In this episode of Associations NOW Presents, guest host David Coriale of the Reboot IT podcast sits down with Mark Graham, vice president of Association Solutions at ASAE, and Paul Pomerantz, FACHE, FASAE, managing director of the Association Governance Institute (AGI) and former CEO of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. They discuss AGI’s mission to streamline resources, build a robust content library, and develop educational courses to elevate governance in associations. Topics include CEO-board relationships, executive transitions, board operations, strategic oversight, and governance structures. They also explore assessments for CEOs and boards, the pivotal role of organizational culture, and how technology and cybersecurity play into effective governance. The episode wraps with actionable advice for fostering a healthy governance culture and navigating the evolving needs of associations.
Check out the video podcast here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_0qljegbl4
Associations NOW Presents is produced by Association Briefings.
Transcript
Dave Coriale 0:03
Hello everyone. I'm Dave Coriale, president of DelCor and host of another podcast, Reboot IT, where we talk about all things technology for the association and 501 C community. Today I am guest hosting this podcast, and I am very excited about our two guests. One of them is Mark Graham, who is the vice president of association solutions at ASAE, at the Center for Association Leadership. And the other is a leader I've been a fan of for a long time, Paul Pomerantz. He has been a CEO of several health and medical associations before this, and he is currently the managing director of the Association Governance Institute. Let's get going. Let's listen in on the conversation. I think there is plenty to gain from hearing what they have to say, and here we are having the conversation I've been looking forward to for weeks now, ever since this was scheduled. Paul, Mark, thank you for taking your time. I know you're both very busy to talk about something that's coming up and very important, the Association Governance Institute, that is one of the main topics. I'm sure we'll weave and bob through a couple others along the way. But like always, I like to start my podcast with what are we talking about? So let's talk a little bit about the Association Government Institute, what it is, etc. Mark, I think you'd be great to lead that part of the conversation. So why don't you give us a little bit of background and where we're headed here?
Mark Graham 1:23
Sure. So the Association Governance Institute, AGI, the brainchild of Michelle Mason, wanted to create a brand new home for governance, for associations. ASAE has done a pretty good job at governance, but we wanted to really focus on it and really have a terrific resource library. What we did was we always created, like a brand new organization. Why we called it the Association Governance Institute, although it will be part of your ASAE membership, and what it does, it creates a library of resources that are all focused on just governance. If you search as a website now, and you search governance, you'll get a whole host of content. But what we've done is we really drill down to a bunch of categories of governance, six categories of governance and three to five subcategories of governance, because governance is quite complicated. There's an art and science to it, and we hope to address both of that with the Association Governance Institute. So let me give you a few examples of the categories. The CEO-board relationship. We're talking about. The CEO evaluation, the compensation, the contracts we get into the culture of boards. One of the major responsibilities with board is to hire and manage the CEO. So we have a whole section on executive transitions, operations. We're talking about the soup and nuts of how boards operate. We have tons of content and sub content on all these topics to round it out. We have strategy and oversight and structure, so we've really used a lot of our advisory committees of CEOs and consultants to help us devise this whole new institute and how to organize all the content. That's the content part of it. But we're also including new tools with AGI and new educational courses. Paul and I have always joked, this is like creating a brand new organization. We started last January, and we're ready to launch next month.
Paul Pomerantz 3:06
Really exciting stuff. And just to add to this part of the thinking behind this, especially as this was first being developed by Michelle and myself and some conversations. The idea was twofold. One, ASAE has a lot of resources, but they're in different places, so the idea is bring it together and really emphasize it, shine a spotlight on it, and make it easier to find, more accessible, and then give it a place to grow. So we already have a great set of tool kits. But what's missing? What needs to be developed? What other tools can we develop? So this will provide that kind of focal point for it. The other thing is that you think about the CEO job, and CEO is successful, if his governance is successful, if the CEO and the board are working in unison, they're aligned, goals are clear, resources are being allocated according to the goals and the plan of the organization, then you have a healthy organization and it functions. Things break down when governance doesn't work. And so in our view, job one for a CEO is to make sure that governing process works; that there's communication; there's transparency; there's clarity. All those types of things. And part of our goal is to really support the CEO in carrying out that part of their position, the CEO and the staff team in other industries. corporate setting. You have the National Association of Corporate Directors in the healthcare setting. You have other governance resources. Associations do not have that kind of focus, and we're bringing that kind of focus to it.
