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Small-Medium Business Boards
Is it frustrating when your board meetings feel unproductive or even counterproductive?
Are you fully utilising the advanced capabilities of AI to make fast and effective board decisions?
At Munro’s, we understand that the boardroom is where critical decisions are made—and that’s why our specialist business advisory service is designed to help you fix wasteful meetings and foster a culture where constructive boardroom conflict drives better outcomes.
The Problem: Unproductive, Wasteful Meetings
Many small and medium business owners and directors experience meetings that lack focus, clarity and direction. Too often, meetings run over time without clear decisions made, leading to wasted resources and missed opportunities for strategic action. This inefficiency can leave you and your team frustrated and drain valuable time from running your business.
Our Solution
Our business accountants and advisors can help you tackle this challenge by implementing a proven meeting framework. This framework can be used for many types of meetings, including board of directors, advisory boards and even management meetings.
Key Benefits & Outcomes
- Time Savings: Shorter, more productive meetings mean more time to focus on business growth.
- Enhanced Clarity: Clear agendas and roles lead to discussions that get straight to the point.
- Better Decision-Making: When meetings are efficient, your team can focus on making decisions that move your business forward.
- Reduced Frustration: Eliminate the stress and wasted time that comes from poorly run board meetings.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Meetings Last Forever But Don’t Actually Achieve Much
video key points
- Effective leaders ensure meetings are focused and outcome-oriented, driving the business forward by executing its strategy effectively.
- The differentiation between successful and exceptional businesses lies in their ability to prioritise and execute the right actions, standing out from competitors.
- Meetings should not only discuss strategy but also assign clear responsibilities and accountabilities to team members, ensuring progress towards strategic goals.
- Common meeting pitfalls include lack of clear decision-making processes and consensus ruling, leading to inaction and inefficiency.
- For tangible improvements in meeting efficacy and strategic execution, adopting best practices in meeting management is crucial.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
We suspect you’ve been in at least one meeting that lasted an exorbitant amount of time and after you and your colleagues left the meeting practically nothing came from it. What an incredible waste of time!
Now, if that experience was a once-a-year occurrence, it would probably be palatable. But if it’s a more frequent occurrence, that’s an organisation killer!
Effective leaders make effective use of their, and their team’s, time.
Meetings must be focused and drive real results.
You’re strategy should be the cornerstone of focus. There is definitely a place for looking into short-term matters such as budgets and firefighting, but ultimately, as leaders of a business your meetings must continually drive the business towards executing its strategy.
If we’re not being direct enough, then perhaps this is more clear.
Many businesses can do strategy planning. Many have ok strategies. What separates the good from the great? Those who focus on getting the right things done!
Your meetings, and the actions and accountabilities which come from them, are directly linked to how well you execute your strategy. They influence how your business does things that little bit better than your competitors, and therefore how it reaps the rewards that come from doing so.
At this point, ask yourself, of the last few meetings you’ve been to, have you and your team:
- Even discussed your strategy?
- Know the key strategic focus for this quarter?
- Of the things discussed in the meetings, was anyone given direct responsibility to take action?
- At the next meeting, is it crystal clear what everyone’s accountabilities are?
- When it comes to the next meeting, will people actually be held accountable?
- Are there common problems which may garner discussion but no action? Probably because there is no clear decision-making process.
- Are your meetings ruled by consensus decision-making?
Just like everything in business, we learn what is best practice and how to implement it. Learning how to have effective meetings is no different.
Let us know if you’re ready for better meetings, and the rewards which follow.
The Problem: Avoiding Conflict Can Mean Missed Opportunities
In many boardrooms, conflict is seen as something negative to be avoided. However, avoiding healthy debate can lead to groupthink, where ideas aren’t challenged and the best decisions aren’t reached. Business owners and managers often find that without constructive conflict, decisions may be made too quickly or without enough scrutiny—ultimately hurting the business’s potential.
Our Solution
Our team of experienced business advisors believes that constructive conflict is essential for driving growth from effective decision-making. We work with your board to:
- Create an environment where different viewpoints are welcomed.
- Establish ground rules that encourage respectful challenge and debate.
- Provide structured frameworks to ensure that disagreements lead to productive outcomes.
- Help your team embrace diverse opinions as a pathway to more robust decisions.
Key Benefits & Outcomes
- Improved Decisions: Constructive conflict uncovers new insights and leads to more informed, well‑considered decisions.
- Increased Accountability: A culture of healthy debate encourages each member to prepare thoroughly and contribute actively.
- Greater Innovation: By challenging assumptions, your board can explore creative solutions that drive growth.
- Stronger Team Dynamics: Embracing different viewpoints builds trust and a sense of shared responsibility for outcomes.
