How Students Can Prepare For Boards

Gosh, why didn't this. If I just worked. It has the worst interface. Yes, it's working. It's working. Happy Friday. My God. Thank God it's Friday. I've had the worst week. I'm really grateful that it is over. I need to be back in my home where I'm safe and things don't go wrong. This is why reflections are important. You know how every week I'm like, have you done your reflections? Have you seen what worked well this week? What didn't work well this week? I had such a bad week. And I've just been asking myself today, like, how did I get myself in this position? Where did I go wrong? Which was the decision I made that took me down this path of so many, like, negative things so that I can figure it out and make sure that it doesn't happen again. It's also important to ask what worked, what you're grateful for, because even in bad situations, there's always something to be grateful for. There's always something that helped or someone or something you did that mitigated the situation or so those are good things to look out for and make sure that you're aware of and you stay positive because you got to keep going. You got to keep going. That's what we have to do. No matter how you feel, no matter how difficult it is, this is just life. You have to keep going. Like I've been posting on Instagram this week, you got to live harder. Life doesn't get easier. We just get tougher. Apparently that's what the older people say. So I'm like, oh, lovely, love, lovely. So much to look forward to. Just gotta keep getting stronger and tougher because life doesn't get easier. So you need to get better. Anyway, so today we are talking about students and boards. Boards has been an interesting topic this last couple of weeks. I know my live last week was super rushed because I was in the airport. I didn't really remember where we left off. Oh, I was doing lots of questions then. I had a lot of questions last week. The ones that I didn't answer in the live. I think I sent written responses too. And we have some questions today. So students is a weird area for boards because most of the time as a student, you're not thinking about these things. But it's never too soon to be preparing for the person you want to be. The sooner you get practice, the sooner you start to become that person. I think the first time I went for a board meeting, I was about 16 and my dad took me and told me to take notes, learn, listen. It was interesting for me, it was a bit tense. Like, I've never seen adults, like, disagree in a formal setting like that. So it was exciting, like a TV show. Because a lot of the times board members have different opinions, and so they had to, like, they have to find a way to, like, agree to disagree and, like, okay, let's all move on in this way. And now that I'm part of boards and I have to do it as well. It's. It's very funny. It's still amusing to me. Sometimes I want to, like, fight, and I'm like, okay, let's become how we're gonna figure this out. Who has to, like, adjust or compromise what's best for the company? Just because you think this, the other person thinks that. So it's very entertaining. Sometimes I've seen board meetings where, like, at agms, oh, my gosh. Where it's so dramatic and people, like, stand up. Like, the shareholders are allowed to, like, speak up and say what they want to the board. Oh, my God, it's so awkward. They, like, abuse them, or they give their opinion, or they see you're doing a terrible job and you just have to sit there and take it and be calm and politically correct. And thank you for the feedback. We are doing our best. Give, like, a company explanation. So board life is very interesting. And the sooner you start to be exposed to these things, the easier it becomes. So when I'm thinking of students even just attending meetings or sitting there or listening out as an intern or if you work in a company and there's different types of meetings, like high level meetings, you do learn from it, and you do get to. I think being exposed to something shows you that it's possible, shows you that what it could be and shows you that it exists. So it expands your mind's, like, imagination or your mind's awareness of what is possible in life. I had never been in a board meeting when I was 16. I don't think I could have been on a board when I was, what, 29, I think was when I was my first board, because it's just not something that would have been my scope of mind. Like, I even understand the structure, what it is, or how it works. So empowering yourself with information helps. You can see how board meetings go even in movies. In the movie about Steve Jobs, that's one of the most famous, like, dramatic board meetings ever, where they bounced him from his own company. And it's interesting, but it's true. This stuff happens in the last week. Was it this week or last week? Elon Musk was supposed to join the board of Twitter. Then he decided not to join the board because he'll have more power. He's a shareholder and not a board member, something like that. They had to like announce, then take it back. So. So it's always happening. This is entertaining and it's like life. This is how companies run. It's part of the existence of businesses. So these are like American examples. But this happens in Uganda as well. This happens across Africa. And the sooner we all have boards, the sooner it shows that our companies have better governance. They have, it's a better way to manage. Because it's not just the people involved in the day to day operations that are making big decisions. Especially as companies get bigger. They need more accountability, more oversight. You know, people are always complaining