committee, whatever, whatever you might call it, and say, how does the induction program work? Yeah, what do the directors think of it? Oh, don't know. Didn't ask them. They went through it, but I've got no idea what they thought of it and haven't really thought about how we could make it better next year. So the second key thing is to have them formally monitored and formally monitored by whichever committee has been set up to be your governance-related committee. Um, the formal monitoring, probably every six months, checking in with the director. Are you getting what you need? How's your mentor going? Are there any things that you'd like to see in the next 12, in the next six months as part of your induction program? So this formal monitoring, it's easy to do. It's just not done. Linda, what have you seen with these first two, the mandatory and the formally monitored?

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yeah, well, it's really interesting, isn't it? Because if I had somebody that said to me, Oh, I was too busy, then I'd be thinking, Cracky, I made the wrong recruitment decision here. Because of course, if people don't want to learn, if people don't want to attend an induction, then they're not going to learn anything when they come anyway. So my concern is uh, yeah, if if it's really important that it's mandatory because you're liable from the minute you agree to go on a board. Um, and if and so, yeah, if people aren't actually um wanting to learn, then that's a concern. And then the second thing is formally monitoring, you know, it's that old saying, Stephen, what's measured is is actually um done. And if we actually spend time asking the people who are going through the program, well, how are we finding it, evaluating the success of it, then we're into continuous improvement and always working out what we can do better? So I don't see why we wouldn't be doing that. So I think those two are really critical things.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Catherine, what are your your views with your background in communication and strategy? Now things what are your views about the the communications that are had around um uh induction programs and the, you know, uh particularly with the formally monitored, what do you see happening or not happening from your experience in terms of people actually talking about the things that need to be talked about?

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Um well, looking at those four and thinking about the boards I've been on, um it's really only mandatory that uh yeah, what one out of four. Um in in that, you know, so something we know that something does happen, and it's talked about kind of there's a lot of one-off stuff. So one-off in terms of um it might be uh the the induction for a new member might last kind of one literally one meeting cycle as opposed to one annual reporting cycle. Um formally monitored, I I love that in terms of the board actually taking ownership and and installing it's like a check and checks and balances on itself. Are we doing this? And um in terms of so you your question about communication, I think when you have uh a formal monitoring process in place, it gives people permission um or actually responsibility for everyone to say, Oh, are we doing this? So, you know, and and being able to ask a new new trustee, a new director, um, did that happen for you? Um So yeah, I I think having having those, the formality and the intention around it, it makes communication theoretically a bit easier because it gives people license to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

