Kate H: It's 07:30PM. The meeting was supposed to start at seven. Three committee members still aren't there. The papers? They were emailed two hours ago, so nobody has read them.

Kate M: The treasurer is trying to explain the budget while everyone else is scanning their phones trying to find the attachment. And then there's Dave. Dave.

Kate H: As usual, Dave hasn't read anything, has very strong opinions, and is absolutely not afraid to share them at length about everything.

Kate M: Two and a half long hours later, no decisions have been made because there simply wasn't enough information available and there was no time to prepare.

Kate H: A great meeting is almost entirely built before anyone even sits down.

Welcome to The Committee Room.

Welcome back to The Committee Room. I'm Kate Hartwig, Kate one.

Kate M: And I'm Kate McPhee, Kate two. We help volunteer board and committee members of small not for profit organisations who feel overwhelmed, frustrated or just plain stuck to get their organisation back on track, meet their legal and compliance obligations and work better together.

Kate H: And Kate, we're starting a new series today Smarter Meetings because all the good governance we've built over the last 11 episodes only comes to life if your meetings work. And most committees, if they're honest, know their meetings could be better. So today's episode is everything that happens before anyone sits down at the committee table.

Kate M: The preparation, the agenda structure and reports because we know that if you get these things right, then the meeting in the room almost runs itself.

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. Right. Let's get into it.

Kate M: So there are two groups who need to prepare for every committee meeting. The people building the meeting, that's usually the president and the secretary working together, and every individual committee member. So let's start with the people building the meeting.

Kate H: Okay. So their job is to think strategically, not just to create a list of things, but to curate the meeting. They ask what are the most important matters this month? What needs a decision? What governance items are due from the compliance calendar? And critically, what items in the reports need proper discussion and should be marked for special attention?

Kate M: And then without fail the full meeting package goes out five working days before the meeting. The agenda, all the reports, all the supporting papers five days, not two hours

Kate H: As Dave's committee so vividly demonstrated. Now five days is best practice but if you're really struggling to meet this deadline make it at least three. This should be achievable for any organisation no matter what size you are. If you're still finding that difficult, there are probably some other issues at play that need tracking down and you can always contact us if you need some help.

Kate M: So let's have a look now at the individual committee members and their part in preparing for the meeting. So reading the meeting papers is not optional. It's a baseline responsibility as we covered in episode four. It's part of your legal duty of care. So you need to set aside some time, hour, hour and a half or so.

Read every report, understand the financial position, form your preliminary views on decisions, make notes about the questions you want to ask. That way you'll arrive informed and ready to contribute, not scrambling and trying to catch up at the committee table.

Kate H: Because that preparation is what makes the really good questions possible. You can't ask good questions at a committee meeting about something you haven't read, and poor preparation leads to poor decisions or no decisions at all.

Kate M: Kate, how does that thing go, the seven P's? Proper planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance.

Kate H: Oh, I had not heard that before, Kate. I like that very much. I'm going to say it again. Proper planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance. That's great. It's better than Peter Piper picked a peckle pebble peeper. I can't say either.

Kate M: Okay. Seriously though, back to it. So if you're speaking to a report, you need to have prepared yourself. You need to anticipate the questions you might be asked and you need to prepare your responses.

Kate H: And a quick word about if you are actually one of the people writing a report. Make sure you have it in on time because the thing that often makes agendas late is waiting for people to send in their reports, so keep that top of mind.

Kate M: If you can't attend a meeting, then you need to send apologies as soon as you know that you can't make it. If there's something on the agenda where your perspective matters, then you need to send written comments to the chair. Just because you're not in the room doesn't mean your view doesn't count.

Kate H: Now, the agenda, because a lot of committees are sitting on the single most powerful tool they have for a productive meeting and just not using it properly.

Kate M: Kate, you and I have both seen many, many committee and board agendas that look like a shopping list. One word items that tell you nothing. You know, finance, membership, general business.

Kate H: Ah, general business. The item where important things go to die.

Kate M: Or where ill mannered committee members lurk waiting to ambush the meeting. So please get rid of general business. Please just don't have it. Delete it from your vocabulary. Delete it from your committee's mind. Okay.

Kate H: Section one, formalities. That's your welcome and apologies. And here's a distinction that matters. If someone didn't show up without telling anyone, they're marked as absent, not an apology. An apology means you notified someone in advance. Absent means you just didn't come.

