Governance

Could Your Board Be Asking Better Questions?

In accordance with Section 180 of the Corporations Act (2001), ‘A director or other officer of a corporation must exercise their powers and discharge their duties with the degree of care and diligence that a reasonable person would exercise’. Section 180 also includes the Business Judgment Rule, whereby to demonstrate that a director has exercised due care and diligence, a director should be able to demonstrate that they acted in good faith, made the judgment in good faith for a proper purpose, did not have a material personal interest in the judgment, informed themselves about the subject matter of the judgment to the extent they reasonably believed to be appropriate, and rationally believed the judgment to be in the best interests of the corporation.

Customer-Centric Governance… Customer is King, Cashflow is Queen

In a challenging, competitive customer-driven environment Customer-Centric Governance is critical for boards to adopt to ensure their organisation keeps on winning in the future. The need to balance and integrate ‘heads and hearts’ with ‘business and service’ is becoming increasingly more challenging, yet more compelling for directors, chief executive officers and executives (leadership teams) of community businesses (NFPs). Integrating and balancing an organisation’s business objectives and outcomes in the new customer-driven, competitive marketplace with existing or future service objectives and outcomes is a tough call, particularly given that many leadership teams remain oriented to the government-funded welfare mentality and approach.

Adaptive Directorship: Creating Organisations that Flourish in Unpredictable Environments

The following is intended to be the beginning of a discussion: A pathway to opening up the discourse on what attributes, beyond pure technical skills, individual boards must possess in order to help their organisations thrive in a world that is constantly changing and is, to put it simply, unpredictable. This is not meant to be prescriptive, but rather to present ideas to get you thinking about what practising the emerging concept of Adaptive Directorship might mean.

Pulling in the Same Direction – How to be an Effective Board

To chart an effective strategic course for any organisation, the board needs to be a high-performing team. However, it is common for boards to spend little time articulating and developing how they want to operate as a team. This can make strong governance and strategic change much harder to achieve. Progress is slower and decisions are less effective. As leadership and governance expert Jeffrey Sonnenfeld has identified, what distinguishes high-performing boards is that they are robust, effective social systems.

Four Types of Problem Solvers – Who Is On Your Board?

All the members of your board might agree on the social change you want to see occur as the result of your work. But the odds are that each person will have a drastically different idea of how to achieve that change, and what the metrics of success should be along the way. These differences can lead to argument and disjuncture. However, they come down to how people fundamentally approach and solve problems.

Board Member Remuneration Report 2016

The Better Boards NFP Board Member Remuneration Report 2016 explores the make up of Australasian not-for-profit boards and their remuneration practices. The report provides a unique snapshot of the dynamics of Australasian not-for-profit boards and provides insights to help you understand the changes in board structures and remuneration practices. Through this 40 page report Better Boards aims to provide valuable insight to not-for-profit organisations, boards, board members and others in the not-for-profit sector on the topics of board remuneration and structure.

Board Fundraising Check-Up

Not-for-profit boards are under increasing pressure from the press and regulators to ensure the propriety of their fundraising practices. The Shane Warne and E.J. Whitton Foundations are simply two of the latest examples where boards are asked to explain their approach to raising and distributing funding. If you have been thinking about reviewing your own fundraising practices, we have put together a series of eight points to guide your review.

Tech in the Boardroom: Beyond the Board Portal

Discussion of boardroom technology has almost exclusively been focused on board portals. This makes sense as board portals have probably had one of the most significant impacts on boards of any widely available technology to date. However, we are now beginning to see the consumerisation of a wide range of far more complex and advanced technologies that have the potential to make a significant impact on the boardroom and the way boards operate.

Gavin Nicholson on Handling Complexity in Board Decision Making

In this video, on handling complexity in board decision-making Gavin Nicholson – Associate Professor at the QUT Business School – examines how decision-making processes can help to tackle significant complexity in matters considered by the board. Transcript This is a very abstracted kind of decision that I’ve got here. But I really wanted to make the point that you can have all the information in the group and still make a bad decision, depending upon how you make the decision, the actual process.

Reshaping the Board’s Role in Organisational Culture

Culture is a crucial driver of any organisation’s success and a critical lever in its performance. It shapes and influences an organisation’s internal environment, as well as its interactions with and success in the external environment. In an organisation, culture is the way people behave, what they believe, and the values they hold – on the whole generally without thinking about any of it. These behaviours, beliefs and values are passed through the organisation via communication and imitation, from one employee, volunteer or even director to the next.