Action, Approval, Information - Which is it?

"Bill, I'm not sure what you're asking the committee to do with the material you sent out for the meeting." The man on the phone was the committee Chair and he wanted to be sure he understood what was being asked of him before going into the meeting.

That was my mistake. As the resource person supporting the work of the committee, my job is to organize the material so that its purpose is crystal clear. For example, there are only three things you can ask of a Board or Committee:

• Action - You're asking them to do something
  
• Approval - You need their approval in order to move something forward
  
• Information - You are reporting back to them

If the Chair is clear on what is being asked of the Committee, (s)he can set the right tone for the discussion. If the supporting written material is already organized so that it flows towards a clear objective, less time will be wasted. With clarity of purpose and well organized supporting material, the work of the Committee can be done quickly and effectively.

It's when there is no clear purpose that Committees often flounder and meetings become protracted. Members end up trying to second guess the intent of the material before them or worse, re-write it completely. When that happens, when you look around the room and see a lot of tired faces, the best thing is to refer the work back to where it came from with instructions to re-draft it.

By this I do not mean to imply that Committees should be manipulated into one specific direction. If the intent of the work before them is clear, it is also easier to reject it or send it back for more work. My personal experience with Committees is that they respect a well reasoned argument and will put a lot of energy into reviewing it if the information is brief and well presented. They will usually come up with comments that I had not considered, so that the end result is better than it would have been had I been working alone.

Which brings me to the topic of brevity. Churchill famously insisted that all briefs be reduced to a single page, but your Board / Committee probably wants a little more background than that. Readable writing is more important than just the length, although if a brief is perceived as being too long you run the risk of your Committee not reading it at all. If writing is not one of your strengths, by all means delegate! There are lots of freelance editors who will help you structure your thoughts. Here are some tips:

• Use bullet points - they break up the monotony of the text and make it easy to find the important parts of your argument,
• Use sub-headings - they organize your work -- try reading just the sub-headings, they should give you a feel for the whole document
• Keep your sentences short - avoid compound, complex sentences
• Avoid the passive voice - keep your prose active

What has your Board experience been like, whether from the staff viewpoint or the Board member's? Please join the discussion and leave a comment.

Lock 'em Up and Throw Away the Key

Today's Globe and Mail newspaper had an article about a woman who clearly needed to be taught a lesson that would serve as a deterrent to others:

Bela Kosoian, a 38-year-old mother of two, says when she didn't hold the handrail [on the transit escalator] Wednesday, she was cuffed, dragged into a small holding cell and fined.

Okay, if the police are going to arrest people for that kind of violation, I have a few other transgressions that deserve their attention.

1. Accountants who cram too many columns of numbers onto one page. You know the ones I mean. They put the monthly actual, budget, last year month, budget variance, and last year month variance on the left side of the report, then the year to date actual, budget, last year, budget variance, last year variance and full year budget on the right side, making the font so small you need an electron microscope to see the numbers let alone make sense of them. Book 'em Danno.
2. Blaming the new system. The new computer has been blamed so many times for so many things, that I'm not buying that excuse any more. If you can't get your computer system to work, send me a manual payment. I'm not that picky, really.
   
3. Balanced with a difference. As Yoda says, "Balanced you are or unbalanced you are. There is no balanced with a difference." Take away their bookkeeping license!
4. Oh, I forgot to give you this last receipt. Everyone who prepares personal tax returns knows this miscreant, the person who lets you do all your work on their return only to come to you at the last minute with a piece of paper to add to the shoebox of forms they already dumped on you. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?
   
5. I just want to push a button and . . . This one's personal. I hate it when people oversimplify their reporting needs and assume that the system is designed to give them exactly what they need at the proverbial push of a button. We recommend the maximum penalty the law allows your honor.
6. It's immaterial. Auditors can say, "It's immaterial" all they like. That's music to my ears because it means I can stop working on that issue. But when anyone else hides behind materiality, they should be cuffed and jailed. If it isn't right, it's wrong. Off with their heads!
   
7. Blame the budget. If an expense is over budget or a revenue doesn't come in as planned, it's pointless to say the budget was wrong. You had your chance at budget time. Now it's "fixing the problem" time, so get out there and do it!
8. Put down the client. If a client complains, you should get down on your knees and thank them for the opportunity to serve them better. Most clients don't complain. They just take their business elsewhere. Officer, arrest this accountant!
   
9. Incomprehensible gobbledygook. Arguably, communication is half of the job of an accountant. Financial analysts who fill their reports with talk of accruals and negative variances being partially offset by timing differences deserve to be led off in chains.
   
10. Excel sins. They should reopen Alcatraz for people who:

• Override the formula in a long column of calculations,
• Change standard templates, such as budget or expense forms,
  
• Type in the totals instead of calculating them,
• Insert blank lines and columns into a table - you can make it readable without making it unsortable,
• Allow different, incompatible versions of a spreadsheet float around,
• Type numbers into cells without leaving any trail for others to follow, and
  
• Forget to round their formula results so that their totals don't add.

What other indictable crimes do you know? Please use the comments below so I can pass them onto the authorities. They clearly have the time!