And and the thing with that is it's so easy to do. All you do is you have a annual work plan for your governance committee or whichever committee's in charge of it. And in that annual work plan, on month six, you have a formal review of the induction process with the director. And then once it's in that annual work plan, it actually will happen. So um again, one of the great tips is for all of your board committees, many of you will do this anyway, but for all your board committees, have an annual work plan for them so that they know um what's the cadence of things that they need to look at. When do we review ourselves? When do we do this? When do we do that? And you can build into your governance committee your um formal monitoring after the after the first six months. Now, the the other two elements on here that make up really good induction programs are mentoring. Now, mentoring goes together with the next one, which is, and your induction program should be for at least 12 months, not one week, where they sit down and meet with the CEO and they get all the papers and their first uh commentary from the uh the CEO in particular is okay, so our next board meeting's on the 14th of September. Good luck see you there. So we want to get past that and really help our directors add the real value they can because they've they've been appointed or elected because of who they are and what they represent and the potential that they can bring to it. So let's not make it difficult for them. So mentoring, most organizations go back, Sean. Sorry, most directors um sorry, most boards don't really know how to help mentors. So one of the things that will provide you as part of this is access to some guidelines on how to um talk with mentors and how those mentors should be talking with their mentees. There's got to be a better word than that, but the people that they're mentoring. Um, because often we don't have a formal process and it's just left up to um people who've put their hand up to be a mentor or who are allocated to be a mentor to do what they think a mentor should do. Let's help them by giving them some guidelines, and we'll provide you with some examples of that towards the end of this program. So, mentors. Now, two of them, one for the first six months and a separate person for the second six months. What you don't know in the second six months is very different to what you don't know in the first six months. So the first six months is more likely to be around process. It's more likely to be around, well, what's the background behind this? It may be around, you know, how am I doing? Is it is is what I'm saying coming across? Am I picking up the nuances in the organization around the board table? The second mentor will probably be more likely around the behavior, the uh the understanding of what silence means in this board. The understanding of what uh respectful dissent looks like in this board, more the behavioral things rather than the operational structural components. And so, therefore, when you're choosing your mentors, you probably want to choose the first mentor as someone who can help your new director understand some of the background, understand why these things are important, and then to the second mentor to understand the culture, to understand the nuancing, to understand the boardroom behavior and director conduct. Because mostly people don't have experience in this. Particularly if you're a member-based organization, let's say, let's say you're a speech pathologist, which I was for quite some time, and you get elected to the Board of Speech Pathology Australia, speech pathology New Zealand, and you come on there and you're a fabulous speech pathologist, but you've never been on a board before, or if you have, it wasn't a particularly pleasant experience. We need to help those directors actually get up to speed really quickly and be that gift that they can be. And the mentoring is a very powerful component of that. And then at least 12 months. So don't think of this as a one-off thing. It should be planned out over a 12-month period. Once you've planned it, it's easy. And one of the things that we'll talk about later on is each director should have their own individualized mentoring program, their own individualized induction program. Now, why is that important? Well, let's say you get someone coming onto your board and you are involved in the community. Very strong community connections, very strong community-based organization. Your vision is about empowering and and uh and growing the community in the areas that they need it. And this person who comes on has great financial experience, very good at business development, because this is what the straight plan says that we need, right? You're not probably going to spend much time mentoring them on the financial and business sustainability stuff. You're probably going to spend most of your time mentoring them and also providing them with access to the community stuff that they don't have the experience in. Conversely, if you're on an organization that is uh technical in expertise and you have someone who has had very little experience in communities or dealing with with diverse groups, you're probably going to want to spend more time on that than it is on the actual technical backgrounding side of things. So you can individualize it. Okay, so Sean, next one. So what would this look like? Here's an example of what this might look like over a 12-month period. The first five months, yeah, four months, five months, six months is building the confidence, right? So to help our director make informed and confident questions so you can actually assist them. Don't expect new directors to know how to ask questions, which is why many board papers should have on there a little section underneath that particular board report that says strategic questions for board consideration. So that can actually help train up our newer directors on what are the sort of questions that are really, really powerful. Um, the discussions around boundaries between governance and management. How often have you seen a new director get in who wants to dive into the operations because it's interesting? Um, and then so they need to be uh coached, mentored, given some guidelines about what are those boundaries between governance and management, and also the fact that we it's a it's a wavy line, it's not a straight line. So sometimes we dive in, sometimes we dive back out again. The hallmark of an experienced board is when they know when to dive in, they know exactly when to dive back out again. And then participate without holding back or or overreaching and building credibility early. So this is that first part of building confidence. Linda, what's your view on you know, in the first let's say five months or so, what should they become?

