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Sound-Up Governance (ep.26) - Re-thinking the board deck, with a dose of madness (feat. Robert Wolfe)
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Sound-Up Governance (ep.26) - Re-thinking the board deck, with a dose of madness (feat. Robert Wolfe)

Matt talks with the co-founder of Zeck about how they're trying to make boards' and executives' lives easier using technology and fun
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TRANSCRIPT

Matt VO

Welcome back to Sound-Up Governance. I'm increasingly grateful to Sound-Up listeners for your willingness to follow me on what really has been a bit of a meandering journey so far. A lot of what happens on the show is at least a little bit spontaneous, and it's been so fun to have an excuse to get to know my friends a bit better while also meeting a bunch of new and super interesting people. On that note, I recently went out for a couple of very fancy cocktails with my friend Andrew Escobar, who was also my guest in Episode Five. And he mentioned a new governance tool he'd come across called Zeck. Take a second to pause and check it out right now at zeck.app. On the homepage, they say quote "Zeck reimagines the entire board meeting process." At the top of the "Why Zeck?" page, it says, "The board meeting is broken." They have a page on their site called "madness," which honestly is not the page with the most madness on the site. Anyway, I was predictably intrigued and honestly just sent an email to their generic address asking to interview someone. Who got back to me? Robert Wolfe, one of Zeck's founders, and the guy who runs the show. It's not easy to find stuff about Robert out there. So here's his story, in his own words.

Robert Wolfe 

Yeah, I'll tell you, and it does relate to why we started the company because it's really based on our own life experience. I first I started a company called Moosejaw. So we sell Northface, Arcteryx, brands like that. But we were first acquired by Walmart, and then actually, a few weeks ago, we are, we are acquired by Dick's Sporting Goods. And I can assure you, I never thought I would utter those words. I mean, I started Moosejaw when I was a kid. So it's sort of crazy. But we had a real board at Moosejaw. To say that I was bad at building the board deck and hosting the board meeting is an understatement. I think I was the worst at it in the entire world. And then, with some of the same people, started a second company called Crowdrise. So Crowdrise ended up becoming the biggest platform to raise money for charity in the States. And we were acquired by GoFundMe. And really had a similar experience. We had these amazing VCs on our board, millions of dollars of value in the room. And our board meetings were mostly fruitless. And it was all my fault. There was no map for this. And the idea that I would send a 100 page PowerPoint to the board day and a half before the board meeting yet still expect them to be able to add value was foolish. I just didn't know that until I sort of got out of it and saw that this angst around the board meeting wasn't just me and our team, that it was pretty universal. And that was the catalyst that led us to start Zeck.

Matt 

Okay, so before we dive into what Zeck is, and the problems you're trying to solve. What you just described, and I've talked to, I wouldn't even want to hazard a guess probably over 1000 CEOs. And most of them don't ever learn the lesson that you just described, which is that they're the problem.

Robert Wolfe 

Yes, I didn't realize it either.

Matt 

Well, but you did at some point. So tell me, tell me, what is it that makes you think that you're the problem, rather than looking at your boardroom and saying, "guys, why aren't you doing better?"

Robert Wolfe 

It's a great question. So after our companies were acquired, I, my new job became advising companies. And I would have done anything with these companies. My brother, who we partnered with everything on he went and sat in and did customer service emails, and we didn't care, we're grinders. It turns out that all of these companies that we worked with where they needed the most help was around their board process. To the point that had we've been talking a couple of years ago, and you asked me what my job was, I used to describe myself as a board advisor, sort of a made up title, but that's where I was spending all my time. It was only seeing it from really an outsider's perspective, that I came to the conclusion that the presentation is such a big part of the problem. And the lack of engagement with the board creates a situation where you get into the board meeting, and it's flat, it's one dimensional, you're basically rereading content that you already read. The catalyst to a better conversation can't just be urging your board to participate more. The leadership team has to be the first step in driving those conversations.

Matt 

So there's a piece here that I'm really interested in. I've been a little bit obsessed with over the past few years, which is when I meet people who are what you used to be. And they see the light bulb goes off and they say, "oh, shoot, maybe I am part of the problem or the entire the entirety of the problem." They say to me, "Well, how was I supposed to know when I walked into this role in the first place, how to do this well?" And I'll pause there. I mean, what would your advice be? If you meet a new CEO who says, "What do I do?" where do you point them to try to figure out how to do that well?