the government has so much corruption or one person is making a decision that affects the lives of thousands. And that's not fair because we all have bias, we all have bad days, we all have our opinions. We can all be corrupted like we're human beings. So the whole point of a board is like a safety net for the company. So to have different ideas, different opinions, different oversight, so that different people are coming together in the interest of the company. This is why I've been explaining it as a mentor for the company. A board is the mentor for the company. Yes, a board is made up of several different people, but it helps to understand it that way. So as students, the sooner you start to understand these kinds of systems and how they exist in the world, the sooner your mind starts to be exposed to that stuff. You start to adjust, you start to be open. Maybe you want to be on a board. Sometimes people ask me, how do I get on a board? Tell me what to do. And if you've started thinking about this when you're young, it's easier for you to get there when you're older. One of the things I said was big is start volunteering in different committees, different groups, different clubs. Student life is full of clubs, committees, guilds, chairs, what treasurer go those things. Even if it's for something fun or silly like on the weekend or hiking, Club Rotary, do something, get out there. As a student, it's so easy to just coast, to just like go with the flow. I go to class, I go for my friends. That's it. That's all I do. So many students have businesses and so that is so impressive to me. So as a student with a Business. Think about that. Who could be your advisory board for your business? Even if you start to do it like you're playing, like you're practicing, go and ask three of your parents, friends, please, can I come to you? Once a year we have tea and we have an advisory board meeting. And you can do it like just for fun, for practice, but you actually get the useful information, you get the advice, you get the push and you learn how to do things in a more formal way. Boards have to be organized. They have to give the board members board packs, which is full of reports, finance reports, operations reports, HR reports, all the different things that have happened there and or in that quarter. And they have to go through the process to make those packs, which as a company you're going to have to do one day. You're going to have to be able to show people. It's like when you're making a pitch deck as a business, when you want an investor, you have to have a business plan, you have to show them, you have to have an elevator pitch. There are certain documents you have to make so that you can get more capital. So as a. When you have a board, there's certain documents you have to make to prepare the board to give them all the information so they can advise you and guide you in a good way. These are things you can start to practice from when however old you are, you don't have to wait till you're old. And I'm now successful and I have all this and I'm respected now. Let me think about boards. It's too late by then because all there are no other people have been thinking about it since they were young, have been making inroads and have growing their network and doing different things to get ahead of you. So I always say start stuff when you're young. I know in Africa they really don't respect young people and we struggle and we fight. But you guys, let's not make it easy for them, huh? All the youth, they're so impatient, they don't know anything. Guess what? What if we know what we need to do? What if we've been doing the research? What if we're prepared? Huh? Huh? How will you refuse to give us the jobs then? Let's not make it easy for them. Just because we're young doesn't mean that we're not capable of doing things. Honestly, I had felt that. I've dealt with that for my whole career. Still, people think I'm the youngest, so I'm too young to be where I Am yet some people now think I'm old. I don't count as youth anymore. But I had to learn things when I was young. And if I could do it, you can do it. It's just about learning. It's just about exposing yourself to different things. You need to look for the opportunities. You need to prepare yourself so that when opportunity comes, you are the best candidate. You have to make sure that you put yourself in a position to succeed. Because it's not about luck. I know I have been privileged and I've had exposure to different things when I was younger, just by default from being around the parents I have. But how many people have entrepreneurs who are parents in Africa? Come on. We are many. Very, very many. Even if your parents has a small business, go and learn from that business. Go and make documents for their business. If your mom has a shop that she's running out of your household, she's selling things from there or from her office or she sends a border guy, tell her, can I help you with your documents this year? Let me see how you're doing your financials. Let me help to rewrite your business plan, even if she doesn't have one. Do it. Go and use it as a exercise. It's practice. My dad used to give us exercises like that when we were kids. We used to be upset, but we learned. By the time I got to business school, I knew so much more than all the other students just because I had been doing stuff in the business. And my dad thinks it's fun to test us on things in the business. You're in dinner or in the car somewhere and he's asking you questions about the business. Such answer. And you know the thing? It's like you have to know these things. I didn't get it then, but I get it now. You can never