Kate H: Imagine this. Maybe it's your club. A committee of seven people trying to run every aspect of their organisation entirely by themselves. Events, communications, membership, finance, governance all of it landing on the committee table every single month. Kate M: The meetings run for three hours. The same three people do all the actual work. Everyone else is just going through the motions. Kate H: Burnout is settling in. The president hasn't had a weekend off in six months. Kate M: And meanwhile, a significant chunk of the membership talented, interested people willing to contribute has never once been asked. Kate H: The answer to committee overload is not working harder, it's working smarter. Welcome to The Committee Room. Welcome back to The Committee Room. I'm Kate Hartwig, Kate one. And I'm Kate M: Kate McPhee, Kate two. We help small, time poor, volunteer led committees run better meetings, make better decisions, build stronger structures and have better systems with less stress and less mess. We are in our Great People, Great Committees series and today we're tackling one of the most common problems in volunteer organisations The same small group of people carrying everything, while the broader membership watches from the sidelines. The solution isn't working harder, it's building smarter structures. That's right Kate. So portfolios, subcommittees and working groups. Three tools that spread the load, engage a wider membership and enable a small committee to do the work of a much larger one. Kate H: And a quick note before we start, this podcast is for general information on best practice governance for small to medium associations. It is not legal advice, but it is great governance advice and we've got plenty of it for you today learned from our decades of working with small organisations just like yours. So let's get cracking. Kate M: So let's start with portfolios, something a lot of committees haven't really thought about, but makes an enormous difference to how a committee functions day to day. Kate H: The idea of course is borrowed from government. Ministers take on a portfolio health, education, finance and are responsible for overseeing that area on behalf of the whole government. Now committee members can do exactly the same thing, although hopefully with remarkably better results. Kate M: So we already have two obvious examples we'd recommend for every committee. The treasurer nearly always heads up finance. The secretary usually leads governance. That's standard. But there's no reason every single committee member can't have a portfolio of their own. So usually that position is called the portfolio leader. Kate H: Now what should these portfolios be? Well your strategic and action plans will largely tell you. They're the areas where work needs to happen. They're the areas that need a clear owner. Common ones include member engagement, events, communications, facilities, advocacy, professional development. It all depends on what your organisation actually does. Kate M: So what does a portfolio leader do? They provide strategic oversight and advice. They manage subcommittees within it. They manage portfolio projects. They support and lead the people working and of course volunteering in that portfolio area. And critically, they report back to the full committee good news and bad news, opportunities and problems, The Successes and the Failures and the Lessons Learned. Kate H: Now that reporting piece really matters. You want portfolio leaders who bring the committee bad news early, not cover it up until there's a crisis, which as we discussed in episode six is exactly what good committee culture looks like in practice. Kate M: I'm nodding like mad here Kate, because that is so important. If you want to know more about how and which questions to ask, episode six questions are gold will be very helpful. So when everyone on the committee has a portfolio, everyone is much more motivated to be prepared and engaged. Meetings, unsurprisingly, become much more focused. The president or the chair isn't trying to carry everything and the people who've been turning up and just going through the motions, well, now they've got something to own. Hey, could you see what I did there going through the motions? Kate H: Yeah. Yeah. I did. I did, Kate. Very punny. Thank you. Back to using portfolios to work smarter, not harder and potentially make better jokes. Match portfolios to people where you can. Someone with a communications background, marketing and communications. Someone with a good systems head who loves organising events, member engagement. Your skills matrix or skills audit, which we'll be covering soon in our very special Bastille Day episode is super useful here. Kate M: So remember, the portfolio lead doesn't necessarily do all the work themselves because we're talking today about spreading love, spreading the workload, but they're expected to be the enthusiastic champion, you know, the cheerleader for the issues and the opportunities and the activities within their particular portfolio. So once you've established these portfolios, the next natural