Mark Graham 4:43
Yeah. And as Paul says, this is a starting point. In January, this thing will continue to evolve and grow with the help of our advisory committees. Paul has been instrumental, my partner in crime, if you will. He's a bright star when it comes to governance knowledge. So he's helped guide this thing from the very beginning.
Dave Coriale 5:01
No better guide out there. So I do have a question. You mentioned content. Two questions. One's about content. You mentioned that you've gone through and you've curated the content. So this sounds like it's new content, and probably a mix of some existing content. And so I want to hear a little bit more about that, as well as the assessments that you mentioned. What type of assessments would one find in the AGI?
Mark Graham 5:23
Sure. So the content is divided into a couple of different categories. You have a lot of opinion and articles thought leadership on best practice and governance and all those categories that I just mentioned. We also have how-tos, checklists and case studies. These are all tools you can give people to help them do better. In governance, I'll focus on maybe one area: executive transitions. There is a lot of guidance. We've been talking about CEO succession for decades and how to improve it. So we've gone through and curated all the best articles on CEO succession. We provide some checklists on CEO succession. For instance, very sadly, sometimes there may be an abrupt departure of a CEO. They may be terminated, they may quit. Sadly, may even pass away. We have checklists of what you should do, and each one of those instances, executive transition also involves a CEO contract. So we have whole sections on contracts from the board's perspective and the CEO's perspective, what to look for, what to negotiate, what's important, what you really focus in on? And of course, there is compensation. We have lots of tools and compensation philosophy. We even have a whole practice built around helping organizations determine the right compensation for their CEO. So that's just one of those areas that we really drill down and focus in on. The content. So we provide the opinions, the articles, the how tos, the checklists. We do this for every single one of the categories. Like in financial management, we have 20 questions a new board member should be asking about the financial situation of an organization. This is good for someone who's maybe new to governance and doesn't know what they're doing. So it's a good primer. We could talk about all the content, almost this entire podcast, who does just so much of it, governance. I went into this knowing a little bit about governance, and now I think I'm almost an expert, almost nearly half as smart as Paul, because there's so much to governance, the science of it, there's so much to it. And where people mainly get tripped up is the art of governance. And so we hope to be taken care of the whole package.
Paul Pomerantz 7:22
I couldn't agree more. And one of the great areas of content that we're really proud of, and we go through everything like Mark says: legal, roles and responsibilities, all these things. But one of the areas I'm very proud of is the board selection and development piece. And this is the area where Mark Engel and some other folks have been leaders in this area and have really created publications and tools. Well, all those are going to be curated into this website. So the whole idea of, how do you evaluate board trends and board needs? How do you recruit for a board house is an optimal leadership development process? How do you orient and train and own board members? How do you evaluate their performance? All those kinds of really rich tools that haven't been easy to locate will be part of our resource center.
Dave Coriale 8:13
And I think that's a critical piece. You just pulled out the easy to locate, right? So the ease of use of this resource center, and especially if it's being redesigned, or being designed from the ground up right now, as opposed to taking something and trying to fix it, always yields a better user experience. And speaking of the users, who is this targeted? Is it the CSO, the chief staff officer? Or is it the board? Is it both? Who's the target of the resource for, what are most of the resources for?
Mark Graham 8:34
Really anyone involved in government. So primarily, is going to be the chief executive and board members, but increasingly, especially large organizations, they'll likely have a chief governance officer or someone who's a significant portion of their time is dedicated towards governance. These are for people who aspire to the C-suite or aspire to serve on a board that a lot of people just think they're going to learn on the job. And I can't stress enough that's the wrong way to do it. You don't want to start making mistakes on the job. When it comes to governance, you want to go in fully educated on how this stuff works and where the landmines are. I've seen too many CEOs, chief executives get tripped up because they didn't know what they didn't know.
