Governing Across Borders and Cultures

[00:00:00] Today, join host Richard Conway as he interviews Audette Exel, Chair and Founder of the Adara Group, and former Director of Westpac and Suncorp, about the challenges involved in maintaining effective oversight of organisations operating across vastly different jurisdictions.

[00:00:18] Richard Conway: Welcome to Minutes by boardcycle. I'm your host, Richard Conway, and today on the podcast I'm pleased to be interviewing Audette Exel. Audette is the Chair and Founder of Adara Group, an organisation that uniquely pairs business and purpose together to change the lives of people in poverty. Until recently, Audette was a Director of Westpac and was formally a Director of Suncorp as well.

[00:00:40] Richard Conway: Today, Audette and I are going to talk about how boards and businesses can maintain effective oversight over organisations working in challenging locations worldwide. Welcome, Audette.

[00:00:51] Audette: Thank you, Richard. It's lovely to be here with you.

[00:00:53] Richard Conway: Great. So, Audette, you've had the unusual experience of overseeing organisations operating in quite vastly different geographies. So, including Bermuda, Nepal, Uganda, and of course, Australia as well.

[00:01:08] Richard Conway: And so, today I wanted to open by asking you, today at Adara, what are the biggest challenges you have in overseeing an organisation operating in such diverse geographies?

[00:01:19] Audette: You're totally right. I mean, I've always said that my home is the world. And I've loved the fact that my career and my business life has taken me around the world. And it does add an extra dimension when you're working in lots of jurisdictions, in terms of the ways you think about managing your organisation.

[00:01:35] Audette: So, if we think about Adara for a second, we are audited and we have legal and regulatory compliance across six different jurisdictions, and they're all incredibly different.

[00:01:46] Audette: In addition to that, our work on the ground in the low-income countries we work in is the business of human social service delivery to very vulnerable client groups.

[00:01:55] Audette: So, policies, as you think about governance structures and regulatory structures, they're not just words on paper for us. Child protection, for example, is a very critical consideration for all we do.

[00:02:07] Audette: So, it's a bit of a balancing act: keeping your eye on compliance, on best practice, while never losing sight of the substance of what you want to be focused on in terms of the service delivery that you have. It certainly makes life interesting to work in lots of different language groups and jurisdictions.

[00:02:24] Richard Conway: And so, Audette, how do you know, just picking up on some of those issues like child protection, etc. How do you know what to focus on, where, at any given point in time, as a member of the board or the Chair?

[00:02:37] Audette: Yeah, it's really good question. You've got multiple stakeholders. I've often said in my purely business life, in terms of my investment banking, corporate advice, NED life for big boards, we're looking after stakeholders that are easier to understand and to work with, if you like.

[00:02:54] Audette: At my not-for-profit life, and that side of Adara's organisation, we are thinking about vulnerable client groups and different cultures that have ethnic, religious, rule of law, gender, all sorts of complex overlays that you have to think about.

[00:03:10] Audette: So, it's a constant process of bringing it back up to what your KPIs are, what your objectives are, what you are trying to achieve. And mapping what you're doing against those key KPIs.

[00:03:24] Audette: Otherwise, there's a huge risk that you're going to get lost in the detail and miss the bigger picture. And I think we're seeing examples of that, horrible examples of that, in the child protection space around some of the early learning ASX listed companies and others, right at the moment in Australia. So, lost in the detail, forgetting what the really big pictures are.

[00:03:44] Audette: But for us, it's about always bringing it back to our key stakeholders, our key purpose, our key performance indicators, to make sure that the conversation and the work is centred on that.

[00:03:56] Richard Conway: And Audette, you've also been a Director of some pretty large institutions with big international operations. So, Westpac, Suncorp, etc, there. And I wanted to ask you to perhaps, sort of, compare and contrast what the challenges are for a big organisation like that versus something like in Adara. Like, what's similar and what's very different about those?

[00:04:20] Audette: Great question. It's so interesting isn’t it? I try very much, in the last 30 years or so of my life, to be working in places where I can make an impact and positive change.

[00:04:29] Audette: And so, with Adara, it's as a social entrepreneur and a small-to-medium-sized organisation. It's very different to sitting on big boards, whether they're global boards or they're big ASX Top 50 in Australia.

[00:04:43] Audette: And it's interesting, I’ll start with the similarities.

[00:04:45] Audette: So, every organisation has to consider similar matters, which are, to me, all wrapped around these stakeholders and meeting those stakeholders' needs. Whether that's the environment, your staff, your customers, your suppliers, your investors or your donors, if you like, who have sort of fall into the same category depending on what your purpose is and the community.