step is to establish subcommittees. Most portfolios will have a subcommittee sitting underneath them, a formal ongoing group led by the portfolio leader that does the detailed work in that area. But you know, let's keep it real Kate. Kate H: In a very small organisation, you might not have enough people to have the luxury of populating your subcommittees. That's because subcommittees are formal and ongoing. Working groups are different. They're informal and have an expiry date and may be more useful in a small organisation, but more on those in a moment. Kate M: So who can sit on a subcommittee? Well, committee members, obviously. The portfolio lead will usually be on the subcommittee, probably as the subcommittee chair. If for some reason your subcommittee doesn't match up neatly with the portfolio for whatever reason, then you'll need to make sure there is at least one committee member on the subcommittee to ensure that there are strong lines of communication between the committee and the subcommittee. But the point of all of this is that you can also include people who aren't on the committee. So people with specialist knowledge who either aren't willing or aren't able to be on the full committee, but they're willing to contribute in a specific area. Subcommittees are a brilliant way to access skills and knowledge that aren't sitting around the main committee table, and you get a lot of operational work done between committee meetings. So that means the committee can spend more time on the big picture governance discussions and decisions. Now here's Kate H: a governance principle that's critical but often misunderstood. The committee can delegate some of its powers subcommittee, but it cannot abdicate its responsibilities. Delegation not abdication. Kate M: Oh, love that. Delegation not abdication. It sounds like a song. Can you sing that, Kate? Kate H: I thought we'd established that I'd done my dash in that area, Kate. Why are people so unkind? But you are right. Subcommittees are not separate legal entities. Ultimate responsibility always rests with the full committee. A subcommittee cannot go rogue, like launching its own initiatives or making variations to the club's logo, applying for grants or making financial commitments, taking a public position on an issue. In other words, they cannot act in ways that seek to override or contradict the committee. A subcommittee only has the powers the committee has explicitly given to it, nothing more. Kate M: That list of rogue actions, Kate, is just a sample of what we've seen over the years, usually because people didn't understand or just didn't want to accept that the buck stops at the committee table always. Kate H: And it's sometimes the case of a subcommittee becoming overly enthusiastic. They always need to know what their boundaries are. Kate M: Yes. Now this is why every subcommittee must have a clear terms of reference. Purpose, why it exists. Kate H: Objectives, what it's designed to achieve. Its scope, what it covers and just as importantly, what it doesn't. Membership, how many people, how they're appointed, how often they meet, who they report to, what the specific functions of the subcommittee are and critically what decision making and financial authority it has and what has to come back to the full committee. That last part is often overlooked. Defining what's not delegated is just as important as defining what is. Kate M: And that's why the terms of reference must be approved by the committee and the document must include a review date. Things change. Organisations grow or shrink. Priorities shift. So you want the terms of reference to stay current, not become just another document that sits in the filing cabinet or a dusty corner of your internet. You want all of your subcommittees to be fit for the day and the age and the stage of your particular organisation. Kate H: You may have seen the term standing subcommittees or standing committees in your constitution. Now these are the subcommittees that are named in your constitution and you must have, So just make sure that they're working well. Now there's one more benefit to subcommittees that I think is underappreciated. They are an excellent talent pipeline. You get to see how somebody operates before you ever ask them to consider a committee role. Do they show up when they're supposed to? Do they make useful contributions? Do they follow through on their promises? If the answer is yes, then the committee should decide who is the best person to have that conversation, the one about them joining the committee in the future. Kate M: Your talent spotters are such useful people. But Kate, the opposite is also true. If someone on one of your subcommittees is a nightmare to work with, if they're a seat warmer or there's someone who doesn't respect the internal or the external rules or the code of conduct, or worse if they promise the world and deliver zip zero at least now you know so you're not going to encourage them to progress any further. Kate H: Okay so next we're going to talk about working groups and these are my favorites. Working groups are different