Dave Coriale 8:36
Yeah, it certainly makes sense. I know how to run my business, but I've been on a board, and the orientation was, you know, "this is our cadence of meeting. This is how we do this process. This is who is the head of this. This is who's the head of that." That's very different than what I'm hearing here in terms of giving the team the resources they need to really ensure that the governance is quality, right? The assessment piece, the onboarding piece, you're talking about the content that I could have as a board member reviewed to understand my role better and how I contribute better. That's what it sounds like. We're bridging the gap between I'm on a board to what's the most successful version of the board.
Paul Pomerantz 9:53
One of the critical audiences we had in mind, CEOs, board members. But also--so and Mark mentioned this--that governance professional, the chief governance officer, director of governance, sometimes manager board operations. They have different titles, and most of them are that, like everyone I met, is a supreme professional, but they all come from different backgrounds. They all have different experiences. And when people are introduced to this job, they may not have all the foundational elements. We developed a course that will be offered asynchronously, called Introduction to Association Governance, and it was originally for this group of governance staff professionals sometimes new to the job, just to give them a common framework to operate from. But as we've begun to develop this course, realize it's of interest to new CEOs. And also CEOs are telling I'd like to share this with our board. In this course, the station in this course, which will be ready in the coming weeks, we'll have legal fundamentals, roles and responsibilities of the board, board selection and development and a function of a board meeting, what you need to do before, during and after. So the tools, as you can see, are really intended for everybody who's part of the governance process.
Mark Graham 11:17
Yeah, offering a micro credential in that course you can get certified in governance.
Dave Coriale 11:23
That's awesome. You mentioned that course is asynchronous, right? Are there in-person events also associated with this resource?
Mark Graham 11:30
With AGI, there is. Where ASAE has two exceptional governance in-person courses already that have a long history and a really great programs. Blend Teck program, CEO Symposium, the one mark Engel runs Exceptional Boards. But we have added another one called the Governance and Strategy Forum within the McKinley Group, which is going to have its inaugural meeting of April 29 here in Washington, DC. It's a two day in person event. It's designed to build the strong partnership between the CEO and the elected leaders, typically the, of course, the chair. But these are also open to incoming chairs. These in person meetings we hear time and time again are terrific to build those bonds with the chief staff and those elected leaders.
Dave Coriale 12:18
That's awesome. There's a micro credential associated with this in the in-person piece. I know that a lot of work has gone into that new in person piece that you just talked about, that's happening in April, and I'm sure that the participants will come out with much more than they thought they would when they went into it. And I'm aware of the symposium and other pieces that you talked about, and they've always had a great track record. So before we wrap up on AGI, one of the other things that I remember hearing about was some assessments. Earlier, you mentioned there are some assessments too that are related to it. Who's the target audience assessments, and what might one expect to put into it and get out of it? If you could elaborate on that a bit.
Mark Graham 12:57
Certainly. At launch, we're going to have two assessments, but we have more planned. But at launch, we're gonna have two assessments. One is a CEO assessment the board would use to evaluate the chief executive, and the other is the board self-assessment, where the board would evaluate themselves on maybe 11 areas to see how they do, how they function, how they work, and compare it against thousands of other organizations who've taken this assessment as well. So the CEO assessment is very cool. It's four parts. It's a custom tool there where you could enter in your own performance evaluation of your chief executive. Every organization is different. They have their own KPI and goals. Well, there's certain things that are just fundamental to every organization. There is, how will you do the job, the administration of a CEO role. There is the leadership qualities, the personal leadership qualities, your interpersonal skills, your communication skills. And then, of course, we have accomplishments and challenges that are present for every organization as well. So this tool is an online tool that board members fill out at the end of this survey, they take on the chief executive. They get a report, and also the CEO takes this survey as well, so the CEO and the board can compare how the CEO perceived themselves in these areas compared to how the board viewed the CEO in these areas. And the other the board self assessment tool focuses in on, I think it's 11. Sorry, we are working on so much here at AGI sometimes it's hard to remember the exact number and details of these parts. But if focusing on how the organizations, the culture, the meetings, the policies, financial oversight, and how well board members think they do in these areas, and again, then we compare it to. No board is perfect. Some boards are great. Some boards are okay. And so what we're going to get with this report is we're going to see how you stack up again. Stack up against a bunch of other organizations. So these two tools were created, actually a long time ago in partnership with board source, but ASAE has now taken them in house, and now they'll be part of AGI.
