Marty Svrcek: Board Transitions

0:00   Is your organization having challenges transitioning older board members to younger board members? Let's talk about

0:07   it. This is the Fairgrounds podcast with top [music] experts and innovators. The men and women who shape the future of US

0:14   fairs and Canadian ag societies brought to you by Pilot [music] Rock, leader in benches, picnic tables, and just about

0:21   everything outdoors. Here's your [music] host, Jay Spicer. All right, today's episode of the Fairgrounds podcast,

0:29   we're welcoming guest Marty Svrcek, the executive director of the Montgomery County Fair, which was my old home fair back in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Marty,

0:38   welcome to the club and we're going to have a conversation about transitioning boards and board members and people in your staff and like that. So, um, let me

0:47   just welcome you and say thanks for joining us. And we'll start off with a big question. First of all, why are board transitions so difficult for nonprofit organizations?

0:57   Well, sometimes the uh the difficulty in transition is based on the organizational setup that an individual fair would have. You

1:06   know, every fair has bylaws and policies and procedures and that sort of thing.

1:11   In my particular situation, we have a board that rotates every year. We have 12 members. they're allowed to serve two

1:19   three-year terms and every year three of them go off. So by bringing in new

1:26   people at a regular basis makes that transition pretty easy because we're very used to it. Um the other part of

1:34   that equation that helps with the transitional piece is training new board members. Um giving them the opportunity

1:41   to to learn what it is they're coming into. So we spend couple hours before the first board meeting when folks are

1:48   elected and we give them a year's worth of minutes talk about all kinds of various procedural things including you

1:57   know non-disclosure agreements um and various other pieces that are required you know to a good nonprofit

2:04   that would apply and uh keep that piece in place. Sure. So, when you're bringing

2:12   in new members because of your bylaws, um, all the fairs have the bylaws, but I have seen instances where the fair board

2:20   didn't exactly follow what the bylaws said. They just kind of blew through it and instead of having somebody uh roll

2:27   off the board, all they did was add another one or two of their friends or family member or someone who they thought deserve to be on the board for

2:35   whatever that means. Um, what would you do about that?

2:40   Some of that also uh is built uh Jay into the bylaws. Like a person myself, I'm the executive director for the

2:47   Montgomery County Agricultural Fair and I have specific parts of my position title that give me responsibility for

2:57   certain parts of fair ops. The operative word in our particular bylaws is I am

3:03   the chief executive officer and I serve at the direction of the board of directors. So they have basic power over

3:12   everything which they should and I appreciate the fact that it's there because it can be very useful in certain situations but how effective a leader

3:22   can be is largely based on what they are allowed to do within the confines of their bylaws.

3:29   Sure. So, what if a fair has very loose bylaws or no bylaws at all and you have

3:37   I mean, I can't tell you, Marty, how many boards that I've seen in fairs where the board members have been on the board of directors for more than 20

3:45   years with no break. So, how do you know it's time for a longtime board member to step aside? And the incidents you just

3:54   described, Jay, probably before the 20 years got there. Although I have board members that have been with me for my

4:01   entire 20 years and they've rotated on and off the board and some of that brings good institutional memory to

4:09   experiences that the fair may have had in the past and helps them make decisions regarding the future. Um it's

4:17   very difficult situation when we're dealing with people who have become our friends, our colleagues and trying to let them know that it's time to move on.

4:27   It's a very difficult piece vignette that occurred to me years ago. We had a food booth volunteer chairwoman who was

4:36   doing a great job for a long time. The time had come where she really needed to

4:42   move on. So the president and myself uh decided to have a meeting with her and we had very little plan for how we were

4:50   going to handle it going into the meeting because we just did not know how it was going to go. This person had long-term standing in the community.

4:58   They she was a member of a farm family that owned hundreds of acres of farmland in the county and they were actually

5:06   part of the founding fathers of the fair. So that's what we have and we're trying to move this person on. So, the president and I got in a in a room with

5:14   her in our boardroom and we just started talking about how could we get her some help to make her job easier and we

5:22   conversed for a short bit and finally her eyes opened really wide. She looked at both of us and said, "You want me to

5:30   leave, don't you?" So, at that point, it was avoid now we're in for it. And what

5:36   actually happened was she said, "I am so thankful. I've been trying to figure out for years how to stop doing what I'm

5:45   doing. I don't have the capacity to do it. I'm getting older. I know a lot of people and I can help you, but I do not

5:52   want to be the leader any longer. So, I guess the lesson learned there is you have somebody who you want to try to move on, consider having a meeting with

6:01   them and offer to help them and see how that could work in terms of making transition in certain positions. Same thing would be for a board member.

