Understanding comes before solutions.

Governance, compliance and organisational advice for boards and business owners. Adelaide, working nationally.

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13years

on the Gove Peninsula, East Arnhem Land

3organisations

a global miner, an Aboriginal-owned mine, an Aboriginal corporation

CEOthen CFO

of a major Aboriginal corporation, reporting to a board

25years

of ORIC and CATSI Act depth in the compliance partnership

Most advisers arrive with a framework and start filling it in.

I start by working out what is actually going on. That usually takes a day or two, and it is the difference between fixing a problem and rearranging one.

By the time somebody calls me, or by the time the regulator sends me, something has usually been wrong for a while. The visible issue is rarely the beginning of the story.

Governance isn't paperwork. It's better decisions.

Compliance gets treated as the thing you do so nobody gets in trouble. That is backwards.

Governance exists to make the decisions in a business better, clearer and faster. Good compliance is what falls out the other end. Organisations that understand this stop experiencing their obligations as a burden, because the obligations start paying for themselves.

The reverse is also true, and it is expensive. An organisation with weak foundations cannot qualify for the funding that would let it grow. It is not that the applications fail. It is that the organisation never gets to the starting line. By the time that shows up in the numbers it has been building for years.

What I do

Two lines of work, in that order.

Getting the foundations right, so growth becomes possible.

Rule books, members lists, board and general meeting minutes, and the obligations that sit under the CATSI Act.

This is the work that decides whether an organisation can go after funding at all. I work out what has to be in place, and how to get it there.

Most smaller corporations, and most growing ones, are not turned down for grants — they are not eligible to apply.

I have run this calendar from the inside as a chief executive, not advised on it from outside. And the compliance work is fully supported: I partner with a specialist with around twenty-five years in ORIC and CATSI Act matters, who takes rule book review and deep audit work wherever an engagement needs it.

The organisational work, once the foundations hold.

Operational efficiency, systems and process, relationships, and the harder question underneath all of them: what should this organisation actually be wrestling with right now.

An organisation can become exceptionally busy while moving further away from its purpose. Most of the work here is getting the busyness pointed back at the point.

How I work

The room first. The documents second.

The room

Before I open a single document I want to know what the place is like. Is it cared for or is it neglected. How do people speak to each other. What is this organisation actually made of — one building, or a dozen programs and entities that nobody has mapped.

That first day or two tells me how hard the rest of the job is going to be. Whether I have got a team that wants it fixed, or one that will spend the whole engagement blaming each other. Those are very different pieces of work and they need to be priced and planned differently.

The documents

Rule book, members list, minutes, financials. The financials are usually the quick part. Problems surface fast once you know what you are looking for.

I am often walking into a tense room. That is the nature of it. Nobody calls an adviser on their best day.

Most of the time things go wrong because of people. And sometimes it is not one person's fault. It is that three or four people don't work well together.

One person is accountable, and that person is me.

I work to my own audit checklist and bring in specialists where the work needs depth I do not have. Compliance and rule book review is covered by a partner with around twenty-five years in that field. An audit firm handles evidence gathering. Systems and technology people come in when an organisation's real problem turns out to be its software.

I have run a large Indigenous corporation, so I understand how all of it fits together. That is not the same as being the best person in the country at every part of it, and I would rather bring in someone who is.

Background

Thirteen years on the Gove Peninsula in East Arnhem Land, across three organisations — a global mining company, an Aboriginal-owned bauxite mining company, and an Aboriginal corporation with multiple operating businesses.

Most recently chief executive of that corporation, reporting to a board, in a region undergoing one of the largest economic transitions in northern Australia. Before that, its chief financial officer.

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The first conversation costs nothing. Tell me what is going on and I will tell you whether I am the right person for it.

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