Dave Coriale 14:56
Understood. And what's the time commitment on the organization or the executives part on those types of self assessments?
Mark Graham 15:02
About 30 minutes, 30 minutes. It's a thing, where you can jump in on your phone, fill out few things, come back. But if you sat down, really wanted to push for it, it's about 30 minutes on each one. There is some administration for the CEO assessment, because some of those questions are custom assessment questions. But once those are done, the board member can expect about 30 minutes. It's a good tool they can use year after year and track their progress, board self assessment and the CEO assessment, so they can see where they're doing better and where they still have some work to do.
Paul Pomerantz 15:32
It's a wonderful tool. I've seen it used. I've used it on my own board, and I've worked with other boards. And what it does is it provides that opportunity for the board to give itself feedback. This is a board self-assessment, and boards could be their most critical evaluators. And so it's one thing for a CEO that say, you guys could be doing better. It's another one for the board itself to look at this and say, we could be doing better. And so when properly done and facilitated, these instruments are incredible because the board identifies not only its strengths but its weaknesses, and gets to compare itself with its peers. And so that's really eye opening for board members. The eyes light up. They get excited, and they're engaged about how do we move forward? How do we become better? It's a great tool for self improvement.
Mark Graham 16:21
These tools are completely confidential. The board members are not going to know who answered to what questions, so it really gets some honest feedback of the CEO and of course, the board.
Dave Coriale 16:30
Yeah, that's a really important point to make in ways you want to ask also, one of the things we love to do in this community is benchmark ourselves against others, right? Will there be as you collect data across time, even though it's anonymous, will there be the opportunity to see where your ratings stand against other organizations?
Mark Graham 16:48
Yeah. In fact, in every report, you will see every single category, almost every single question, how you stack up against all of your peers, because this poor self assessment has been administered for gosh, I drew my math here, 16 years, we have an enormous amount of data, awesome to pull from. The CEO assessment is not a benchmarking tool. And it shouldn't be, for probably reasons. But the board self-assessment, you'll be able to see how you do, yeah, and year to year, if you do the report every year, every couple years, you can just go back to the little report and see how you did.
Dave Coriale 17:18
So speaking of how you do, is one of the key aspects of this. How are we doing as a board? How are we doing as a chief staff officer? Paul, you started this thread. You started this conversation around the CEO is successful, or the chief staff officer is successful when governance is solid, paraphrasing a little bit there. But you're saying governance a good place. CEO has much more likely chance of success. And I know you also mentioned earlier, culture playing a role in that, and that's something that I feel like you've focused on. You've written some articles about it, you've talked about it. I've heard you talk about culture, fair assessment, fair statement. That's important as far as success goes beyond just the operational aspect.
Paul Pomerantz 17:56
Yeah, I would say it's probably the most important aspect and the least well defined.
Dave Coriale 18:01
I was going to ask you to start by defining what when you talk about culture, how do you define it?