6:13   Yeah. So rotating off the board for the last time doesn't mean gone forever.

6:20   Their knowledge of the fair is a and a mentorship to be able to to help teach the younger folks coming in is is very

6:28   valuable. I never want to be mean about it, but I think once you hit a point where you're you're I'll just say old.

6:37   You're too old to understand what young families want out of your event. You're unwilling to change because it's the way

6:45   you've always done it and you're physically unable to do the work on the fairgrounds anymore. Then I wonder why

6:51   are you still taking this seat? It's got to be delicate. Like make them a distinguished board member, distinguished trustee. Give them the

6:59   benefits of still like come to the fair and enjoy the event that you've worked for years to put together and just enjoy

7:06   it for a change. don't be burdened with all the, you know, the production side of it.

7:11   And you know what what you're saying, Jay, makes a ton of sense. It's difficult for those who have transition off of our board for one reason or

7:20   another to give up that piece where they were looked up to, respected um as a

7:27   decider, as a leader. In our case, we have a 12 member board and my board

7:34   mailing list is like 17 deep. Now, why is it 17 deep? Because there are that many extra people that fit that category

7:44   that you just set. They bring institutional knowledge. They see stuff that comes up in a board meeting because I let them see the minutes. They see the

7:52   financials. They see everything that the board and our art and finance committee sees. and they'll call me up and say, "Marty, I see this came out. I know I'm

8:01   not a board member any longer, but consider this." So that relationship building between the executive side of

8:08   the management piece and the board is absolutely essential. There has to be complete trust and no filters. If

8:17   something is screwed up, we need to address it as it's screwed up and move on.

8:23   Yes. and honoring the contributions of those folks because they got the fair to today

8:31   and bravo for that. But how do we avoid the conflicts between what they think needs to be done cuz that's the way

8:39   they've been doing it versus what the new leadership like making room for them and their decisions to take the affair

8:47   in maybe just a slightly different direction. There's going to be a conflict there, I'm sure.

8:53   and avoiding that conflict is next to impossible. And I have to say this, a board that doesn't have conflict is not

9:01   making progress. In our particular case, and I think this is important for any fair anywhere in the country,

9:10   we have to develop a youth leadership program to take over that piece as we

9:16   all age out. In our case, we built in 2006 a junior board of directors. Now,

9:24   it's maybe not the best name because junior kind of implies that they are just kids, but they're not. They're 16

9:32   to 22 years old. Some of them in college, some of them headed for college, some of them in high school, and it's a 12 member group of kids who

9:40   are kids and young adults who have real jobs. We've talked to fairs around the country that have tried to emulate what

9:49   we do. And one of the biggest mistakes they've made is they give the the junior board of directors junior jobs.

9:59   Can't give them junior jobs. You we have to provide them with the information that they need to take over and run the

10:06   fairgrounds. So, we teach these young people about nonprofit law, about taxes, about our 1099s.

10:17   They see all of this information, our annual financials. We talk during the fair with them about the data that we

10:25   get from our ticketing company. This is what we're seeing that we're getting.

10:28   This is where we're missing it, and this is what we got to do better. So, we have them doing real jobs. Um, and they don't pick up trash. We don't have them

10:37   running around the fairgrounds looking for ways to clean tables and do jobs that somebody else should be doing. They won't hesitate to do it, but it's not

10:46   their assignment. Their assignments are basically built by themselves. Um, they do a lot of work with our senior committee on senior day. They run a

10:55   senior tram that goes through the property. They help they organize and run the 4H uh parade on Sunday during

11:02   our fair. And it's a lot of organizational. They get to see management and we treat them like real manager.

11:10   That's very important. I have seen many affair establish a junior fair board and give them nothing to do except run ice

11:18   back and forth to the vendors and they get discouraged those young people.

11:23   Nobody seems to want to listen to the junior board member and their ideas which also makes them feel really

11:31   unimportant. I've seen them come into the fair, put on their fair volunteer shirt, and they go, "Where do you want me to go?" And they send them down to an

11:38   area, and there's nobody in charge of them. They're just, "Here, you just go do that, kid." And then in 20 minutes,

11:46   the shirt's off, and they're out running around the fair because nobody seems to care what they're doing. It goes back to that that board member mentality that

11:55   I've been here 20 years, and this is the way we've always done it. And if you can't do it the way we're going to do it, then we don't need you. There

12:03   doesn't seem to be an appreciation or a inviting opportunity for younger people to get involved. You're not in the click. They don't want you in the click.

