S2E7 - Why don't we break into groups during board meetings? (feat. Andrew Escobar)

TRANSCRIPTMATT VOICEOVERWelcome back to Sound-Up Governance. My name is Matt Fullbrook and I'm back for another episode with governance rogue and open finance expert, Andrew Escobar. We left off the previous episode talking about the potential for informality to enhance decision making in boardroom. Today we build on that and suggest one very specific, highly doable thing that you and your board could try right away. It's easy, it saves time, and it costs nothing. Before we get there, I'm going to drop you into the middle of a point I was making to Andrew about how Nobel laureates in science have something really interesting in common with each other.MATTWhat was that study? What did they find? 22 times more likely than a sort of normal scientist. Nobel laureates are 22 times more likely to be artistic performers of some kind. And, 22x is such a big number that there has to be some causal thing happening in one direction or the other. I don't know what. Like, it's too abstract for me to be able to say what, but it occurs to me that, like, this idea of art enhancing technical skill or the other way around, I'm not sure which, is something that boards probably really want to think about. Right? And if that's true, if it's true that art and science enhance each other in some way - in a person, not in the world, but inside a person - that art probably matters for boards in a way that hasn't been considered. Bringing this up because this... It's not an informality. It's a, like, letting go of the comfort of formality for a moment. It creates an opportunity for us to engage in these things in ways that we would never do with, like in a super structured environment. Then maybe that's part of the art. I don't know.ANDREW ESCOBARThe art versus the science of decision making?MATTYeah. Or of getting together as a group and doing something useful in a boardroom, whatever that is. Right?ANDREW ESCOBARThere's probably something to that, because when you think about what are the times that I've most enjoyed myself in a formal board meeting or in a formal board setting, probably there was a bit of artistry to it in that it was unstructured or there was intentional time for unstructured activity, thought like that... That is a bit of an art. And I don't know how to. You can't quantify it.MATTThere's no mystery that people learn very effectively through play. Right? It doesn't matter if you're 2 years old or 200 years old. Play helps. I'm not saying that we want to make board meetings playtime, but we do want to learn stuff. Right? And I think there's the... We avoid a lot of shortcuts like taking informal moments or introducing play or whatever things that might make our work better and faster. Because as you say, like, it just doesn't feel like what a board is supposed to do. I think it's a really stupid, conventional, constraint.ANDREW ESCOBARThis is one of the things I've always wanted to do and I never have and hope I get to do it in the future. Maybe there's a bit of artistry to this. Like, I've always wanted to take a board decision and instead of delegating it in the early stages to a committee or figuring out how the board is going to tackle it, maybe divide the board into two. And have both groups, like, they're not committees, they're just, t hey're just two groups of the board, approach this in potentially radically different ways. What would happen? Would that get different results? Would that raise different issues? Like, what would happen? And again, like, I don't. I don't know if that'd be a good use of time, but it might be a great use of time.MATTWell, this is. You're leaning into something that I. I mean, it's actually so mysterious to me why boards don't break into small groups during meet. During board meetings ever. Like, literally never. I've never seen it happen except for when I've like, forced them to do it.ANDREW ESCOBARI've never seen it happen in a formal meeting. I've seen it happen in, you know, strategy, strategic planning. We set a day and so, you know, three groups, different rooms, doing, yeah, really great work. But why, why can't you. What's stopping you from doing that in a structured meeting? A lot, but. But I don't know. Figure it out.MATTRight. And when you say a lot, it's mostly none of the... We could make a list of the things, but none of those things is provably good. None of the reasons why we don't do this are like, oh, well, yeah, that's a great reason not to try breaking into groupsANDREW ESCOBARBecause they're solvable. You know, like, oh, well, how would we minute that? I don't know. You would have.MATTAsk your lawyer.ANDREW ESCOBARYeah, ask your lawyer. And maybe they would tell you you can actually just have a section of the meeting that had three separate minutes of those groups. I have no idea. But find a solution.MATT VOICEOVEROh, man. This is why I love Andrew so much. " I have no idea, but find a solution." I might adopt that as my corporate governance mantra. And it's true that many of the organizations I've met over the years feel like the most difficult obstacle to trying new approaches to the way that their board and executives do their work is that it just feels like they don't have permission. On top of that, it's not like there are all kinds of other boards out there doing interesting new stuff that you can learn from. Whether you like the idea of breaking into small groups or not, I bet you can already imagine how it might be helpful to some boards in some circumstances. Anyway, thanks for listening. There's more to come with Andrew, and at the time of recording, I'm not sure what music will go with this episode, so please check the music notes at the end of the episode post at groundupgovernance.com for more info on that. Thanks for listening.MUSIC NOTESThis beat happened because I loaded a really fat sounding sawtooth bass synth sound into my OP-Z and just started mashing a note in particular rhythm that i liked and sequenced a beat over it. I added some kinda spooky percussion that reminded me a bit of Numbers on the Boards by Pusha T (which I LOOOVE). The guitar doodles are on my sparkly Gretsch using some effects on the Headrush MX5. This was all recorded through the TX-6 and TP-7, and then mixed down back through the TX-6, which is also where the stuttery tape effect on the guitar came from. Quick and dirty - nothing fancy. Just caught a vibe and went with it for a sec. Get full access to Ground-Up Governance at groundupgovernance.substack.com/subscribe