Paul Pomerantz 18:06
Greatly, it's like that famous quote by Justice Potter Stewart. I notice when I'll know it when I see it. He was describing pornography in those days. So probably not a great analogy, but culture, we're going to end up with an explicit rating, exactly, you know, and your kids listening to this. But no, all kidding aside, the culture really refers to what groups value, what they believe in, and how they behave towards each other and to others, and it really reflects The norms of behavior. And what's interesting is that culture is not defined by what people say they are. So one of the big misinterpretations out there is, well, the board values, right, or the organization values they represent your culture. They may not, because the culture is really how you live, how you behave, people. And I'll say Mark Engel again, he has assured with me, and I truly believe it, that there are three pillars to governance, strategy, structure and culture. And the if you think about it, strategy is your direction, structure is the hardware, right? How's the board organized? How many board members are there? How's it staff, all those kinds of things. But culture is the software. It's really how it works. It's the operating system that really makes the board operate. And the literature is full of examples of when culture doesn't work properly. They go back in the last couple years, we've had issues on the media with the National Association of Realtors, where culture broke down, the organization was blind to activities that took place within the organization that was very costly for a reputation of the National Association of Realtors, certainly in the corporate sector and the for profit industry, many examples and we can point to. To really the very high profile experience with Enron, going back to the turn of the century, where, you know, that led to really the downfall of that company, because the board was not paying attention to things it should have, and accounting was hidden. It was falsified. And really resulted not only in the downfall of that company, but new laws and regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that really required a high degree of transparency, and we can go through examples in this article I wrote for more brief, there are many examples where it's just very costly, where, when the culture breaks down, it could be extremely costly for the organization. Interestingly, people would say, what's a an example of the good cultures of people getting along? Is it people being very civil with each other? And I'd say, no, it's really the reverse. It's where boards are inquisitive, where there's healthy disagreement, where there's healthy curiosity, there's robust discussion of issues where people are held accountable. There's accountability of the staff. There's accountability to each other, and the board is engaged in a very rigorous process of self evaluation, evaluation of the organization and accountability. They're asking the tough questions about their industry. They're asking the tough questions about the organization and how well they're doing. They're asking tough questions about their competitors in the competitive environment that they're in. I think we sometimes falsely seek in our organizations a degree of camaraderie that may not necessarily be healthy. And one of the things we talk about in the article is that association boards are especially vulnerable to this false sense of harmony. And the reason is, in associations, you got people from the same profession or same industry, and we're less likely to be critical to call each other to account, because I'm going to rely on you. Let's say you're in my profession to help me to advance further. I want you to like me. I don't want to call you out, because then you'll call me out. But in the contrary, that false harmony can be very detrimental to the organization. So I hope that makes sense, and what we talk about in the article is, how do you evaluate your culture, and then what are some of the tools and resources that are available to help check in and improve that culture? It's not all that hard. It's really just asking the right questions. The board self-assessment is clearly a tool you can use the CEO selection and evaluation. That's a very critical resource you want to make sure that the CEO has been somebody who has had experience building a culture, building a partnership with the board, sets the model for a healthy culture. In an organization, you want to recruit board members who have similar types of experiences that are good at this. They understand what they're trying to do. Look at the board agendas over time. That's another tool as well. Boards with a healthy culture will spend more time on strategic items and generative items. They're going to spend more time exercising their curiosity and asking tough questions. Boards that have a weaker culture are going to spend their time on operational issues and micromanagement. Why? Because it's easy way of getting out of the tough issues. You really want the board focused on the tough issues. Another thing that many boards are doing is they're bringing on public members and other perspectives to create a diverse, diverse points of view. So if you have a board that's we're all from the same industry, we're all used to talking to each other, bring in different perspectives, bring in a member of the public, bring in a customer of members, either as a member of the board or on an infrequent basis, to help challenge the board and then lean into the bad news. What I found is boards tend to avoid the bad news until it's too late. What you want to do is, if you had a bad record financially. You want to talk about that. What does that mean? The industry is facing some tough times. What are you going to do, and how are you going to address that? That you've had a staff engagement survey, there are some signs of stress among the staff. How do you present that to the board and talk about that? But leaning into the bad news, having those frank conversations is very much part of that.
