Newsagents sit on the boards of various businesses supplying newsagents including stationery wholesalers and associations. While I am sure they discharge their duties to the best of their ability, it is appropriate to consider whether newsagents are the best directors of these business enterprises.
Newsagent owned businesses, and associations conducting commercial activity to newsagents, operate in a commercial world quite different to a newsagency – distribution or retail. This is why I question why newsagents make the best directors.
Directors are usually paid fees for their time. Are they worth it ? Are their decisions adding value to the businesses? Are the boards they sit on performing well? Would they get a gig on the board of a competitor business?
I know from my own experience on the ANF board in 2003/04 that newsagents bring personal baggage to the boardroom table. I saw a lack of commercial savvy and a disinterest in due diligence and transparency. Bill Express is a perfect example of a bad decision by directors ill-equipped to make the decision. Before I resigned I expressed concern at the excess of the ANF Board meeting bar tab – a 45 minute fight ensued which I lost. They spent more time arguing about this than matters of serious commercial consequence for newsagents.
I have other stories I could share of my own and from others. If only newsagents knew.
Boards ought to be focused on big picture issues, setting direction and holding the employees of the organisations to account. Too often that is not the case, giving the competitors a free kick and wasting member and shareholder funds along the way.
These newsagent owned commercial enterprises collectively turn over well over $100 million a year.
Isn’t it time we populated the boards with quality commercial directors as competitors of these businesses do?
I am surprised if there is a lack of professionalism on these boards. I had assumed, perhaps wrongly, that it is everyones best interests to get the very best people available for these jobs! These boards are dealing with peoples livelihoods and lives.
Bruce, too often there are not elections either because of a lack of candidates or because of political manoeuvring. Either way, newsagents are poorly represented.
The Board employ a MD/CEO to the wholesaler or association which should be totally responsible for all facets of the business. The board should be advisors and approvers of all set KPI’s from the MD/CEO.
If you had ‘professional’ Board members, do you think the quality would be better? Do you think the agenda would be much different? Everyone has an agenda.
What do we want an Organisation that represents is to the Publishers, IR, Government and various other groups or an Organisation that as well as representing our needs also pursues commercial activities with us which makes it a supplier to us (leave Western Union to one side). I want the former not the latter as if it is both then I believe inevitable conflicts arise. What the Organisation does then should determine the sort of person we need as directors.
By the way I find this Hierarchy of State then Federal Organisations representing expensive and wasteful. Perhaps the first move is to roll all state and the ANF into one organisation.
We need a national representative body with a properly skilled board – and this means a mix of newsagent and non-newsagent board members to bring the widest skillset and knowledge base to the table. This has been missing for years and is a major contributing factor as to why our national representative body has made very little real, measurable difference to every day newsagents.
The national body should be able to focus on national issues, not state issues. The ANF cannot effectively manage state based issues and national issues concurrently. IMO, the best way is to have state groups (QNF, VANA, NANA, WANA) dealing with issues on the ground in each state, as the needs of the states are different and localised. The ANF should focus on National issues and there should be a clear demarcation between the two.
Until we newsagents begin to take an active interest in our associations, what they do and how they represent us, then the standard of our representation will not improve. Our own apathy is our biggest downfall.
Some states can’t manage state issues. Add up how much newsagents spend on directors of associations and businesses they own and then on the infrastructure of their associations.
Consolidation among suppliers is not occurring at the representation level – saddling newsagents with a higher cost for poor representation.
This post, by the way, was more about the commercial enterprises. Directors are failing newsagents and not being transparent about the extent of their failure.
With a growing number of newsagents consolidating terrtories and becoming shareholders of a bigger entity it’s a good time to have the discussion. An effective governing board should be primarily responsible for the company’s strategy, legal compliance, governance and to provide accountablity and oversight of it’s senior management. It should be measured by the degree in which it protects and grows the equity of it’s shareholders. An ideal board should contain a mix of skill sets that addresses all of these issues equally. It’s probably not specifically relevant whether a board member is a newsagent or for that matter is not a newsagent. What is relevant is the selection process, the individual qualifications, and the fit into the skill /knowledge mix. Just being a shareholder is not necessarily a qualification to be a member of the board. Equally risky is a board composed of members handppicked by the CEO. Tenure is also an important issue. A board needs to be refreshed quite regularly and new directors that are more appropriate for a company’s changing circumstances bought in to introduce new skill sets and experiences.