Robert Wolfe 

Literally the call that I was on, prior to us hopping on the phone was about that topic. Because again, there is no map for this. I mean, I think the finance section in a presentation is pretty dialed in and can be somewhat universal, but nothing else is. I really think it's getting it's your board's responsibility to help you with that framework, because they're significantly more experienced. But you, as the CEO have to ask for that help. It's interesting, because I think so many VCs and angel investors, they say, "Hey, we don't want to mandate anything. We don't want to give this kind of feedback to our team. Because we don't want to be heavy handed." We want the help! So I'm on the board of a company that that recently, we went from quarterly board meetings, to monthly board meetings. One of the VCs on the board said, "Hey, one of our other companies has is now doing monthly board meetings, and we have a template, do you want the template?" And the CEO was "fuck yeah! Send it to me!" Right? Any help that they can get not one person in the history of the world has started a company knowing how to do this.

Matt 

Tell me how Zeck is supposed to help with this.

Robert Wolfe 

So I There are a few ways. So first, we have crowdsourced a template from VC, PE, CEOs that you could just come in and embrace. So lots of our companies have never done a board meeting before. And we're basically giving them the map that we never had. Beyond that there are nudges or prompts as a part of the product that get you to surface the information that your board will actually care about. Which has multiple effects. One is you as a leadership team, aren't spending so much time building your board presentation, because we're a catalyst to allowing you to include the information that's most important. So you don't ultimately send that 100 page deck. In a perfect world a CEO is saying to his or her leadership team, "no one is allowed to create a section that's more than four minutes long." So now I as the CMO, for example, I'm typing my update, and in real time, I'm seeing that read time. When it gets to 11 minutes, I have two options. One, I can cut the content, or two, I can put them into links, which is basically our version of an appendix. That doesn't count against read time. So again, just another way to convince the CEO or CMO in that case, to surface the information that's most important, instead of, again, turning this into 100 page presentation that no board members gonna ever read.

Matt 

So tell me from your perspective as a CEO, describe in generic terms what you want to get out of a typical board meeting? Well, what is it for for you?

Robert Wolfe 

Yeah, I want to find out what are the biggest challenges for the company so that I can actually help. So I think part of the way to mine that information is through the pre read. So I think the pre read is really important and is consequential to a better board meeting. So if I am able to read through the presentation, leave comments in advance, understand what's most important to the leadership team, I as a board member can come in prepared to help with those with those challenges. If I'm coming in cold, what typically happens is I'm learning about the company and getting calibrated in the board meeting. And then we have to assume that post board meeting I'm going to help with next steps. The problem is so many CEOs are scared to ask their board members for help. So it never happens. And the whole thing turns into a meeting that's entirely fruitless. That's why I think getting that engagement prior to the board meeting where the presentation is really a living document or what we call a workspace as opposed to just a deck. I think that creates more banter and ultimately better decision making.

Matt 

So describe to me if you could kind of in a specific detail, how like, what's the thing that Zack does to enable or encourage CEOs to be active in asking for that help?

Robert Wolfe 

So part of it, is it the framework. So for example, we have sections that are that we call deep dives, they're your strategic conversations. The framework pushes you to start that section with questions for the board. So you are immediately as you get into this section, it's "okay, do we want to launch retail stores in Europe? Here are our five questions that that are important for us to ask you that we want you to come in prepared to answer." And then beyond that, unlike other tools, where the commenting system is really an afterthought, with our platform, it's really in your face, and designed for this specific use case. So I'll give you an example. I would never leave a comment in Google Slides, which we used to use, which is an amazing product, because I don't know who's going to see 'em. So I wouldn't, as a board member leave a comment that says to the CMO, "Hey, you forgot to include any repeat data," because I don't know if her whole team has access to the presentation. So I would never do that I wouldn't want to throw her under the bus. With our product, we understand that having lived through it. So you actually can click a button that says who can see this. And you know, who's going to see your comment before you post it. Plus, there's DM functionality. So again, just built for this very specific use case.