Dave Coriale 24:21
So there's a lot in there, right? I'm trying to listen and parse all the way through that, and it all made sense. You asked in the quite in the middle of that, you said, that does that? If this makes sense, it all made very good sense. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, right? So culture is one of those things that you have to have your eye and it's also always known to be one of those things that it's really hard to change. You can't execute a new culture like you use the word. You have to build it. You have to push towards it. And you tied that to the values of the organization. And when there's misalignment between values and action, is what it sounded like to me, fair assessment, that we have values, that there. The website we're done with that. Let's move on. That's a critical piece that can fall apart when you're not paying attention to it.
Paul Pomerantz 25:07
Exactly. I've seen too many boards say and come up with values that don't really reflect who they are. So our value is customer service. Our value is civility. Now you really got to break down, what do you really mean and what do you truly live? And I'm going to modify your quote there, culture eats strategy. I'm gonna say culture eats CEOs. What happens is, if a CEO knows how to manage culture, understands culture knows what to look for, they're gonna do well. But what I see too often is that CEOs will enter organizations not really familiar with the culture that they're walking into, not sure how to measure it, not sure of their compatibility with the culture, and try to redefine strategy or their role or change culture without really knowing how to do it. And we see those stories all the time, and having a cultural competency is really important for a successful CEO, particularly as it comes to working with governance.
Mark Graham 26:08
Well, we'll add though, culture can sometimes be the third rail in organization management, because a CEO goes in there, they can see the culture is not well, but to change it, they may have to tackle their own board of directors. I've seen many associations CEOs going, Nope, it's just not worth it. I'm going to just go with the status quo. And sadly, that's really one of the reasons why we want AGI to be successful. We believe in excellent governance. We want to give people the tools to maybe tackle that third rail, even though it's a little intimidating. But if culture's eating things again, yeah, I think it is eating CEOs and strategy, probably a few other things.
Dave Coriale 26:43
It's such a big word, and so I'm wondering if there is an assessment. Yeah, I think you mentioned there is an assessment. Are there ways to assess culture as a new CEO walking in? Because one of the ways we define it is how work gets done. Right here at Delco, we say culture is how our work gets done, and we're not talking about the process that we go through. We're talking about what you talked about, Paul, in terms of whether or not we communicate with each other frankly and honestly, or if we just want to get along for the moment, whether or not we challenge each other. That helps us define what we mean by culture. But in the AGI content and assessments, how does the CEO get help assessing their culture?
Mark Graham 27:19
I think when Paul and I first adopted the board self assessment and took a look at it, we made some minor tweaks to it, to update it, modernize it for 2024. But he and I saw a huge opportunity to really upgrade this. So we're already in the planning stages of version 2.0 of the board assessment, and really drilling down on culture, because we both believe it's very important, because this is a benchmarking tool, you need to make these changes like once or twice. You can't just make iterative changes to a benchmarking tool. So we made very small changes to it for this first version, but this next version that Bucha and I were working on in 2025 we hope to really drill down on culture. I'm not sure if it's going to help CEOs going into an organization, unless executive recruiters require boards to take this self assessment before entering into a search phase. But at least when they're in there, the board, the CEO and everyone who reads this report might know where they're weak and where this improvement to be had
Paul Pomerantz 28:17
And I'll add to that that the courses that ASAE offers at CEO Symposium, Exceptional Boards. These offer opportunities to talk about culture. I think there's good content in there that Glenn Techer and Mark Engel and others offer that allow for that frank discussion about things. The other thing I'll say is that if you come in as a new CEO and you say, All right, I'm going to address this culture, and I'm going to have that changed in six months. That's not how it works, a slow process. You work by example. You work iteratively. Your organization will live by the example you set. By your example of transparency. By your example of collaboration, your example of how you raise issues and discuss issues, you'll begin to shape the culture that you want to achieve. I think that the organization I came from, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, we had a very cumbersome structure. It was nothing that anybody would say that they would want as a governing structure, House of Delegates, large board. We had a even a third tier, because with the board was so large, called our administrative council. But what worked was the culture. We really emphasized having those discussions. We emphasize accountability, we emphasize transparency, we lean in the controversial items, and the members really appreciated it and were able to get things done. And I think that's how you do it. You set the example you build trust, one board at a time, one president at a time, and you'll get to where you want to get to.