be too prepared. There's no such thing. And being prepared has helped me so much in my career. Because you, as a young person, you're always going to be the underdog. No one is going to want you to be there. Everyone is going to assume you don't know what you're doing or what you're saying. So for me, the way to fight back was to always be prepared. Because that's something I can control. I can read and read and read. I will watch the videos, I'll ask questions, I will get all the information so I don't look stupid in the one meeting that we have the next day or next month. Because being prepared is something I could control. It's something I can do and that's how I want to encourage students. Don't coast. When you're young, you have so much energy, you have no idea. Getting old sucks. Use the energy you have when you have it and when you're young, you have time. You don't have burdens and obligations of six children and you're paying for this and you have to be at this job and you need to be there. Yes, you have struggles, yes, you have challenges, yes, you do have things you pay for, but it's only going to get worse. So this is the most time you're ever going to have. So use it wisely. Look at areas you want to improve in your life and say, how can I get better at this? How can I learn this skill? How can I learn about this field? The questions I've had on boards this week, I'm like, wow, first they have these things you could Google. You don't need to ask me to spoon feed it to you. But also as grown up adults, you don't know how board works at all. These are some people who work in companies. Don't you hear about your company saying, oh, the board did this, the board said this. This is a new decision. Don't you see the annual reports that your company sends out, people who work in corporates. If you don't, you should go look for those things. They're free, they're online. It is the law for companies to publish these things and especially publicly traded companies. There's so much information about them. And I mean like in Uganda, I think we have DFCU and Ume and Stan. Big, you know the companies on the stock market, those are publicly traded. So they're under like legal clauses that they have to give certain information to the public because the public owns shares like now even mtn. So go and look at these things. Go read those reports. Yeah, a lot of it is boring. Yes. Some of it you won't understand. But you will expose yourself to something new. Your mind will expand. You will know that this is what it takes to be in a company or to have a company. If you are a career person, you'll see this is how companies think. This is what's important to them. This is how they measure things. These are their targets, these are their goals. This is how they run. It helps you. The sooner you expose yourself to stuff, the better. Because when you're ignorant about things, there's nothing worse. Honestly. Let's not live up the stereotype, young people. Let's not be useless, let's do what we can to be ready so that the moment, the opportunity is there, the job, the board seat, the idea, the internship, they're like, oh, I know exactly who I want to hire. Because that person knows that person has energy, enthusiasm. They're always researching, they're always trying. We love those kinds of people. Those are the people that get the opportunities. Guys. Okay, let me move to questions. Faith. As students, sometimes we have hectic schedules. So how can that be managed? Girl, girl, girl. Everybody has hectic schedules. Time management is a skill and it's something you can work on and you can learn. What you want to do is make sure you are highly productive in the time that you have. Unfortunately, most people are very busy, but they are busy and they're not actually achieving things. This is one of the things I'm always talking about and teaching, so you can go on my YouTube channel. There's a lot of productivity and time management tools and tricks there. Plan your stuff out. This is why I'm always saying weekly reflections on Friday. You have to measure things. If the week passes and you don't know what you did this week, where did your time go? What did you achieve? You're not being productive, you're not being effective. So if you have a hectic schedule, make sure you plan everything in advance so that you get all your priorities done in the week. You make time for everything. Guess what? There is time for everything. Some people are a thousand times busier than you, but they are achieving a thousand times more than you. So if they can do it, why can't you do it? Take that attitude, figure it out. Time management, productivity. Become a more efficient person, then you will have more hours in the day. Ken, what are the long term benefits of this action? Joining boards as a student? Firstly, some boards pay you, which is lovely because it's almost like free money because you don't like work there every day. So I like that. But also you learn a lot and you're exposed to a lot. So in the different companies and the different boards you sit on, usually it's in different sectors you get to learn so much about that company, about their operations, about their field, about their sector, about their competitors, about their staff, about everything that they do. Of course, as a board member you're not supposed to like share this information, but for you it's interesting. Like you learn so much. Like I have learned so much. One of the boards I'm on, I know a lot, lots about property management, right? But we don't have warehouses and now I Get to learn so much about like the warehouse industry, the prices, what's busy, what works, what doesn't. I get to