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Practical governance for volunteer committees and not-for-profit organisations. Hosted by governance consultants Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee, each episode tackles one topic — clearly, honestly, and without the jargon. Short enough to finish before your coffee goes cold.
It's 1789. The governance of France is, to put it charitably, not going well. The Committee, let's call them the Ancien Regime, have been in power for generations. There is no succession plan. There is no performance review.
Kate H:Louis the sixteenth has been in the top job since he was just 19.
Kate M:The membership, the actual citizens of France, have not been consulted on anything. The budget is a disaster. The treasurer has no idea what's going on. Key decisions are being made in rooms the general membership doesn't even know exist.
Kate H:And when the members finally lose confidence in the committee?
Kate M:The feedback mechanism was robust.
Kate H:And the moral of this story, we celebrate Bastille Day, is that performance review really is the more civilized option. Welcome to The Committee Room.
Kate H:Welcome back to The Committee Room. I'm Kate Hartwig.
Kate M:And I'm Kate McPhee coming to you today from Central France, so bonjour. The sun is shining. The birds chirping. It is absolutely delightful, and the locals are celebrating Bastille Day with considerably more joie de vie than your average committee meeting. And I've got my beautiful Limoges cup here with some delicious French coffee in it, so I'm good to go.
Kate M:Kate, what do we do?
Kate H:What do we do? Okay. We help volunteer boarding committee members move from chaos and confusion to clarity and confidence by building stronger structures, systems, and decision making practices with less stress and less mess.
Kate M:And today, in honor of the date, we're using the French Revolution as our case study in what happens when an organisation completely fails at succession planning and performance review, which, and I want to be clear, we do not recommend.
Kate H:Madame La Guillotine is not an approved governance tool. Noted.
Kate M:The governance content today is completely serious, but the framing is not.
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.
Kate M:So let's start with succession planning. Today, we're going to use a case study, the French monarchy. Here was an organization with no succession plan beyond the eldest son, or in this case, grandson, gets the job. No skills matrix. No assessment of whether the incoming leader was actually suited to the role.
Kate M:Louis the sixteenth was 19 years old when he became king. Nobody asked whether he had the right skills. Nobody checked whether he understood the financial situation he was inheriting. He was the third Louis in a row, stepping into a role his grandfather had held for fifty nine long years, a grandfather who'd left the finances of France in ruins and the population at boiling point.
Kate H:He did not understand the financial situation he was inheriting, or in fact any situation he was inheriting.
Kate M:He most certainly did not. And the rest, as they say, is history, extremely dramatic history. We know it as the French Revolution, a period of European history that produced a remarkable number of cautionary tales about committees with way too much power, no accountability, and very, very poor succession planning.
Kate H:The lesson for your committee? Succession planning is the ongoing process of thinking about what skills, experience and perspectives you need, and working towards that mix intentionally over time, not leaving it to a hereditary principle most definitely not leaving it to whoever happens to put their hand up.
Kate M:And let's be very clear about what succession planning is not, because this is where committees often go horribly wrong. It is not about installing your allies. It is not about making sure everyone around the table thinks like you, because that approach has a name.
Kate H:L'État, c'est moi. Exactly.
Kate M:I am the state.
Kate M:Louis the fourteenth's famous declaration, the belief that the organization exists to serve the leader rather than the other way around. That's the fastest route to a committee that has completely lost touch with its members.
Kate H:Which in 1789 did not end well for anyone involved.
Kate M:The practical tool at the heart of good succession planning is the skills matrix. You map out the skills and the experience that would make the ideal committee for your organisation. So governance expertise, financial literacy, legal knowledge, marketing, industry experience, whatever it is that matters most for your organisation. Then you plot your current members against those criteria.
Kate H:Those gaps become immediately visible and tell you exactly what kind of people you need to be actively encouraging towards your committee over the next election cycle or two. Now, not finding your next Robespierre, that would be bad. Finding the people with the skills and perspectives your organisation actually needs at this time.
Kate M:A little note on Robespierre while we're here, because he is the ultimate cautionary tale about what happens when someone decides their own interests and the organization's interests are one and the same. So Robespierre started out with good intentions, but let's remember, he ended up sending people to the guillotine for disagreeing with him.
Kate H:Which is, we must be clear, not an approved response to dissent at a committee meeting.
Kate M:Not even for particularly difficult agenda items, sadly. As much as we might wish it was.
Kate H:Yes. No. But seriously, let's look at subcommittees and working groups instead, because they are brilliant for succession planning. Far more socially acceptable than chopping someone's head off. A subcommittee member who shows up every time, thinks before they speak, does what they promise, that person is worth actively encouraging towards a committee role.
Kate H:They've already shown you what they're made of. Some committees provide a much better filter than hereditary monarchy. Slightly more democratic too.
Kate M:So, Kate, we're talking about this because it's Bastille Day in in France, and one of the ways that the French celebrate is by having what people outside of France call the fireman's ball, so Les Belles de Pompeii. So this is when the each village has its own fireman's ball. They're great events in in some of the big cities. They're quite steamy, I believe. I don't know. I haven't been to one. Here in Central France, they're quite sedate kind of family affairs, but still a lot of fun. But the point I wanna make here is that succession planning is all about trying to get the very best people onto your committee. Now I have to recommend to you firefighters. Really, they make the ideal committee member.
Kate M:Have you ever wondered why that might be?