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Yeah, look, I think I think this is it's fabulous actually having this mapped out, Stephen. I think that the um the the emphasis that you're putting on new directors is a sensible one because if someone is experienced, they will of course understand the difference between governance and management and understand what you've said, which is a it is a a wavy line. So if you're in crisis, if you have um uh you're a new startup, those sorts of things, then of course the board is more involved than if you're uh an established entity that's been around for a long time. The other thing is that it's a very explicit uh requirement of the chair to provide opportunities for the whole board to share how they ended up there. So, what is their value that they're bringing to the board? And that's what you're talking about with that credibility. If you actually want a trusting relationship around the board table, which you must have if you're going to make those hard decisions and have those robust discussions, you need trust. And in order to build trust, one of the key ingredients is having um an understanding of the value every person brings around the table. And I just suggest to um to participants that they um look up the trust equation that um was developed by Charles Green, and that's a great tool for building good board dynamics.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Another great tool around this, um, and Catherine, I'll be interested in your views whether you've seen this in anything, is um we often recommend to to boards at the start of each year when they've got their new directors who've just joined, or whenever that first board meeting is after a new director has joined, take 10 or 15 minutes at the start of the board meeting and ask a simple question of each of the directors. And that simple question is here's our vision statement. What does that mean to you? And the and the point behind that is that you expect everyone to have a slightly different view. That's why they're sitting around the board table, because they bring these experiences, these insights. So, you know, if if your vision statement says uh uh a resilient and vibrant uh community in our area, then um Linda, what does resilient mean to you? Catherine, what does vibrant mean to you? What does the community mean to you? And you you go around and you get the view that, first of all, the vision is important, but we all have a slightly different perspective of what it means. That's the power of the conversation. And it also enables, particularly new directors, to get an idea of the things that drive the passion of others, but it's within the framework of the vision or the purpose or the mission, whatever you call it. Uh, it's a fabulous technique that you can use, takes about 15 to 20 minutes at the most, and you should not write down the answers because you're not asking. after the answer. You're after people's views and visions around that. Catherine, what have you seen in that first, you know, first to five months that's really made a difference?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

I was just just looking at the um the divisions and I think uh and also with with my eye on one of the one of the questions and um in terms of building confidence of course for really experienced directors they might uh that period might be really short. But what's often not talked about and and can trip some people up is there can be an unlearning period as well that needs to um happen particularly around cultural norms. And so somebody might come in with a lot of confidence, have no crimes at all about asking questions, participate without holding back and so on. But it might be a cultural norm on the board they've joined that people don't do that or people do that differently or with different language in different ways. I guess what I've what I've seen in terms of induction is that it's often um over by by the time by sort of month two or three so I'm just sort of looking longingly at that at the three stages in a in a 12 month cycle. I just want to draw your attention to a quick there's a quick question in the in the QA. Great question from Lance there go through it Catherine Oh um I was actually just gonna um back a a few um from uh on Ben David uh just an observation about many boards taking on really um trained accredited directors a board I'm on we've we've disappointed members who hugely experience you know chartered fellows and so on and it can be um there can be an interesting dynamic where we assume perhaps oh they won't need induction won't need as much and certainly you know it can it can seem awkward to say to somebody who's a chartered fellow oh we're going to give you a mentor um and I wondered if you had any comments or observations on how to approach or the importance of even applying the same process even to really experienced directors on boards.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

It's probably just as important for the really experienced directors because a mentor's not going to take them through the basics of governance right they're not going to take them through here's how you read financial reports in this organization. Experienced directors will do that. However what they will do is take them through some backgrounding take them through on why decisions have been made in the past take them through some of the difficult situations that the board has faced in the last three years. So there's a series of things that a a good mentor would take them through. If you don't like the word mentor use the word buddy if you don't like the word buddy use the word support you know whatever it is that's needed. But even the most experienced directors need to actually get some insight into what is some of the context behind what what has happened here. And they probably don't need as much as new directors that have had little experience but they certainly do need something.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Linda well I was just going to say I think that it's the context is everything isn't it and so as an experienced director going onto a new board what I'm interested in a lot of the time is is how the shareholding works how you engage with your shareholders and key stakeholders are there any that you actually need to really work hard and build a relationship with because there's a bit you know they might be a bit tricky or whatever. So it really is all about context. So if you're an experienced director um then you'll be looking for different things and uh from from if you're a new director who's still finding their feet. Stephen we've got quite a few um questions coming in and um so there's one here that um as you mentioned from Lance where he's talking about a lot of the information that you had listed um in uh your earlier slide were was was information that probably a good director would have already gathered through the due diligence process. And if they hadn't then that in itself may be a red flag. So I thought that was a a good comment to actually um say you're covering all your bases Stephen and we need to do that.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