[00:05:03] Audette: So, there's a similarity in the way that you think around stakeholder management.

[00:05:08] Audette: But there's a big difference that in a large organisation, you know, you might have tens of thousands of staff, you might have millions of customers. And so the challenge is really to, sort of, cut through it all to see the reality and the impact - particularly for two of your key stakeholder groups: and that's your staff and your customers.

[00:05:28] Audette: Whereas in a smaller organisation, a social entrepreneur sort of, purpose-focused organisation, the challenge is much more likely to be in making sure that in this incredibly, rapidly changing environment with huge complexity, risk, opportunity. That you are able to keep up, and that you've got the resources to keep up.

[00:05:51] Audette: You know when I think about, Westpac or Suncorp or other boards that I've sat on globally, I mean, there's always a debate about resources, but there are significant resources to allow you to keep up. Whether it's with cyber, with AI, with whatever the big change or big escalation is happening.

[00:06:07] Audette: Whereas when you are in a smaller organisation, you're very connected to your staff, you're very connected to your clients or customer groups. But keeping up, dealing with cyber risk, regulatory risk, change risk, is a much different game.

[00:06:22] Audette: So, to me, that they're the sort of key things. They're both different and both meaningful. Whether you do at the big end of town or you do it yourself with your own organisation.

[00:06:31] Audette: And there are threads you can pull across them. Training for one is great, as far as I'm concerned, for training for the other.

[00:06:37] Audette: But there certainly are differences in how you make sure that you maintain your place, your solvency, your impact, when you're the little guy versus the big guy or the big guy versus the little guy.

[00:06:49] Richard Conway: Absolutely. And also, Audette, I wanted to ask you, obviously it's essential when you are operating in different geographies to adapt the way you're working to local conditions, local traditions, etc. But at the same time, there are presumably some not-negotiables from the governance perspective. Certainly, I imagine at other organisations like Westpac and Suncorp, but I would imagine it's the same at Adara as well. So, when do you decide to flex to the local or not to do that?

[00:07:21] Audette: Yes. You have to sort of be able to, this is that, what's that saying about patting your head and rubbing your stomach? You have to be able to run down two tracks at the same time, I think.

[00:07:30] Audette: You know, low income countries, a lot of people who haven't worked there or spent time there raise all sorts of spectres of risk and concern, which I often think are very unfair. I think, for instance, corruption. And right at the moment, if we looked at the Corruption Index in the world, you'll see plenty of high-income, medium-income countries on that index.

[00:07:49] Audette: But the way that we think about it at Adara is we seek out global best practice in the sector. So, we do quite a bit of work on figuring out: right, what's global best practice? And you try to reach that. No lower common denominator. Go to the highest common denominator, if you like.

[00:08:05] Audette: And of course, you must understand and be led by your local teams. You've got to understand local cultural, political context at play. And you've got to listen to them. The whole communities that you're working in. The very simple message of "not about us without us" is a kind of, a bit of a light on the hill.

[00:08:24] Audette: But I do think the one thing and I hear this sometimes in my sort of corporate finance or corporate advice and large company life. I think it's a real risk to fall into the trap of believing... you sometimes hear the said: "Oh, that's just how it's done there," and supporting or turning a blind eye to practices that you would never, ever agree to in your own jurisdiction.

[00:08:47] Audette: And obviously I'm going to anti-money laundering, corruption, bribery, foreign corrupt practices. I think that that is an enormous mistake. A crime in some instances. But easy to default set to that.

[00:09:00] Audette: That's why we always bring ourselves back to what's global best practice here? And everything has to live to that and we judge ourselves against that. And inform by local teams, but never falling into that trap if you like.

[00:09:13] Richard Conway: Audette it occurs to me as you're talking about that, one situation where this can play out is certain places where relationship is considered much more important to getting things done, etc. And I guess governance standards often drive you towards a more not making relationship the centre of the way that business gets done. But is that navigable, do you think? Is it something where you can accommodate local norms or approaches to those things those things?

[00:09:40] Audette: No. And gosh, I have to say, and in the 27 years since I started Adara, gosh, I've learned a lot from our teams and communities on the ground.

[00:09:49] Audette: And sometimes, you know, I was just in a meeting this morning, and you know, I was watching this kind of competitive that almost intellectual, arm-to-arm combat going on between the players in the room. And thinking, gosh, I wish I could have sat you all down in Uganda and watched the way that problem solving happens in communities and cultures that are built on relationship, or that are really thoughtful about the way that people work together across divides.

