The Committee Room

Show Notes The questions that come up in committee rooms are remarkably consistent across organisations of all kinds. The secretary who takes biased minutes. The quorum that can never be reached. The long-serving leader who's not doing a bad job but nothing ever changes. In this episode, the Kates answer eleven listener questions directly — the situations people are navigating right now and aren't...

Show Notes Clarity about who can decide what isn't bureaucracy — it's how committees avoid expensive mistakes and missed opportunities in equal measure. A delegations register doesn't have to be complicated. It just has to exist, be accurate, and be known. This episode covers what goes in one, why the things that can't be delegated matter just as much as the things that can, and how to start if yo...

Show Notes Committee overload is one of the most common problems in volunteer organisations — and the answer isn't working harder, it's building smarter structures. Portfolios, subcommittees and working groups are three tools that every committee can use to share the workload, draw on skills from across the membership and free up committee meetings for the governance conversations that actually ma...

Episode Description You can run the best election process in the world and still have new committee members who are still finding their feet six months later. The difference between a new member who contributes from day one and one who takes half a year to get up to speed usually comes down to one thing: induction. Not a pile of documents — a proper process. In this episode, the Kates walk through...

Episode Description Most committees have a story like this one — the meeting where everyone noticed something and nobody said a word. In this episode, Kate H and Kate M tackle the governance failure that hides in plain sight: the question that didn't get asked. They dig into why people stay quiet, what they should actually be asking across finance, risk and strategy, and how to build a committee c...

Episode Description The annual general meeting. Four usual suspects nominate each other, a hand shoots up from someone nobody recognises, and seven people are declared elected to enthusiastic silence. Sound familiar? In this episode, Kate and Kate explain why nominations from the floor are one of the worst things you can do for your organisation — and walk through the eight-step election process t...

Episode Description Care. Loyalty. Obedience. Three words that sound a bit like an old-fashioned wedding vow — but it turns out they're the foundation of every committee member's legal duties. In this episode, Kate and Kate unpack what those duties actually mean in practice, what happens when they're ignored, and why the reasonable person test is both the standard you're held to and genuinely your...

Episode Description You've been elected to the committee. You're keen. You turn up to the first meeting. And then... nobody really explains what you're supposed to do. In this episode, Kate and Kate unpack what it actually means to be a committee member — the three dimensions of responsibility, why confidentiality matters more than most people realise, and why a job description isn't too corporate...

Episode Description You know that committee where half the people have been there for decades and nobody can work out why the whole thing feels stuck? In this episode, Kate and Kate tackle the question most committees have never really answered: who should actually be in the room, and why does it matter? From committee models to the right size to the kind of diversity that leads to better decision...

EPISODE DESCRIPTION   It's 8pm on a Tuesday. The meeting started late, Dave hasn't read the agenda, and three decisions in you already know you'll have to reverse two of them next month. Sound familiar? Welcome to The Committee Room. In this first episode, Kate Hartwig and Kate McPhee — yes, they're both called Kate — cut through the jargon to answer the most fundamental question in governanc...