But um yeah they're right the the due diligence but there'll also be commercial and confidence stuff like you know the last three sets of board papers and all those sorts of things which wouldn't be available. But absolutely if you've yeah if you've got a director who hasn't done their due diligence. However there are so many organizations where that doesn't happen. You know you again if you're a if if you're a an osteopath or you're a dentist or any professional trade association typically they've done no due diligence they put just put their hand up because they want to be on the board because it's their profession or their trade. And so yeah it it it happens in different ways with different organisations. Linda are that uh yeah there's quite a few I'll just run through a couple more seeing we have the time um one is would it be appropriate for the chair to be a mentor and following on from that we have one who says who are the mentors are they board directors CEOs senior staff who so Stephen who who do you recommend as the mentor typically I wouldn't go straight to the chair because that's the default position you know oh the chair will be the mentor no they're they're busy chairing you don't don't don't lump them up with a whole lot of stuff. So you'd be looking at other directors and you you wouldn't be choosing someone who'd make a terrible mentor. You'd probably one of the suggestions is give them a little bit not training so much but give them some guidance about what being a mentor would be like I think it's a mistake to ask the directors who'd like to be a mentor or me. Okay the governance committee should actually identify and allocate mentors rather than leaving it up to chance or someone who'd like to be a mentor sort of thing. The other thing I've seen too is just talking with one with one board, none of their current directors would be suitable as mentors. They're all too new they're having some issues oh the stories I could tell they're having some issues and so what they're doing with the mentoring is they're going to get some past presidents who are actually really calm cool collected they're bringing some past presidents to actually help mentor these new directors. So there's no one way of doing it you've just got to be you know it's it's what's going to be suitable for that particular board at that particular time.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Yeah I mean there is one here and um and they're talking about uh could could uh uh a mentor be someone from the governance staff such as a governance advisor or board administrator I mean I don't know about you Stephen but I mean maybe a company secretary would be good from a from a you know from a process perspective rules and legislation and and process perspective but I think that um it's unlikely that they would provide as much value as if it was somebody who was a prior or a current board member.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

I don't know Katherine what do you think um yeah I think there's a there's an a lot depends on the context but again I think Steve you were about to say from a from a process point of view um yeah my my feeling is you want you want your mentor program to be uh to be formal and to be consistent and formal like not formal just in terms of predictable and the same for everyone. I guess what people need out of a mental relationship is going to depend on the skills they're bringing and where the gaps are in their understanding. And in an earlier slide with Steve's um gold standard program I noticed you had you know two mentors one for the first six months and one for the second six months and I think that's such a clever beautifully simple design because not everyone is actually good at helping people settle in. Some people that's their real strength is just make somebody, you know, um help them hit the ground running really fast. But then after that there will be somebody else whose skills as a mentor um are really on building depth um depth of belonging depth of those relationships there's another question in the QA about would the CEO make a good mentor as they are in the purpose and vision daily and and my recommendation would be not um again from a governance perspective I think you're going to get some really tricky dynamics in play there if you've got uh the CEO mentoring someone on the board um any any additional comments on that particular I agree with you yeah um on on Ben David's made an interesting point can you use external mentoring companies?

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Yes but not for the purpose of induction right induction is about the board uh external mentoring is about you developing personally as a person and uh yeah I do about I don't know seven or eight mentoring assignments a year and it's never about the inner workings of the board and the culture it's more about helping that person understand how they can add more value strategically without getting involved in the in the day-to-day stuff of that board.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

Okay let's move on here sorry go on no Carol I'm there was just one more Stephen um some suggestions on how to source mentorship for members member association boards whose directors are all novice board directors would be useful well find out who those are that are less novice who are willing to learn how to be a good mentor and it's not hard it's not hard and start with that just start.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