Kate M: Kate, one of my little bugbears is somebody who apologises to somebody else on the committee or expects that they will carry that apology to the meeting. That's not the way to do it. If you can't attend a meeting, then you apologize to the secretary. That's not only good manners, but it means that that's an official apology that can be properly recorded in the minutes. You don't just say to someone else or send them a text message going, hey, can you say that I can't make it? It's infuriating.

Kate H: Oh, is indeed. And it's piss poor performance.

Kate M: It is piss poor performance.

Kate H: Over time, a pattern of unexplained absences can lead to a committee member being dismissed under the constitution. Three consecutive meetings without notice and you're out. So that record really matters.

Kate M: And and I think that's really, really important for small organizations. No one can afford to have empty seats sitting around their committee table. They need everyone there and properly contributing. So make sure you record who's not turning up, and make sure that it's reported at your AGM too, so all of the people that turned up to the meetings and the people who didn't turn up to the meetings. Then the members can make their own minds up about how well people are contributing.

Kate H: It's quite a good thing to have at your AGM just a little table of attendance for your committee. So you have, you know, there were 11 meetings this year and Bob turned up for seven of them and Dave turned up for all of them of course, unfortunately. But it's a good thing to have and it keeps everybody honest.

Kate M: Poor Dave. We should stop picking on Dave.

Hal: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.

Kate M: But we won't. Okay. So let's then look at the minutes of the previous meeting. Now good time saving tip. If you spot a typo or a minor error before the meeting, just let the secretary know rather than raising it at the table.

There's always someone on every committee who loves to find the spelling errors and, you know, that's okay, but do it beforehand. Don't grammar shame the minute taker.

Kate H: Having been a minute taker for a very long time, there is nothing that used to annoy me more than somebody saying, oh, on page three, paragraph four, I think you left out an A. It's like, really? Really? That's what we're going to talk about tonight. That's the most important thing on the agenda. Fabulous. No. Give me a call or send me an email. Honestly, it's just a waste of time and really bad manners.

Kate M: Absolutely agree, Kate. Same experience. Totally agree. So matters arising, third item in the first section, it's the action list from the last meeting. So quickly review who's done what, note what's complete, get a status update on what's in progress and roll the rest forward. Don't discuss them here.

Kate H: If something needs discussion, it gets its own agenda item. And one thing to note also, if an action item seems to be hanging around like a bad smell on that action list for more than a couple of meetings, then really it's something that needs to be moved along by the chair and put into the matters for discussion section, which we'll talk about in a minute. Final thing is the declarations of interest, and this is where if you know you have a conflict with anything on today's agenda, declare it now.

Kate M: Okay. Section two, strategic discussion. And this is really the heart of the meeting, the really important stuff. The mistake we see constantly is committees leaving strategic matters until the end of the meeting when everyone's exhausted and they wanna go home. So you need to tackle those really big meaty issues while everyone is still fresh.

Kate H: So this section has three parts. A current issues update. Now that's really for any urgent matters that have come up since the agenda went out Because remember we're getting it out five days before the meeting, so there could be some things that require discussion.

Then we have the biggest section which is the matters for discussion and decision. So these might be strategic directions, major initiatives, significant expenditure, policy questions, risk issues. Things that deserve proper time and attention, not a rushed five minutes at the end of the meeting.

Kate M: And governance, my favorite. Working through the items in your compliance calendar. This is really important. So you should spread those across the year so you're not facing a mountain of governance work just before the AGM. Policy review here, risk register there.

So do a little bit every meeting. Do it often, and you'll find that there is no mountain just before your AGM.

Kate H: More like a little hill. Yes. Yes.

Kate M: Lots of regular regular little hills that are easy to walk up, not a big mountain. Exactly.

Kate H: At our age, we can't we can't do the big mountains anymore. Don't even try. Okay. Section three. So after you've had your major discussions at the meetings, we get into reports. And this is where on so many agendas we see enormous amounts of meeting time getting wasted. Reports have already gone out five working days before. Dave does not need to read his report out to the meeting. Everyone's already read it.

Kate M: Please no, please no, Dave. At the meeting, the chair simply asks, are there any questions or any points for clarification? Reports are then taken as read and you move on. That's right. No reading out.

No summarising what everybody's already received. And the substantive issues in a report that need a decision get pulled into section two. They are not dealt with during the routine reports. So if the membership report shows that numbers are declining, that's a strategic issue. It becomes a matter for discussion item, not thirty seconds in the report section.

Kate H: The one possible exception to this is the Treasurer's Report. Generally that is one that the Treasurer will briefly address just so that there is the opportunity for anybody to ask questions if they haven't been prompted before. But apart from that, it can all just be taken as read.

