After Paul Smith from the Future Directors Institute spent Season 1 interviewing successful board directors, the tables have been turned: now, Paul finds himself on the other end of the microphone. Anna Byrne interviews Paul about his upcoming presentation at a conference in Savannah, Georgia in the USA.

Paul is in the enviable position where he has many options that he COULD talk about during his presentation, so now he needs to works out what he SHOULD say. The presentation is for The International Policy Governance Association and is targeted to look into new possible governance models and the future of governance in general. Paul was approached to give the closing keynote for their 2018 Annual Conference.

If there are topics that you’re particularly interested in or any new buzzwords floating around, we’d love to hear from you so that we can talk about these ideas on the show. Email Paul at [email protected] or Anna at [email protected].

Welcome back to the Boardroom Hustle podcast for Season 2. Boardroom Hustle is the only podcast dedicated to serving all types of board directors at every stage of their journey, all around the world. Whether you’re aspiring to one day join a board, or you’ve just started your board journey, or you can confidently claim that you’re an effective and innovative future director, this show is for you.

Season 1 was centred around inspiring leaders and we spoke about their passions and their work inside and outside the boardroom. Season 2 is purely focus on the future.

There is plenty of hype around governance in the future. Change is coming, both technological and societal, and directors need to always be looking ahead to what will shift the status quo. It’s all about constantly upskilling to better serve your organisation and its stakeholders. We’ll be looking specifically at how these changes will impact directors inside the boardroom and what it means for their abilities and responsibilities.

Today’s episode is an introduction to Season 2 where we begin our discussions around what the future might look like. If there are topics that you’re particularly interested in or any new buzzwords floating around, we’d love to hear from you so that we can talk about these ideas on the show. Email Paul at [email protected] or Anna at [email protected].

The Best of Season 1: "Disrupting the Status Quo"

This episode makes the end of Season 1, which I’m retrospectively titling ‘Disrupting the Status Quo’.

We’ll be kicking off Season 2 in a couple of weeks. I’ll be co-hosting this season with previous Anna Byrne (episode 5), and we’ll be focusing on the FUTURE of the boardroom and the things that are coming on the horizon that will impact boardrooms and how board members need to constantly adapt change.

This episode features five of my favourite snippets from the guests we had on the show in the first season of Boardroom Hustle:

• [1:55] Penelope Twemlowe (episode 6). The importance of saying ‘no’, being selective in what you do so that you can dedicate more time and energy to fewer things (stop spreading yourself so thinly - say no to little things so that you can say yet to the big ones).

• [6:00] Alan Jones (episode 3). Career inflection points and answering the question ‘what’s making you feel most vulnerable right now? (heart arrhythmia, transition point in life)

• [11:20] Alison Rowe (episode 4). ‘Fail early, then try again’ (tips for building resilience and dealing with imposter syndrome, importance of learning from failure, injecting fun and work-life balance, confidence in decision-making without 100% information, managing risk in the boardroom)

• [16:30] Raph Goldsworthy (episode 7). The ‘art and science’ of the boardroom, most problems in the boardroom are perennial because we still haven’t addressed them properly

• [22:00] Parrys Raines (episode 1). Finding your passion, trying things on the side, determining what works best for you

Geoff Hetherington is ‘The Clarity CEO’, helping business owners to de-clutter their ideas (and their lives) with his compassionate but no-nonsense approach. He is also a Chairman and an advisory board director to several Australian companies.

In this episode, we dive into topics such as:

• Being brutally selective with your focus and your energy
• The importance of having a regular ‘reset’
• Advisory boards VS Governance boards
• The ideal size for an effective board
• Stepping back before deciding how to react
• Observe -> Understand -> Identify -> Decide
• The four stages of learning
• The importance of putting away your privilege
• Key ground rules for directors
• And much more!

Links

LinkedIn - https://au.linkedin.com/in/geoffhetherington

Website: http://geoffhetherington.com/about/

Dancing Blind Man consulting: http://dancingblindman.com/

Top Quotes

1. “My Dad always said to me the only thing you’ve got to strive to achieve in life is to be happy at the guy who looks back at you from the mirror every morning”
2. “The hard thing for young people is to figure out how to avoid playing the politics”
3. “It is so hard to find people that actually run businesses to come and sit on the board. That’s the other thing that’s happening with boards - the people that make up the boards are not necessarily the best or the brightest: they are the most available”.
4. “If you understand or at least you can identify what is wrong, you can then make a conscious decisions about what you’ll do or how you’ll react”
5. “Really good directors have the ability to step back and observe what’s happening. They are also smart enough to understand that nothing makes you do anything, because you have the choice of how you react to external stimuli”.
6. “There’s four stages of learning: you start off unconsciously incompetent, you become consciously incompetent, then you become consciously competent, then you become unconsciously competent”.
7. “What I say to my clients is: ‘don’t hire staff’. What you should be hiring for is for talent. You can always teach talented people something”.