Mark Graham 29:46
Paul is talking about building this culture. AGI is going to give people tools to have room to build that culture. Paul led a webinar that will be on AGI called we love this title. Everyone hates your board meeting and. One of the tidbits in there from one of the participants was they give video presentations of the reports from the organization in advance to the board meeting, and they can watch it beforehand, and they can answer questions about it at the board meeting, but the CFO is not going to the board meeting and giving a financial report eating up valuable time. It's a valuable report. I don't want to take away from that, but if you're giving more time in the board meeting time, by having that information presented at events, we're giving you more time for the strategic discussions that you need to have, the long term discussions changing the culture of the industry and organization. So practical tips can be found inside AGI to be that room.
Dave Coriale 30:38
Doing this work of challenging each other and having these conversations like you're describing without being a jerk. That's really the success of the culture you need to build, which is challenging each other, being candid, leaning in, like you said, to the problems, but everyone needs to be civil and in our environment, in our association, 501c culture, as a community. It is we're generally nice people, right? So it challenges us to be challenging to each other, but fortunately, we're mostly nice people who can do it in a way where it's not going to turn into something that's acrimonious among the participants. So hopefully that's the outcome. But culture is not a new word, certainly. Is this a trend, though? Are CEOs paying more attention to culture than they did 15 years ago. Do you feel like I think so?
Paul Pomerantz 31:24
What I'm seeing is more attention to that and really trying to understand the work that's getting done. That's a discipline generally within the business world. In general, you go into a lot of organizations now, bigger ones, they have corporate anthropologists and business schools are teaching business anthropology, and I think to some degree, all that is heading into the association world as well. Some of the consultants that I'm familiar with have really begun to pay attention to culture, and a lot of the people that Mark and I are working with a CEO Advisory Committee really are attuned to the culture in the organization. And like you say, how work gets stuck.
Mark Graham 32:03
Search teams are created tuned to this as well, and when they place the chief executive, it's in their best interest to have a long, fruitful, happy relationship. So they don't want to put someone into a mismatch. So they're doing assessments and doing the evaluations on the board and the CEO to find out a better marriage.
Paul Pomerantz 32:20
Yeah. Well, what I would say is that CEOs who may succeed on business measures, and they may succeed on culture measures, they'll get fired for failing on culture business, they'll be more forgiven. And I've seen this time and time again, where you see an organization with stronger results, but you have a cultural mismatch, and it just doesn't work. I would say that this is the most critical of skills for effective governance.
Dave Coriale 32:49
I want to hit on one more topic before we wrap up, and that is, and Paul, you were nice enough earlier to bring me into the conversation by talking about the hardware and software, because I'm a tech person, right? That's what we do here at Delcor. Word technology alignment with mission, vision and business objectives. And one of the things that I've seen in governance is a struggle between the staff and the boards as it relates to the technology integrating with the strategy. I've said this a million times, that 10 years ago, we as technologists were order takers. Tell us what you want. We'll build it or buy it or buy it for you. Good luck. Now there's an opportunity for true strategic participation and saying, "Tell us your vision, tell us your objectives. Let us help you with the fidelity around the edges of that because we might know things you don't in setting that strategy or setting that objective." We might know capabilities that the organization could have. What do you feel like the role of the board and the governance body is as it relates to technology within a well functioning organization?