So section four, management items. Now for smaller committees that aren't just governing but also doing operational work current projects, task allocation, progress updates you can actually close the formal meeting at this point and shift to notes rather than minutes. It changes the dynamic, it's more hands on, but members who are not involved in particular projects can leave, you know, because the formal part of the meeting really is over when you've finished your reports. So this is a way that you can respect everyone's time. And of course, the big question, Kate, is what does general business get replaced with in a well run agenda?

Kate M: Nothing. It just disappears off the face of the earth. Okay. Let's talk now about the format of reports because this is something that makes an immediate practical difference to how well a committee can use the information it receives.

Kate H: Reports are written by different people. So your office bearers, your portfolio leaders, subcommittee chairs, staff if you have them, all of them writing reports and all of them will have a different style or a different format. So it's confusing and slow to scan. Know, one person will like dot points, another person will want to write a, you know, 20 page thesis.

Well, the solution is simple. A standard one page template for every report with all the supporting detail in attachments.

Kate M: That's right. Makes life so much easier. So the template has five elements. Firstly, meeting date, report title and author. Secondly, whether the report is for information or for action, and that distinction matters enormously.

Then a two or three sentence overview giving context, and then your key messages as bullet points. And lastly recommendations, my favourite bit recommendations.

Kate H: And when you put in those recommendations frame them as motions. So instead of just saying that the clubs need new tables, the recommendation would read for instance that the committee agrees to purchase 10 new folding trestle tables up to a total value of $2,000 If it's approved, it goes straight into the minutes exactly as written clean, clear, no ambiguity about what was decided.

Kate M: And having recommendations framed as motions makes the secretary's life so much easier. So when we talk down the track, Kate, in a future episode about taking minutes, we're going to understand how a really well written report makes your secretary very, very happy.

Kate H: Oh, it does indeed. Even just scanning these front pages of the reports before the meeting gives you a really clear picture of what's happening across the whole organization before you've even read a single attachment. That is time very well spent. One page, everything else in an attachment.

Do that for every report and your meetings will immediately run more efficiently, leaving more time for those difficult questions and fruity discussions.

Kate M: Fruity discussion, Kate. I love this. We had we had meaty topics earlier, and now we've got fruity discussion. We're just just really revealing our obsessions with food. But anyway, let's let's move on.

Righty o. Let's recap, Kate.

Kate H: A good meeting is built before anyone even sits down. A four section agenda, formalities, strategic discussion, reports, management items that puts important things where they get proper attention and a standard one page report template.

Kate M: Papers out ideally five days before the meeting, only three if that's all that you can manage, but a good number of days so that every member has got time to prepare. So every member sets aside an hour or so to read through those papers and that means that every committee member can walk into the committee room fully prepared. So when does a good meeting start? It starts five working days out when the agenda and the papers go to every committee member. Okay.

So challenges this week. There are two things. First, ask yourselves, listeners, does your agenda follow that four section structure that we spoke about? If it doesn't, then redesign it before your next meeting. It's one of the highest impact, lowest effort challenges you can make, that low hanging fruit on the tree that will really make a difference to your committee meetings.

So there's a four section agenda template from Kate's committee companion in the show notes and that will make your life a whole lot easier.

Kate H: Second, does your committee have a standard report template? If not, create one and introduce it at the next meeting. One page, date and author for information or action, an overview, key messages and recommendations framed as motions. That's it. Also available in The Committee Companion.

So check it out.

Kate M: If today's episode has got you thinking that your committee meetings could use more than a podcast, well, that's exactly what Kate and I do. Between Kate Hartwig Consulting, Licorice Allsorts, that's my business, and our joint venture Fresh Allsorts, there's a level of support to suit most organisations. The details are, of course, in the show notes.

Kate H: And if you have a governance question you'd like us to tackle, well, we'd love to hear from you. Head to thecommitteeroom.com.au because somewhere out there someone has the exact same question and will be very glad you asked.

Kate M: So if you found today's episode helpful, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and send the link to someone else on your committee or another committee. The show notes are at the committeeroom.com.au. And if you've got a moment, we'd love a review for the podcast on our Facebook page, which is also helpfully called The Committee Room. Who would have thought?

Kate H: So coming up next week, we're going to look at what happens inside the committee room. Cheering well, managing the discussion, keeping topics and people on track, and why starting and finishing on time is a form of respect.

Kate M: Until then, I'm Kate McPhee,

Kate H: 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.