[00:10:16] Audette: So, we have a huge amount of learning that we can do.

[00:10:19] Audette: Occasionally, it's interesting business people that get into not-for-profit work. And I confess to having fallen into this trap right at the start, myself.

[00:10:28] Audette: You know, we often think that our skills are transferable to the NFP world. And there's quite a lot of derogatory commentary about the NFP sector. If there's one thing, I hope I've learned apart from deep respect for people on the ground, It's that there are whole different ways of thinking that are relevant to the work.

[00:10:48] Audette: The sort of listen and listen again, think and think again. Sit quietly, and wait a week or two for ideas to kind of slowly funnel down. And that can actually be an enormous strength.

[00:11:02] Audette: I've made terrible mistakes when I've rushed. And when I've brought kind of business eyes to do lists, data matrices, to what is such immensely complicated work.

[00:11:14] Audette: So, not only is there room for it. It's a critical skill to learn. Which is, I think, directly transferable the other way, and makes us better leaders if we manage to learn it and crack it in different communities with completely different cultural contexts.

[00:11:34] Audette: And I'm sure that anybody who's worked in First Nations communities or not-for-profits could tell you the same thing. That the incredibly enhanced view of how to lead, how to learn, how to think, that you get from working with some of those traditional communities. You know, makes you a better leader or around whether you're running a Top ASX 100 company or 10 company, or you're running a great NFP.

[00:11:59] Richard Conway: That's fascinating. And last question I wanted to ask you on this topic, Audette is that, I'm assuming that working in places like rural Nepal, Uganda, etc., that you just have some really practical challenges which exist around getting oversight of your operations there, even just kind of basic communications. So I wanted to get an idea, what are some of those really practical challenges? And what are some of the things that you're doing to overcome those?

[00:12:25] Audette: Yes, it's funny. You've never stopped being grateful for living in a sort of high-income country when you work in low-income countries.

[00:12:35] Audette: You know, and I tell you a million stories about having to stand on top of water tanks to get the one minute bar cell phone service to get out, or having to trek with giant satellite phones in the early days and to remote Nepal to have any chance of communicating. The paper-based economy, or even communities, you know, in the early days that didn't have cash economies.

[00:12:56] Audette: So you're dealing in very different settings. Although, fabulously, we are seeing huge leapfrogging of technology going on. And as people begin to see the internet as a human right, we're seeing communication in that form improving radically.

[00:13:11] Audette: In terms of communication and understanding cross language, cross culture, cross sector. I mean, for us, and everybody cuts this cake a different way, we've always had hugely localised operations.

[00:13:23] Audette: So right from the start, thank goodness, at least, that was something I did get right. Build large teams of brilliantly skilled locals. Get really skilled local directors. Then figure out how you make those teams part of your global team.

[00:13:39] Audette: Whether that's communications and connections, has a COVID and all the horrors brought to our world. But one thing, it has brought us this ability for us to have meetings online. So, not just regular, but as part of everybody's day-to-day working lives, seeing themselves as sort of, we've run what we call a one world strategy in Adara, everybody's, our teams are cross country, cross sector.

[00:13:59] Audette: Making sure that you are getting your teams moving around, whether it's bringing Ugandans to Nepal or Nepalis to Australia, or Australians onto the ground. However you do that so that there's a human-to-human understanding and connection.

[00:14:13] Audette: So, really getting a deep understanding of the risks and opportunities in country. Just knowing the lay of the land.

[00:14:20] Audette: And for us, you know so it can be 28 years to get us here with a huge team of brilliant people that have, kind of led the work for us. But knowing what to expect, knowing what is okay, what is not okay, and then kind of rolling with the punches when something wild happens that you hadn't come across before.

[00:14:37] Audette: But really setting yourself up so you understand the context, the communication and having your teams WhatsApp groups, actually. I wake up every morning to this wonderfully uplifting WhatsApp group from the Ugandan Adara team, or the Ugandan Adara family, as they'll call it, full of messages and photographs of what's going on there.

[00:14:56] Audette: And the Nepalis are doing the same. And the Australians are doing the same.

[00:14:59] Audette: One world.

[00:15:00] Audette: And there's no reason that we can't do that now. But for us there may be geographic distance, but there's not professional distance, there's not human distance. There's not skill difference between our teams, no matter where they happen to be at any particular point in time.