12:12   I mean, that becomes a problem, too, just in general, the the click, if you will. Like a lot of people, they don't want to be on the board because they're

12:20   not in the click or they know they'll never be on the board because they're not in the click. young people, new parents, people who have exhibitors

12:27   showing that want to be more involved in the fair because their kids going to be there six more years showing. How do we get the board members to just let the

12:36   reins loose a little bit and be a little more open-minded?

12:40   And and that's a that's a big challenge for every every fair anywhere because some of our folks like I said that have

12:47   transitioned out have found it to be um emotional downright depressing to a certain degree because they were viewed

12:56   as leaders. They did substantial work to make the fair great and now all of a sudden they're off the they're off the

13:04   board and they lose that. It's like cutting a string. So the key really is to keep them involved but at a pace that

13:10   is more um amendable to growth. Our junior fairboard members are required

13:16   during fair ops to shadow a board member or myself for a day. Now it never lasts

13:24   a whole day because they get bored and they got to go do something else. But the point is they sit in on every meeting that I have whenever I'm doing a

13:32   shadow piece. Um, they hear about drama that's going on in a trailer area. They hear about pieces of um of uh a police

13:42   work. Occasionally we have issues with outsiders coming into the fair and acting foolishly. They sit in on every

13:49   meeting with every person and they hear everything that I hear and they walk away from that with their eyes open um

13:57   because they think it's just turn a key and and the fair will start up and it'll run. It doesn't come close. So, we also

14:05   teach them about contract writing. Um so much of the minutia that most people never see and never think about happening.

14:15   That's excellent because I've always felt that you you have to let them see how the sausage is made because they're

14:22   going to grow up. They've been an exhibitor most likely at your fair or associated because of their parents being volunteers there for all those

14:29   years. Then they go off to college and if they come back to your hometown, you want those people to be associated with your fair. So give them responsibility.

14:39   And again, remember the older board members, if you're if you're not in charge anymore, it doesn't mean you're gone forever. You see, you still have

14:47   value to the fair and just enjoy it. So, with that, I just want to take a second to thank our sponsors that present this show for you every every time. And

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15:51   [music]

15:52   Welcome back. We're here with Marty Zerek from the Montgomery County Fair in Maryland and we're talking about boards

15:59   and transitioning board members. So, one of the challenges, Marty, that I've run into in in some of my own fairs and I've

16:06   seen at other fairs is they tend to devolve into the good old boys club or the the chairperson will go out and

16:14   recruit his own buddies because he thinks that they have value. There's certain types of people you want on your board, not just the good old boys club.

16:23   Do you have any insight on like what kind of person makes a good board member?

16:29   Well, generally uh a person who's run a business is is a good board member. A person who's in the um in the accounting

16:38   business, whether they're accountants or tax preparers, those kinds of people.

16:44   But additionally we need to keep the egg side involved. In our particular board, one of our criteria um to be a board

16:53   member is the board composition has to be 80% active farmers.

17:02   So we keep the egg piece in. The other 20% can be folks from the community that bring other elements to the table. That

17:10   piece has served us well and has kept us grounded with the agricultural side as our community has become more and more

17:18   urbanized that keeping the aside is more and more difficult and we may reach the point where we have to change the bylaws just

17:26   to keep people involved. But this is another part of our equation that I think helps. um for the first I'm saying

17:34   maybe six or seven years that I was here um board members were basically appointed in other words the good old

17:41   boys network found the people they wanted on the board their friends their buddies whatever um subsequent to seeing

17:48   that for a while I was able to garner some support from the board to build an actual nomination process

17:56   so now a person who wants to be a board member has to physically apply Now, it's called a nomination, but you

18:04   can self-nominate or someone else can nominate you, but you have to sign off, of course, and say that you're interested. 5 years ago had one or two

18:12   people would apply. Today, we had eight people who applied this last year for three positions.

18:21   So, they see the the value in the organization. They understand that it's it's a job. A board member has to work.

18:29   and we're getting people who are basically young business folks within the community. Three of our junior boardies over the years have made it to

18:37   the level of board position. So, we're growing from within and our parents of our 4 age kids that are just the right

18:44   age are coming on board to help run the ship.