Matt VO

I'm sure it'll surprise nobody to learn that I really like what Robert is telling us here. First an admission that as a CEO, he was doing a shitty job at engaging his board and acknowledging that he could and should be part of the solution, instead of just hoping that things would get better. But then taking that about a million steps further and building a new platform to try to nudge boards and executives into better engagement with less time investment. Now is probably a good time to admit that I haven't even seen Zeck yet. So I have no opinion on whether it's any good. I'm getting a walkthrough a few days after this episode airs. And so we'll give you an unvarnished update soon. Anyway, I'm very familiar with the fact that boards are obsessed with the status quo. And I expressed some skepticism to Robert that Zeck would be able to nudge them out of their comfort zones.

Robert Wolfe 

There's been this really positive peer pressure. So for example, if there's a five person board, and four of the board members leave comments, all five of them know it. And I guarantee you that next board meeting, the fifth board member is leaving comments. We also have analytics. So right now, if I, as a CEO, send my presentation to the board on a Sunday night for a Friday meeting. On Wednesday, if two of the board members haven't opened the Zeck, I can send them a message saying "hey, we we worked our asses off on this, the meetings in two days, will you read it?" Right? Or at least read these two sections. And then there are also we think, significant learnings from understanding where your board is spending time. So if you as a team are spending 12 hours every month or every quarter building the marketing update, yet your board is spending zero time looking at it, then let's exclude that from the presentation. So we we believe deeply in data. There's a lot of data that can help here, but I think this this, again, what we call positive peer pressure, is creating more engagement. And then I'll tell you from from my own experience, I'm on the board of a nonprofit. There's about 40 board members, it's a huge board.

Matt 

Four-zero?

Robert Wolfe 

Yes, maybe it's over...it's 35. It's some crazy number. For the last five years, all I've been on the board about five years, all we've done is gone into the board meeting and then regurgitate everything I've already read, and they've been terrible. The nonprofit adopted Zeck. The CEO, instead of scrolling through the deck, all he did was read the comments from the board. And then we didn't even look at the Zeck. It was all banter. So if I Robert asked a question, "Hey, are we going to get into the mental health space?" We talked about that. So it was a really cool way to present. Because instead of looking at a screen, everyone was looking at each other. And that forced a conversation that for the prior five years we had never had.

Matt 

So if I'm understanding correctly, and maybe I'm not, because a lot of the time, there's a barrier to especially CEOs doing what you just described: getting up on the front and saying, "you know what, we're not going through the stuff you've already looked at. Instead, we're going to have this other conversation." They're often just nervous about what the board might think or how they might react. And if I'm understanding correctly, the hack here is that none of this is news to the board, because they've already seen these comments, they've already seen the engagement. So they're not walking into the room and and the CEO just sort of puts this surprise on the table. The CEO is able to come in and say, "you know what, I was actually really interested in these comments, can we have a conversation about it?" Is that a fair sort of assessment of what's different here?

Robert Wolfe 

That's exactly right. I'll take it one step further, the board is sort of having a conversation via the the digital workspace prior to the board meeting, right? So part of the advantage for the leadership team is you know where your your board's head is that coming into the meeting. People are seeing those comments, so everyone knows what's going on. But maybe more importantly is not only are you sending the presentation out in advance, you're doing it in a way that's more concise, so your board can actually consume it. And it actually works on your phone. When we're doing demos of our product, we have this problem where everyone thinks their Google Slides, PowerPoint PDFs are mobile friendly. That's true if there's two bullet points on the page, but it's not once you put real data into it. So now we actually show a prior board deck that we made via PowerPoint and what it looks like on mobile, because you can't read it. So I think, again, we're trying to modernize the approach. And I'll tell you, where part of our thinking comes from. A lot of us on our team worked at GoFundMe. And if you think about GoFundMe, we have 15 data scientists, all day long, all they're doing is how do we create the platform so that those writing the content can do it easier. And those consuming the content can actually read it. There's a science to this. We took science, right? So there's a science to the number of words that can go on a line. There was no reason that you imagine waking up in the morning and reading your news, squished into a rectangle. Right, it would be crazy. Yet that's how we're consuming our board our board material, we want to flip that.

Matt VO

Listening to Robert and with the sincere naivete of not having seen or used Zeck, I was curious the extent to which Robert thinks the platform could be something more than a board deck replacement. You know, something that affects a broader range of the conditions that impact boardroom decisions.