visit them. It's so interesting. Who knows how it will help me one day. But for me I found it fascinating. Also you get exposed to the other board members who are usually also great people. They're interesting. They're in different fields from you. You're expanding your network. That is a massive benefit and it also looks prestigious. I think it helps you to get into other things. It shows that you're serious and disciplined and you know you can be trusted in certain areas. So I think those are the long term benefits of boards. As a student, if you're going to join smaller things like Rotaract or like your student clubs, it's about the practice. You expand your network as well, which is great. Make sure you get to know everyone in your different clubs or groups or boards. And also you are practicing how you carry yourself. You know how you like sometimes watch people in parliament and like they're asleep or they're fidgeting or they're on their phones because they're just not used to sitting through parliament. You don't want to be that guy who's on a board and doesn't know how to like get through the board meeting. You don't have to be that person who's in Rotary and doesn't know how it like operates and you're like that person out of place just because you were ignorant about it. So I think practice is a useful thing in life. Even if it's a board that you don't take seriously or it's a club and you're just a part of a community. You start to learn the norms, you start to see how people behave. You start to see how people are influenced, how people make decisions, how people decide. This is where we want to go with the club, how they execute plans or programs. It's useful. You want to expose yourself to this stuff. It has many long term benefits. Mistake. Why should I sit on a board and not be hands on in the field? Oh, that's a good question. So I think it gives you an advantage because you can have both. If you have your own company, you're in the field and then you're on a board, you're not. Because being in the field is full time work. It's exhausting if you're in the field. If you're in operations, you also get limited information and you can't be on the field for so many different things. Please. Yeah. I know, I try. I'm in so many different companies, but to be in operations in several different companies in several different sectors, that is not something I would really recommend. It is very difficult. It's so hard to keep up. There's always something going on. You can't be on top of everything at the time, at the same time, it's just not possible. We're human beings. At the end of the day when you're on the board, you're not responsible for day to day operations. They give you all this information in a nice board pack that you just have to read and you can think about it, you can give advice, you get to learn, you get to give an input and impact. It's a different way to be involved and you get to be in different sectors and in different areas in different companies so you exposed more things. So I think that's the advantage of being on a board rather than being in the operations. For example, I don't think I would work in operations for most of the companies I'm on a board for. I don't know if that's the I have the right skill set or enough like it wouldn't work, I don't think. Yeah, you could. But I also couldn't work in all these different companies at the same time. So this way I get to be a part of so many different things. At what age, Ryan, thank you for the question. At what age should a young person be on a board? It's a good question. I don't think there's any particular age because there's so many different types of boards. There's advisory boards and executive ones and like depending on your field, depending on your experience, depending on what you're looking for, I would say you are never too young to be on a board. Even if you have a board with your friends, you have an investment club, have your board, have your meetings, you can do it. Don't wait till you're a certain age. As soon as you start looking for these opportunities, as soon as you start to take them up, the sooner they start to respond to you, the sooner you get better at them, the sooner that more opportunities come, it's like it gains momentum once you start doing this kind of stuff, it starts to find you also. So the sooner you get onto a club or a board or a committee, the sooner more will look for you and ask you to be on theirs. And as soon as like a very useful one in your life will come along because you can't control that, but you can influence it by being enthusiastic and prepared and you be intentional, things gain momentum and they start moving, and it works. Michael, how frequently should a board meet? Typically, boards meet every quarter. That is the legal standard. Some companies meet every six months. Once a year you have an agm, which is the annual general meeting. So that's the standard. You can also have emergency meetings if there's, like, something that has to be decided on really quickly. So those are the typical timelines for how often boards should meet. But if you're an entrepreneur just starting out, maybe every six months so that you prepare your board, you give them information, you sit down until you get better, and you practice, and you get up to quarterly. Okay, Michael, how does a board propagate instructions to the workers or employees? What's the best approach from your experience? So the board should never be dealing with the workers and employees. You're not supposed to really interact with them. On the board is usually the CEO, the company secretary, a cfo. Like, there are certain people who are on the board who are