18:48   So, that's interesting when we're talking about nominations. Um, one of the transition challenges that I've experienced is within that nomination

18:58   committee, who gets to be on that nomination committee? because I've had flack, if you will, from people in the

19:07   association that want to be on the board that think that the system is rigged because of who the nomination committee

19:15   is made up of, who decides who gets to be on that committee and who picks them and like I've seen that be a problem. I

19:22   saw that one coming and when we built the our nomination process, we put together the requirements to be on the

19:29   committee. The vice president of the board is always the chair of our nomination committee because of in our

19:36   world, the vice president becomes the president. So that person should be deeply involved in the process. Um on a

19:45   committee it requires two active board members, three active volunteers who are not

19:52   board members, one member of our junior board of directors.

19:57   That's a great idea having the volunteers involved. It did. It wor and it works very well because at the end of the day, folks can say the nomination

20:07   committee just followed the good old boys network.

20:11   But it's very hard to add substance to that statement when you have a diverse group of age demographic, of experience

20:19   demographic, and of the kind of people who are involved at different levels of fair operations involved in the uh in the deciding process. I have seen that be an issue.

20:30   Um, let's go down the hole of where do we look for younger board members out

20:40   there. A lot of the people who have been with the fair have been there a long time. So that the youth is not getting any younger, that's for sure. And you

20:49   guys have a heavy egg presence. And I know that the farmers like their kids are not getting involved in farming anymore. They're letting the family

20:56   farms go, selling off to uh solar panel fields and things like that. So, where's where would we look for younger help in our community?

21:06   The way it works in our particular situation, our members are our recruiters.

21:14   So, they do the looking for us. We don't advertise, you know, come volunteer at the fair. our membership, which is

21:22   entirely volunteer-driven, we have 2600

21:28   life members. Wow. Out of that 2600, about 120 do the work. It's not much

21:37   different than most church groups. If you if you're familiar with how those churches work, you have a small percentage of people doing a large

21:46   percentage of the work. So, in order to become a life member at our particular fair, you must volunteer 200 hours of

21:53   service. You cannot buy the life membership. You can't trade it. It's yours and it stays with you. So, once

22:01   you've got that life membership in hand, that person is allowed to come to the fair for life for free. That person's

22:09   significant other, wife, husband, whatever, comes to the fair for free.

22:16   the under 18year-old children come to the fair for free. So this is a very valued status piece, you know, to the

22:24   point that there have been divorces in our community where who owns the life membership has become a point of contention.

22:34   So people earn it, they keep it, they appreciate it, and we are completely built on that premise.

22:41   Do they have to be in that club to be eligible for the board?

22:46   In order to be eligible for a board member position, one must be a life member. You've got to have already

22:54   experienced 200 hours of service to the fair.

22:59   That's great. So they don't have the chair just running off and picking up somebody off the street and just getting enough people to vote them on the first

23:07   time. That's that's good. you know that that that did go on years ago. I've heard stories before my time where the

23:15   board was basically built at the annual meeting by folks who nominated others and had brought in enough friends to be

23:22   able to make that board work. Some of those folks no doubt were probably good board members but not necessarily the

23:29   best. The process with a nomination committee that has diverse composition seems to work well in our environment.

23:37   That's a good thing. Let's say you have uh all these qualified life members uh or board applicants

23:45   and you really want someone to get involved and they've been involved all these years and you know they'd make a great board member.

23:52   What would you do to overcome their objection when they say things like, "I don't have time to give." I know that

24:00   we've run into my one of my favorite sayings is the sometimers club where you have board members who only show up once in a while or or they participate once

24:08   in a while. They're not really vested in the program anymore. But when you have somebody who's legitimately says, "I

24:16   don't have time for the board," but you really want them because you know that their experience would be valuable to you. What would you like try to coax them into it?

24:26   Well, there's something to be said for trying to recruit and coax people on to your board. We've taken the uh the

24:34   highway, the path to if somebody doesn't doesn't want to do it, there may be other reasons that we don't even

24:41   understand. Um a person can say, "Marty, I just don't have time to do this job.

24:46   I'm in the middle of whatever, whatever." Um okay, fine. This is a good time for me to back down.

24:53   many times in my career here, I'm now here 21 years, folks who I have recruited and they said no. Guess what?