One of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face is authenticity, not least of all in the boardroom. This is a topic that my guest today knows all too well.

Ronsley Vaz is the founder of the award winning Amplify agency, author of Amplify: Raise Your Voice, Boost Your Brand and Grow Your Business, and host of Bond Appetit - Australia’s #1 food podcast. He’s also the creator of the We Are Podcast conference - the largest podcast conference in the Southern Hemisphere. And throughout his illustrious journey, one of his biggest learning curves has been confronting himself in difficult situations.

Top 3 quotes:

1. "That is what’s fascinating now about about business - that everyday I find out how much I don’t know".
2. "Every time I’m exposed to someone, I learn more about myself".
3. "Be yourself so much that people want to hang out with you and appreciate you for who you are, then you don’t have to impress anyone".

We also get into all of this too...

• Ronsley’s top inspirational quotes
• The different definitions of success, and how they vary from one entrepreneur to the next
• Why you have to be selfish to be an entrepreneur
• The importance of having the right people around you
• How to stay in the present, rather than being in the past or living in the future
• Why fear won’t go away, and how to deal with it when it comes along
• Learning how to appreciate the problems you come up against as an entrepreneur
• Ronsley’s legacy, and the importance of questioning everything
• How Ronsley’s personality has fitted into the boardroom
• Why being authentic in the boardroom is so important
• The values of millennials and why it matters in business and the boardroom
• Effective listening as a critical part of how we interact with the world around us  

Our Mission is to empower, support and connect a generation of directors steering meaningful change from the boardroom. Check us out at https://futuredirectors.com.au/

Links

Amplify Agency

Ronsley’s book, Amplify: Raise Your Voice, Boost Your Brand and Grow Your Business

The Bond Appetit Podcast

Should I Start A Podcast

We Are Podcast Conference

LinkedIn

Facebook

Twitter

Anne-Marie Elias is a force of nature. Her title is ‘Chief Disrupter’ and she’s spent three decades challenging the status quo and breaking down the cycle of social disadvantage. Disruption runs in her DNA. She’s worked as an adviser to government ministers, in the NGO sector, in the private sector, and in the boardroom. Anne-Marie shows us that we need to realise that what we might think is ‘the best that we can do’ is a long way off our best - we need to embrace change, disrupt what isn’t working, and build toward a better future for all.

In this episode, we dive into topics such as:

• The essence of disruption: challenging the status quo
• The difference between ‘disruption’ and ‘destruction’
• Telling stories to humanise real problems beyond statistics
• Inspiring action and moving toward a greater cause
• Being aware of those that fear change and feel threatened
• Reimagining ‘the best we can do’ (we’re currently not doing it)
• Productivity in the workplace and rethinking work hours to solve traffic congestion
• Collaborating virtually and working remotely
• Reconnecting with reality
• Boards taking a ‘long hard look at themselves’
• Getting more things done
• And much more!

Links

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiefdisrupter/

Chief Disrupter - https://chiefdisrupter.com/

Disruptor’s Handbook - https://disruptorshandbook.com/

Techfugees (Australian Chapter) - https://techfugees.com/chapters/australia/

Spark Festival - http://sparkfestival.co/

Top Quotes

1. “I’m not apologetic to disrupt the hell out of whatever’s going on because we’re failing people”
2. “We have to look out for everybody, and that’s where the real disruption happens”
3. “I think people that fear change think disruption is destructive”
4. “We are so disconnected from reality at every level of society”

Dale Simpson is one of the Principals of Bravo Consulting, which is a blend of executive coaching, systems design, leadership and boardroom development, and operates across Australia and India. Dale was a suggestion from one of our previous Boardroom Hustle guests, Alison Rowe.

In this episode, we dive into topics such as:

• Shifts in our mentalities
• The search for more meaning in our work
• The difference between coaching and mentoring
• Curiosity as a learning tool
• The importance of forgiveness as well as humility
• The benefits of imperfection
• Harnessing vulnerability
• Working in India
• And much more!