from subcommittees in two important ways. They're informal and they're time or task limited. So they exist to tackle a specific issue or problem or opportunity and when that work is done, the working group is dissolved. Kate M: Who was the Wicked Witch that dissolved? WWoftheW: I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too. Kate M: The Wicked Witch of the West. She dissolved in a puddle of awkwardness. They dissolve happily because they've done their job. So working groups can be established by the committee or by a subcommittee. Doesn't matter. Depends on the circumstances. Either way works. They have very limited authority and usually no budget, but they can move quickly, stay focused and bring exactly the right people together for exactly the right task. Think of them as an elite strike force. Kate H: So a practical example. The governance subcommittee wants to look at options for electronic voting for committee elections. They establish a working group, just three people who meet fortnightly for two months, deliver a report and recommendations at the end, short, sharp, shiny, job done. Kate M: So the great advantage of these working groups is because they don't involve an ongoing commitment, you can often attract people who'd never put their hand up for a subcommittee, let alone the committee itself. But if they can have a great experience in a working group, sometimes that'll change their thinking and they'll be more willing to take on another role down the track. Kate H: Now here's something worth doing even before you have a specific task in mind. Survey your membership. Ask who might be interested in contributing in some capacity and what their area of expertise or interest is. Build a database. You might be surprised by the hidden gems that come out of the woodwork. Kate M: So it's all about leveraging what you've already got. So I've done this exercise with organisations that I think in every case were really surprised at how much their members had to say and to offer. So architects, lawyers, bookkeepers, you know, landscape gardeners, coaches, marketers, IT specialists, all hiding in plain sight, sometimes for years. All waiting to be asked. Kate H: So ask. Go ahead, dear listener. Find them and ask them. Sharing the love and more importantly, the workload is what this is all about. Kate M: So, Kate, let's recap. Portfolios give every committee member a specific area of strategic ownership aligned to your organisation's strategic and operational plans, reporting back to the committee. No more seat warmers, no more passengers. Kate H: Subcommittees spread the workload and provide formal ongoing support and management of each portfolio area. Give them clear terms of reference, remember that the committee always retains ultimate responsibility and build a brilliant talent pipeline on the side. Kate M: And lastly working groups. They're your flexible tool for contained time limited tasks. There's a low barrier to entry, focused output and they're a great way to find out who in your membership has been waiting to be asked to help out. Kate H: So here's your improvement challenge for this week dear listener. Look at your current committee. Does every member have a portfolio? Are your subcommittees working from clear and up to date terms of reference? When did you last think about a working group for a specific task? Kate M: So pick the gap that matters most right now and close it. And to make that easier for you, we've put a terms of reference template based on, one of the templates in Kate's Committee Companion in the show notes. So you can download it and you can get started. Kate H: And if you haven't yet surveyed your membership for Hidden Gems, well, that's a worthwhile afternoon's work right there. Kate M: Now if you've got a governance question you'd like us to tackle on the show in future or a situation you're not sure how to handle, we would love to hear from you. You can use the contact form at thecommittieroom dot com. Au and your question might end up in a future episode. Or you can find the link to get Kate's committee companion or my book, Just a Tick. Kate H: Seriously, no question is too basic. If you're wondering how to tackle something, you can be pretty sure somebody else is too, and they'll be glad you asked. Kate M: If today's episode has helped you, you won't want to miss future episodes, so subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and please share the love with someone else you know on a committee. As always, the show notes and the downloads are at thecommitteeroom.com.au. Kate H: Next time, once you've built all of those fabulous structures for your committee, portfolios, subcommittees, working groups, How do you make sure everyone knows what they're authorised to do? Now we're talking about delegations because I wasn't sure if I was allowed to and oh I didn't realise I couldn't are both governance failures and we'd rather you avoided them. Until then, I'm Kate McPhee. And I'm Kate Hartwig. Kate M: And this has been The Committee Room. Remember, Kate H: you don't need good luck if you've got good governance.