What if they're all novice I suppose you could have an external to support but as you say it's not induction then is it it's more disciplining than on their board yeah so so don't do it if if you've got a total change of your board very unlikely but if you've got a total change of your board and they are all novice is there anyone on there who's been on another board that was a good board that would be useful yeah we find many people have had many board assignments but they're they're still not a very good director. They've been on lots of boards they just ring bring really bad habits with them. So you just got to be a little careful of that too. Okay so um going back just one Sean Okay so months six to eight what what we're doing is deepening applying and then months nine to twelve is how you as a director can evolve and getting you ready to take up a position of responsibility maybe the chair of another of another committee or getting you to that level where you can actually head up a task force or whatever it might be but it's that it's that next level of evolving and getting yourself ready to be the leader. The ideal thing would be if around your board you had two or three potentials who could be the next chair in two or three years why wouldn't you as part of your succession planning actually help develop that uh develop that along okay next one Sean so you can read this at your leisure but you know the first six months might be these things introduction, governance and compliance, strategic overview, financial acumen it's not so much how to read a profit and loss statement or how to look at risk uh balance sheets and and risk management so on but it's how to question them, how to interrogate them, how to look for the patterns that are occurring. What happens if you find a pattern? How do you actually then raise that to the board? How do you escalate it if you're not comfortable with the the responses that are coming this is what a good induction should take you through. Next one the second uh the second thing is from integration and mastery and then from appointment to responsibility read that at your leisure. I'm not going to go through them now. But these are the sorts of things you can change any of this you don't have to follow any of this but it's the thinking that's important and the design of it that's important, which is where your company secretary, if you're lucky enough to have one, comes into it or where the governance committee comes into it or if you don't have any of those, then the chair and the CEO can sit down and actually map this out. Once it's mapped out then you you're two thirds of the way to actually creating it if you thought of it that way. Okay next slide Sean Okay this is really cool. It's so into easy to do a personal onboarding plan for each of your new directors coming on. Each of your new directors will have different experiences, different backgrounds they're on there for different reasons. So develop up something that is particularly useful for that individual. And you do that by talking with them. You don't just sit down with a blank sheet of paper and put it into chat GPT and then have it Claude look over it and you know you sit down with the person and you co-develop with the company secretary and the chair that person's experience over the next 12 months. It usually will take half hour 45 minutes with the person but once you've done it you've done it and we've got an example of a personal onboarding plan that we'll give to you at the end of this session as well. Next one Sean mentors we've talked about there's some great hints again a downloadable we're giving them a lot of stuff aren't we um a downloadable resource on uh board mentoring for new induction we'll make sure that goes out with you okay next one the economic impact it's interesting because if you if you say oh that sounds like a lot of work have you ever thought about what it's going to cost you not doing it and this is one of the really interesting things here so let's say you know time to productivity it takes you six it takes a new director six to twelve months to fully contribute that if you can reduce that by two months if they're fully contributing by the the second or third month as a as a really um uh useful contribution to the conversation out there you've actually covered about 15% of the recovered value of what you would have otherwise lost. If you have one hour of staff or director time saved per meeting because the director, the new director is not asking operational questions or they're not going through backgrounding or taking the time up of the boards going down little rabbit holes that really shouldn't have gone down to that can be a huge saving in terms of time. So if you want to look at the economic impact if you need to you know take it from oh there's going to be so much work look at see the the the impact it's gonna have if you don't do it. And so these are just some examples of what some of the economic impacts are all right next one Sean Alrighty so what next? The the key thing in here and and um uh Catherine asked a great question can we go over the most important things that a board member should receive prior to going on the board all right uh what are the what's the next step? The first thing is sit down with whoever's responsible your company secretary or your um governance committee uh or in the absence of that the chair and the CEO and map out your induction program not just a list of um of materials but a fully thought out program of what they're what you've seen in the past and what would have helped you and to map these things out over a 12 month period what logically should come here what should be the next one what should be the next one uh and then once you've mapped that out then look to see with your new directors coming in how can we personalize this how can we make sure that someone who's got no community experience gets more community experience maybe we uh line up some meetings for them with external uh community bodies or other organizations so that they experience some of this rather than just sitting around a board table. And again it comes back to and and I love this one oh but they're busy people. My answer to that always is who do you give something to to make sure it gets done? You give it to a busy person because they get it done. If they say they're busy they're using that as an excuse but a busy person will actually make the time and as part of their responsibility as a director it should be in brackets it must be non-negotiable. These are the things that need to occur. It could be a scheduling issue that's fine but not if someone says I'm too busy I don't have time what they're telling you is I am choosing not to and this is probably one of the greatest insights that I can give you if someone says I can't because translator that means I'm choosing not to okay at least you understand where they come from.