Links

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dalepsimpson/

Bravo Consulting - http://bravoconsulting.com.au

Bravo Blog - http://bravoconsulting.com.au/blog/

Top Quotes

1. “I think the first thing that precedes any foreign intervention or help that we seek is knowing when to seek help, that’s what makes us humans – is knowing when to seek help.”
2. “I don’t want us to feel that we are somehow obligated to be perfect, we just need to also know what happens and what we need to do when things don’t work out the way we intended.”
3. “We live in a world where we value extraverts as vital to leadership, but in fact, there are many, many great leaders who aren’t”
4. “What you want at any table is diversity. Not just in gender, race and ability, but also diversity in thinking”
5. “Good coaches are the ones that teach people how to coach themselves”
6. “We in the west think we will be happy if we are successful. The Hindus, Buddhist and Jains have taught us the opposite: we will be successful if we are happy.”

Action Items

1. Seek out work or experience in an unfamiliar area. Try and join a project in which you are not already an expert.
2. Always be curious and stay humble - that allows you to ask more questions, which unlock the door to learning.

Raph Goldsworthy is the Managing Director of ‘Better Boards’, an organisation that provides professional development around being a board director.

Raph is someone who has had very little interest in actually sitting on boards himself, but understands the power boards have on shaping the future. He feels he isn’t personally suited to the boardroom, but has been instrumental in impacting boards through his curation of the annual ‘Better Boards’ conference, the ‘BoardWise’ online program, and providing resources to help directors with their professional development in their own journeys.

In this episode, Raph and I talk about:

• Growing the ‘Building Better Boards’ conference to 600 annual attendees
• The ‘art and science’ of the boardroom
• How directors in the NFP sector can connect with those that can help them on their journey
• How to address the reoccuring, perennial problems of the boardroom
• Thinking about how we can learn from history
• Leaving your ego at the door
• Embracing risk and stepping outside the comfort zone
• The power of asking questions
• Impacting boards without sitting on boards
• Specialists vs Generalists
• Diversity and the future of boards
• And much more!

Links

LinkedIn - https://au.linkedin.com/in/raphgoldsworthy

Better Boards - http://betterboards.net/

Upcoming Better Boards conference: http://conference.betterboards.net/

Sign up to the Better Boards newsletter - http://betterboards.net/newsletter/

BoardWise - http://www.boardwise.net/

Sprout - http://sprouthq.net/

Sprout Podcast - http://sprouthq.net/podcast/

Penelope Twemlow has a lengthy list of positions and accolades. Just a few include:

• CEO, Energy Skills Queensland
• Project and Change Manager, Glencore
• Co-Founder and Chairperson, Women In Power
• Ambassador, White Ribbon Australia
• 2016 Queensland Telstra Businesswoman of the Year (Social Enterprise & Not-For-Profit)
• 2016 APAC Insider CEO of the Year

Penelope spent almost 11 years in the Australian Defence Force before transitioning to a ‘civilian life’. Whilst the myriad of skills and qualifications she’d built up in the ADF didn’t directly transfer, she was able to lean on a few key mentors that helped her apply the abilities she’d developed and quickly climb the ranks. In recent years, she has flourished, winning multiple awards and being appointed to new positions.

In this episode, we dive into topics such as:

• The current ‘No’ crisis
• How we can avoid being pulled in too many different directions
• How to be more selective in our approach to what we choose to do (or more importantly, NOT do)
• Giving others the ability to step up and take on greater responsibility
• Tools and tips for time management & productivity
• Scheduling time for yourself to clear your mind and get some space to do some thinking
• How her medically-diagnosed insomnia has helped her think strategically and put new plans into action
• The TRUE role of a CEO (hint: it doesn’t begin until 5:30pm when everyone else has gone home)
• The importance of professional mentors and advisors
• Breaking out of your pigeon hole and broadening your experience
• And much more!

Links

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/penelope-twemlow-40012246/

Glencore - http://www.glencore.com.au/EN/Pages/home.aspx

Women In Power - http://womeninpower.org.au/

White Ribbon Australia - https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/

2016 Telstra Business Woman of the Year - https://www.telstrabusinesswomensawards.com/brilliant-business-women/past-winners/

Anna Byrne specialises in solving complex people problems and shaping mindset decisions and behaviours. She is a Partner at Neuro Power group and is a strategic advisor to boards and CEOs. Anna began her own board career at the age of 17 when she joined the United Nations Youth Association.

Anna has always been fascinated by how humans operate, and she brings a combination of neuroscience and behavioural economics to understand the deeper experiences that shape how we see the world.

Anna published a book called ‘Behavioural Economics for Business’ in 2016, and is currently working on another book called ‘Boardroom (R)evolution’, to be launched in 2018.

In the conversation, we discuss:

• The characteristics of ‘complex systems’
• Behavioural economics and Cognitive biases
• Experimenting within a board career
• The different filters through which we all see the world
• How board members can get to know each other better
• Ways to increase your ability to perform

And much more!

Links:

Neuro Power Group

‘Behavioural Economics for Business’ book

LinkedIn