working in the company. So as the board agrees on things, it now goes to the CEO to now disseminate that information to make sure those instructions are carried out. So the board never interacts with workers or employees. You don't meet them, you don't see them. Maybe if you're walking around the office, you say, hi. But the CEO is the one who now has to go through the proper channels and the hierarchy of the company to give out that information. That's why I'm saying some corporate people must hear, oh, the board decided this. But you hear it from your supervisor, who heard it from their supervisor, who had it from their manager, who had it from the CEO. Sometimes companies will send, like, an email or memo following the board's decision. We are now changing this policy to da, da, da, da, da, da. But it's not the board coming to talk to you about these things. Okay, another question. How frequently are the reports being produced? What's missing in your experience from board reports? Reports are produced every quarter so that the board has updates on what's changing. And then once a year, there's like an annual report, which is like a summary of everything. What is missing? From my experience, I think board reports can be a bit stiff. You know, there's more storytelling these days. Usually it's facts, figures. We did this. We had this. The CEO writes a letter, the chairman of the board writes a letter, but you don't really get to hear the stories. So sometimes in board meetings. May I ask, so how did you come to this decision? Why is this the number that we're agreeing on? How did this happen? Like, tell me the story, because I want to know, because about the people involved, what happened to the people on the ground, in the site, in the work, in that country? How is it happening? Something I really like would save the children is they let us join calls as board members from some of the operational teams. So for example, I'm very interested in women and girls. And when the whole situation in Afghanistan changed last year, we got to sit in as board members, we were allowed to listen in on a call where the team on the ground in Afghanistan was explaining what's going on to the team of, say, the children's network, right in the other offices, some of the investors, things like that, to say what is really happening. So not just what you see on the news or what you see in emails, but what are the challenges they're facing? How is it actually working out for women and girls on the ground? What do they need? What is happening? So I really appreciate that from them. They're always inviting us for things like that. So I think that's useful for boards because at the end of the day, all these organizations are run by people. They affect people. So stories are really important. And social business storytelling has become more important. And even for pitches, even for investors, even for board members, there's usually a storytelling side now where the CEO has to give examples like, these are typical customers. This is Mama Sarah. Our product gives her this. It makes her life this much better. Now her children can have this, this and this. So it's becoming more frequent. But I don't think it's the norm yet. And it's not yet the norm even in corporate like companies. But it's important, I think, because people are the heart of everything. So it's important that we get to understand and know. And I also think boards shouldn't be making decisions solely based on like figures and facts. And this is the situation and this is what's best for the company. It's actually a big thing going on in America in the last few years where there's B corps, which are companies that are more than just businesses, they're more like social businesses that are thinking, how can we measure things that are not just about money? Because typically the whole point of a company is to make money for their shareholders. But there are so many negative effects of that pure capitalism that we are seeing now. So now it's being reassessed. How can we take into account the workers welfare the environment, our impact on these different. Because we live in a world where we are evolving and now we can see that you can't just be pure capitalist, you can't just make decisions. What makes money for the company. Because you affect so many human lives, you affect the environment and the planet. There are so many negative consequences. So we have to be able to take into account these other things, these other factors, and take them as seriously as we take the money part. So I think that's an interesting area that corporate world is going and I look forward to see where it grows. Does a board or business include staff that are already employed? Yes, those are the executive directors. Personally, like I'm a non executive director, it means I don't work in the company, I'm just on the board. But executive directors are like the CEO, the CFO and the company secretary, for example. They are the senior members of management that represent the company, the staff on the board. So those are the ones that are already employed. Just to make it clear for you. All right. I think those are the questions. A book to recommend on boards. I can't say I've ever read a book about boards. In particular, I've read books where they talk about board meetings. It's useful to read memoirs. That's where I learn a lot about this stuff. You read someone's life story, business people, they usually talk about these kinds of things. I would recommend that. Okay, I hope that was useful to you all. Do your Friday reflections. I hope you've had a better week than me and I hope next week will be better. Have a wonderful weekend.