Kate H:I must admit, Kate, that this is something that has never crossed my mind.
Kate M:Well, as we all know, they're very handsome. They're very brave, and they know exactly what to do in every situation. So how cool is that? Also, they can turn a fire station into a party venue in five minutes. They are incredible. They are exactly the ideal committee member. So try and get some firefighters onto your committee.
Kate H:I shall take that under advisement. I might hop down to the local fire station and see what I can find.
Kate M:Give it a go. Give it a go.
Kate H:Right. Well, having solved all governance problems with the judicious recruitment of firefighters, let's get back to where we were. Now performance review and our second case study, the Committee of Public Safety. This was established in 1793 to protect the revolution and govern France properly.
Kate M:Think of it as a crisis management committee. 12 members, enormous powers, absolutely zero accountability mechanisms. Just unchecked authority and an increasingly narrow definition of who counted as a good committee member. The reign of terror followed. 40,000 people were executed or imprisoned, including eventually most of the Crisis Management Committee itself.
Kate M:So the history lesson here is that when there's no mechanism for proper member feedback, no way for the organisation to hold its committee to account, and no space for committee members to honestly assess their own performance, things inevitably go horribly wrong, sometimes catastrophically wrong.
Kate H:A committee that never reviews its own performance is a committee flying blind and shouldn't be surprised when the members revolt. So the good news is that for most small associations, a simple three part process is all you need. An anonymous committee survey, frank one on one conversations between the president and each committee member, and some private self reflection. No guillotine required.
Kate H:Oh, shame. Oh, did I say that? Let's look let's look at each part. First, the survey. Take your committee's job description and turn it into questions. How well has the committee demonstrated leadership? How sound is our decision making? How well have we represented member interests? Five point scale, poor to excellent. Make it anonymous.
Kate H:People give more honest answers when they're not worried about who's reading them.
Kate M:So then the president, or an external independent person, collates the results, tables them for the committee, and the lower scoring areas become the basis for a genuine, frank conversation. A committee that can look honestly at its own performance is a committee that's already in pretty good shape. It's the committees that resist this conversation. They're the ones who usually most need it.
Kate H:And then the self reflection. This is when every committee member asks themselves honestly, have I done my very best to fulfill my job description? Have I contributed as much as I could? Have I contributed in the way the organisation expects?
Kate H:For newer members, be kind to yourself. The first year is often about learning and that's completely fine.
Kate M:And lastly, the one on one conversation. So after the survey, the president or that independent person meets individually with every committee member, informally, over coffee, cup of tea. Survey results, self reflections, suggestions, and concerns, all of those you have a chat about. What are your plans? Do you intend to re nominate?
Kate M:Are you interested in a leadership role, or are you ready to move on?
Kate H:And for more experienced or long serving members, there's a harder question. Do I still have more to contribute, or is it time to step back and let somebody else through? How do you know when that moment has arrived?
Kate M:When you find yourself protecting your position rather than serving the organisation. That's the moment. Back in 1794, France's Committee of Public Safety didn't ask that question.
Kate H:They certainly did not, and we know how it ended. After Robespierre was guillotined in 1794, the Committee of Public Safety was stripped of its powers and faded into irrelevance, and we've both seen committees that have brought exactly the same fate upon themselves.
Kate M:We have, Kate. We have. Et voila.
Kate H:So let's recap. Succession planning is how good committees stay good and how organisations avoid revolutionary upheaval. Build a skills matrix, know your gaps, recruit intentionally. Don't leave it to hereditary principles or blind chance.
Kate M:Personal and committee performance review and succession planning doesn't have to be frightening. An anonymous survey, a bit of private self reflection, and frank, honest conversations. Done every year, it tells you what's working and what isn't. It might tell you who's working and who isn't, and it will tell you who's keen to keep serving your organisation and who wants or needs to step back. A succession plan is much more civilised than the alternative.
Kate H:And considerably less messy. Although you do get a lot of knitting done. We have two important challenges for our listeners this week. First, does your committee have a skills matrix? If not, that is your Bastille to Storm. A rough first version mapped out in a single meeting is infinitely better than having nothing and relying on revolution or chance.
Kate M:And the second improvement challenge, ask when did your committee last review its own performance? If the answer is never, put it on the agenda. Commit to a date. The committee companion has both a skills matrix and a performance survey template in the show notes. Very much less dramatic, cheaper, and much quicker than a revolution.
Kate H:And if you've got a governance question you'd like us to tackle on the show or a situation you're not quite sure how to handle, we'd love to hear from you. Contact form is at thecommitteeroom . com. Au. Your question might end up in a future episode. And no question is too basic. We promise our feedback mechanism is considerably gentler than Madame LaGuillotine.
Kate H:If today's episode helped you learn about succession planning for your committee and was perhaps mildly educational about eighteenth century French history, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and share it with someone on your committee. The show notes are at thecommitteeroom.com.au. If you'd like your committee to work with either or both of us, you'll find our contact details there. Next time, we have the first of our Smarter Meetings episodes, and this one is telling us about how really the hard work of a good meeting is done well before anybody even walks in the room.
Kate M:Until then, I'm Kate McPhee reporting from the Land of Liberte
Kate H:and Firemen. And I'm Kate Hartwig holding fort back home without a fireman in sight.
Kate M:And this has been The Committee Room. Remember.
Kate H:Liberte, egalite, bond governance.
Kate M:Au revoir.