SPEAKER_02 38:54

So Linda I'm just reading a question. Okay can I give you it's a great question should boards also ask some questions from incoming directors as to what they would prefer to know in their induction so that it can be tailored to their needs plus any critical gaps in those aspects may be included. I think that's what you're talking about. Yeah absolutely and then there's a lovely question from Trish who manages this and I love that because often I'm sitting there thinking I'm chair do I have to do all of this so who manages this from the perspective of operational and governance performance where sometimes programs can become operational liabilities. Absolutely not sure about what that means operational liabilities but anyway.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Too much time taken up and staff time taken up and it's all delegated to the staff sort of thing I would think yeah look there there's a couple of things every company has to have a secretary by law company secretary. It's often it's a CEO all right because there's no one else there to do it. Okay well then in that case maybe the CEO should take some time out and at least plan out a rudimentary greater than what we've got at the moment sort of induction program as a company secretary and then give that to if you don't have a governance committee then give that to the chair and between the two of you in your role as company secretary not CEO um you give that to the chair and you then develop that program up. If you've got a governance committee then it should be built into the roles and responsibilities of the governance committee or the people nominations remuneration PC and R whatever you call it. You can also set up a task force a task force has six months in which to develop this up and you could get maybe in one or two ex-directors and one or two potential new directors and a board director and they're given this task over six months to develop up an induction program. You could do that you could look to see what's available out there. This is one of the things we'll talk to you in a moment with you know actually in conjunction with board pro we've developed up a 12 month induction program that people can actually use but you can develop your own own one up as well. So Linda any any insights onto that one?

SPEAKER_02 41:18

Oh look I just think that it's critical that you actually think ahead and you do have a formal program for induction these poor people coming onto your board they're liable from the day they sign their piece of paper saying yes they accept so why wouldn't you actually ensure they can be successful?

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Catherine Yeah on the the too busy um comment earlier the the all important process that precedes induction is of course recruitment. So if people if you find people are saying they're too busy uh you might want to look at um how you position the commitment before you bring them on board and whether you're you're accurately and honestly letting people know the the workload. But ultimately yeah induction is so critical to to making sure your board can keep going at the speed that it needs to um to be effective.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

Well I love the way Sean's gently winding us up. One last thing however because I have charge of the microphone Talot has uh made a comment in there include a beef profile of each board member one of the things I always suggest is that every director gets a CV of all their fellow directors. And the reason for that is that sometimes if you know someone has been for example a farmer in a past life all right you can ask them a question that is related to land or to geography or whatever it might be. You wouldn't have known that if all you know is their current job. But knowing their past history means that you can actually call upon them because they may not have thought of that. So having a CV available for each director I think is just good practice. Okay Sean over to you.

SPEAKER_03 43:00

Thank you sir. Thank you Linda and thank you Catherine you'll receive an email from me it'll be tomorrow now which will include the uh slide deck that uh Stephen has taken you through and also the transcript of the session um just as you leave the webinar don't forget to complete our really short one minute survey it'll really help us out and if you're considering board management software for your organization of course we would love to hear from you. Better still why not try our free 30-day trial it's really simple and straightforward no credit cards required to get started so thank you again everybody for your attendance I hope you enjoyed the session like I did today thank you again Stephen Linda and Catherine for your time I look forward to seeing you all everybody at our next webinar