Read Key Points & Transcript
Embrace Conflict
video key points
- Embracing conflict within a high trust environment is pivotal for leadership and business health, fostering a willingness to engage, debate, and depend on others.
- The presence of conflict, managed well, leads to better decision-making, whereas its avoidance due to low trust results in poor outcomes and resentment.
- Trust and conflict are intertwined; establishing a culture that supports constructive conflict requires building trust over time.
- Evidence-based approaches guide the process of enhancing trust and conflict management, drawing on studies to inform strategies.
- To explore strategies for building a high trust culture that positively engages with conflict, consider booking a complimentary meeting.
Presented by: Drew Pflaum
video transcript
Perhaps a counter-intuitive idea for enhancing leadership is to tell you and your leaders to embrace conflict.
Yet, we’d go as far to say that, a healthy business is a business which embraces the possibility of conflict at every opportunity.
But importantly, embracing conflict always has to be within a place of high trust.
You see, a team with high team trust, has a high degree of willingness to engage, debate and rely upon other team members.
Whereas a team with low trust, which avoids conflict, sees the opposite.
It sees leaders avoiding sharing their opinions, avoiding putting forward their disagreements and thereby avoiding the pursuit of best solutions.
A low conflict business sees leaders choose their battles carefully, regularly remaining silent on important matters. That’s not in any business’s best interest. Rather, it’s a recipe for poor decision making, and perhaps even worse, resentment.
So here, we’re talking about trust and conflict going hand in hand. Creating a high trust culture which embraces conflict and therefore allows leaders to make better decisions.
If you’re seeing the avoidance of conflict within your business, it’s either contributing to trust always being low, or it’s eroding trust over time.
Tackling this issue is delicate.
Conflict without trust can be nasty and destructive. So, we don’t encourage you to simply proclaim to your team that “we need more conflict and less silence”, thinking that’ll achieve desired outcomes.
Rather, you need to follow a process of building up trust over time, eventually getting to a stage where your culture would accept nothing less than high trust and constructive conflict.
As with all processes at Munro’s, they’re informed and led by evidence. So when it comes us to helping clients through this type of process, we apply the science.
Let me give you one small example of what this means.
A study regarding teams in 2022 found that interpersonal conflicts significantly reduce proactive behaviours. That’s because interpersonal conflicts influence employees to view the team as unworthy of their efforts when they feel unsupported.
In the same study, process and task conflicts were not found to impact the proactive motivation of employees. From this we learn that addressing interpersonal conflicts is of greater significance than process and task conflicts. We accordingly cater for this when designing programmes to support your business in its pursuit of building a high trust culture that embraces positive conflicts.
If you’d like to speak with us about how this can be done with you, then book a complimentary Get To Know Each Other meeting.
In that video you just watched, we mentioned some research.
If you’d like the references, simply head on in to the Munro’s Business Academy and you can find them on the Reference page.
Frequently Asked Questions for Advisory Boards
- What exactly are business advisory boards?
Business advisory boards are groups that provide strategic guidance and oversight for a business. They differ from traditional management teams by offering an external perspective and challenging conventional thinking—ensuring your business stays competitive. - Why are some board meetings so wasteful?
Unproductive meetings often result from unclear agendas, undefined roles and a reluctance to address difficult issues. This can lead to lengthy discussions that produce little or no actionable outcomes, costing your business valuable time and resources. - How can fixing wasteful meetings improve my business?
Streamlining your meetings with clear agendas and focused discussions not only saves time but also enables better decision‑making. With efficient meetings, your board can concentrate on high‑priority issues, leading to more strategic and timely actions. - What is constructive boardroom conflict and why is it important?
Constructive boardroom conflict involves encouraging healthy debate and challenging ideas to uncover the best solutions. This approach prevents groupthink, drives innovation and ultimately leads to stronger, more resilient decision‑making. - How do Munro’s specialists help improve board meetings?
Our approach is to diagnose the specific challenges in your meetings—whether it’s wasted time or fear of conflict—and implement tailored solutions. We provide a structured framework for both running efficient meetings and fostering an environment where constructive conflict leads to better outcomes. - Are these meeting best practices applicable across Australia?
Absolutely. While Munro’s is based in Perth, our advisory services for improving board efficiency are available to businesses throughout WA and Australia. - How do I know if you provide good service?
With over 100 five‑star Google reviews, our clients trust our proactive, responsive and no‑nonsense approach to delivering real value. - What is the price for your board advisory services?
Our pricing is transparent and reflects the complexity of your needs. Please see our pricing page and then contact us for a personalised quote. - How can I get started with your board advisory service?
Simply book a free Get To Know Each Other meeting. During this initial meeting we’ll explore your specific challenges, discuss your meeting structure and work towards a tailored solution to improve your boardroom effectiveness and overall business improvement.
Where To Begin
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First Session is FREE (incl. GST)
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