Paul Pomerantz 33:49
I don't think it's ever been more critical. And it's funny what you say. I go back to when I first started in the industry, and that was in the last century, back those of the 19th century, roughly, and it was exactly what you say, but somebody else does that. It's a lower level task. Now it's it's not only a C-suite function, but the CEO is really expected to be conversant in the strategy and issues surrounding technology. And I think it comes down to a couple areas. One is assuring a seamless and excellent experience for the organization's constituents, whether it be its members, external stakeholders, whoever it is, the board has an interest in making sure that the organization is engaging accessible, that the experience of people who interface with the organization And the whole interface is technologically based, is a good one, and that we're getting information and we're learning from each person who comes in boards. Want to make sure that that experience is there, and that they're gleaning the information that comes from that. The second area, I think, deals with emerging technology, and particularly around AI. That has become a strategic item for virtually every board I talk to how is AI going to be used? How are we managing the risks of AI as well as the upside of AI? Do we have an AI strategy? How is it going to help us competitively, and how are our competitors using it? How are we using it and really looking through the future? How are we understanding its capabilities and moving forward. And the third area, I would say, would be in the risk management. The whole area around cyber crime. Cyber Risk is keeping every board I know up at night. Now, the larger the organization, the more pearls the risk, the more chance for the organization to be hacked for information to get out there, and then the deal with that. And so boards want to make sure that there's a good strategy towards dealing with the cyber crime, cyber risk, and that the CEO and this team are really on top of that, including that not only staff need to be well trained in dealing with cyber risk, but the board itself, and really all the commitments anybody interacting with the organization needs to be cognizant of the risk factors. So those are three that come right to mind. Mark, I may have missed some items there.
Mark Graham 36:13
Again Paul, perfect. I have nothing to add.
Dave Coriale 36:15
Then I will ask you both to add one thing as we close out. First of all, I appreciate you spending the time and explaining this. This the AGI, sounds like an awesome new resource for the community. I would like to know what advice you would give an association leader that is looking to build that healthy culture and board relationship in 2025. What do you both have to say? We'll start with you, Mark.
Mark Graham 36:37
I think it really comes down to spending time together and building that personal relationship, because that's where you're going to build, the trust, where you can be candid with each other. Paul spoke earlier, delivering bad news is much easier when you have a strong personal relationship with someone. For me, my recommendation for any chief executive with their board is spend more time with them.
Paul Pomerantz 37:00
I thoroughly agree with that. And the other thing I'd say is, it's no secret, we're in a tough time. The world has been turned on its head. We're trying to understand this world that we're in, and I think having frank discussions with the board that talk about, what are the risks now to our organization, our professional industry, and what are the opportunities? And one of the tools that we talk about, it's in a lot of materials that the AGI has, is and it's and will be discussed in the issue of board brief that'll be coming out soon is the use of generative discussions at the board level. In other words, having a discussion at the board that's not about finding answers, but it's about understanding and just as a board discussing, what do you see as the new risk? What do you see as new challenges to you? What's your experience in your profession and your business, and how's it changing now? And what are some of the things that our association needs to be paying attention to? So it's really trying not to try to avoid the controversy, but as we said before, lean into it a bit. Don't create argument, but try to understand it. How are different members of your organization, different generations, different ownership models, how are they experiencing the changes we're seeing taking place, and how do we best navigate it as an organization?
Dave Coriale 38:19
I love that piece in there, you said, try to understand it. It's a human nature. It's a common thing, especially when you're pressed for time, or don't have the relationship that you talked about, Mark to start assessing blame, as opposed to trying to assess and understand. So I think that's a super elegant way to put just try to understand it before you start solving it. Especially, and if I may be so bold, to offer my one piece of advice to this CEO and to the board, et cetera. It is something that you touched on a second ago, which is, don't cut spending on cybersecurity. We work with a lot of IT leaders, and It shocks me the number of organizations that the head of it is putting in the budget some type of cybersecurity, whether it's a tool to further protect, or it's education which is also going to protect, and they come back, and that's been what's cut. Yes, build a mindset of cybersecurity first in your organization. So again, thank you. I look forward to seeing you both in 3d in real life some point soon, but I appreciate very much the time we spent together here.
Paul Pomerantz 39:19
Thank you, David. This was fun. Yeah, lot of fun. Thanks, David.
Dave Coriale 39:23
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