Robert Wolfe 

We hope so I mean, our slogan is, which we don't talk about much, but it is, "It's not a deck, it's a Zeck." I don't think you talk to too many people who like a deck. So if we can be a catalyst to changing some of that behavior, to make it easier and more efficient, I think there are lots of different paths this could this could go down. One piece of the architecture we're committed to is being able to build the product to make it easier for each specific use case. And we're not there yet. But if for example, we're going to do quarterly business reviews, then let's make sure that we build the product for that specific use case. So it's really easy, whether it's a first time CEO, or an 1000 year old board member, they can use the product without thinking about it. Right? So the number one question we get asked on calls by CEOs is, and I hope this doesn't come out the wrong way, "Will my 1000 year old board member be able to do this?" And the answer is yes. When they wake up in the morning, they're reading CNN and Axios or checking a post on Medium. I mean, my mom, she plays bridge with her friends online, people know how to use these tools, right? It's actually the tools that we typically use for our presentations and decks that are more burdensome and foreign to you, because you're using that 1% of the time, not 99% of the time. We've built something that's more akin to how you're consuming content 99% of the time.

Matt 

I think it's not coincidental that the person in my community who put me on to you guys is the only person I know who's 30-something and has a dozen years of sophisticated board experience, right? And that's not a comment of the who the appropriate consumer is. This is more I you know, I suspect that the people who are more likely to find you are people like him, even if it helps everybody. How do we how do we make it so that - and I think you're right, your comment about the 1000 year old board member's right on - but I'll argue that there's a lot of 1000 year old CEOs out there too, who don't even and they're not even looking for solutions because they don't think there's a problem. How do we convince people that there's a problem or that it's worth looking for an easier way.

Robert Wolfe 

I feel like there is a change happening. And perhaps it's because I'm just too in it to really see it, where the idea, and maybe it's because the whole world is falling apart. But the idea that the board is working against you, I think is an archaic approach to your relationship with your board. And I feel that there's this change happening where people want to embrace their board as a part of their team, as opposed to this, this sort of secretive group who no one on your team really knows about, who you don't talk about a lot, who you don't really like. And because of that, I feel like you want to have the kind of, of tool that can create more positive engagement with that group. Or maybe just more engagement with that group. But I think the idea that the board is solely a reporting function is is going away. And if that's right, I think our I think Zeck is in a really good place to embrace that idea and help be a catalyst to it happening more often. And I'll back up I'll give you an example of sort of the world that we have played in. At our first company Moosejaw. I don't know if you are a climber, or know any climbers or backpackers, but they used to take themselves very seriously. Okay. And our goal was to make it fun. And so if you go to Moosejaw, you'll see that we are anywhere on the spectrum from crazy to foolish. And, and that worked! People want to have fun. And then our second company was in the giving space. And if you think about the giving space in 2009, it was tactless to tell people how you give to charity, to cause. Now you can't scroll on social for more than a minute without seeing how people give back. And that's now just a part of our social environment. Right? And, and we think that we were a catalyst to that. Our whole goal of the company was, how do we make giving back fun, right? Our slogan was, "if you don't get back, no one will like you." Now we find. Now we find ourselves in a new space, the most miserable space in the corporate world, the board meeting. And we're trying, I can't quite say we're trying to figure out a way to make it fun. But we once again, find ourselves in a space where we're trying to make it less miserable. And I do think that's resonating. And if we can be a catalyst to that kind of cultural change, this can be a really big deal and create a monumental change in the way that that leadership teams communicate with their board.

Matt VO

Even though Robert couldn't quite bring himself to dream about board meetings, being fun, I really like his message. And let me tell you, no matter what I end up thinking about Zeck as a platform, I'm very happy to have folks in the governance space trying to do something funky and creative and presenting it with a bit of madness to break through the obnoxious formality. Whether you're inspired to check out Zeck or not, I hope you feel a little bit of a breath of fresh air listening to Robert talk about the change he wants to be a part of. I want to be a part of that change too. And I welcome all the allies I can find. And seriously if any of you start using Zack or anything like it, please let me know what if any meaningful impact it has on your boardroom experience. Thanks as always for listening and don't forget to shoot me an email or voice memo to soundup@groundupgovernance.com if you have any feedback or questions or especially ideas for future episodes. As you can tell, I'm pretty impulsive at following through whenever a cool opportunity falls in my lap. Until next time.

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