25:02   They're now they're now trying to get on to the board. Um, sometimes it's child issues, sometimes it's uh family issues,

25:10   sometimes it's work issues. And the the way our volunteer course seems to work

25:17   is this. The kids of our volunteers become volunteers and eventually become life members. Many of them become life

25:25   members about time they get out of high school. They've earned their 200 hours.

25:30   They go off to college. We lose them for a little bit. I mean, they come back for the summer and they're able to work, but they're not around during the year. They

25:39   graduate from college. They get married for a couple years of their early part of their marriage. They are active as can be. They have children.

25:49   They become inactive for a while while the children are growing up. The children become 4 members at Clover age of eight.

25:59   Then they're back to the fair because they're bringing animals. They're bringing pets. You know, 4 is so broad right now. It's not just about farm

26:07   animals. There's of course indoor exhibits. There's the pet show. There's all the other things that they can get involved in. So the parents come back

26:15   when the kids come back and then we have those parents for the next uh 12 years until they get to be 18. Then we're back

26:24   in business rebuilding itself. It's a self-fulfilling process that works very well in our world. So when you have an

26:32   older board member or board members that have been around for so long, I I think

26:40   that there's for some of them there's really not much else at home and it gives them a sense of purpose and it may

26:48   be the most important thing in their life that they're on the fair board.

26:51   That's why they're hanging around or there's an unhealthy sense of ownership with the event because they've been there so long. Does that make sense?

27:00   like it's their fair sense. And I I'll take that that word ownership and use what is is typically a situation we have here. It's called entitlements.

27:12   Folks who have been here a long time, have been doing the same thing for a long time. Making that change sometimes

27:20   becomes difficult because of the entitlements that we've enabled over the years. So making change on a regular

27:28   basis for any fair is important. If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got. And people start learning that because we

27:37   use that term in board meetings frequently so that we get folks thinking down a different road knowing that

27:44   there's change. Some change is good, some change is bad, but any change fosters improvement over time. Even if

27:52   the change was bad, you tune the change and you make it better. So getting folks to understand that progress and change

28:00   is absolutely essential to any fair that's going to succeed.

28:06   Yeah, that's actually one of my favorite slogans, Marty, is comfort is the enemy of progress. And I don't know that,

28:14   like I said, these these board members are getting to an age where they they're not really connected to young families with a a 28-year-old mom with two little

28:22   kids. What do they want at the fair besides cotton candy and the teacup rides? I'm sure that over the years they've burned up all their ideas, so

28:31   there's no new ideas coming out of some of our distinguished uh board members because they've again they've used them

28:37   all up getting to this far. So when you bring in somebody new, we want to have that institutional knowledge from those

28:46   board members because again, they got it to this point. Now it's time for the younger group to kind of inject their nuances of the new world, if you will.

28:55   That's a probably a terrible word, but um what can you do for a new board member to make sure that they they're

29:02   comfortable and what needs to be done like in the first three months? How do you get them to where they're feeling valuable about their new position?

29:10   Well, I'll say this. Most of our new board members come into the uh boardroom scared.

29:18   They don't know what to expect. They're intimidated.

29:21   We help them out with that piece by doing the training that I discussed earlier. It's it's a it's a full-blown packet that we've developed over the

29:29   years and certain boxes need to be checked as we teach folks what we're up to, what we think is important, and how

29:37   we move forward. What I've learned about new board members here is that they take

29:45   two years more or less before they're ready to start making motions in the boardroom and making and you know,

29:52   sharing opinions that matter. They spend a whole lot of time listening, which is smart. Any good leader's got to learn to

30:00   listen. But a good leader also has to be able to respond, to stand on on an opinion and make it work. One of the

30:08   pieces that we use in our boardroom, and I've talked to board members about this over the years, abstaining for a vote is

30:16   not doing your job. You got to have an opinion. you're either going to be for an an element or against an element, but

30:23   abstaining is not doing a job that the board is expected to do. And we we pretty much try to follow that. Folks

30:31   start abstaining and then everybody's looking at that board member saying, "No, that's not appropriate. We need your opinion." And it can be right, it

30:40   can be wrong, it's going to be what it's going to be, but your opinion matters.

30:43   And that's why you're sitting in this seat. So, it takes time for folks to get comfortable. um new board members hit

30:50   their third year and then they have to leave or they can reup for another three. The second three-year term for

30:58   the board members that I've experienced has been the most lucrative, the most beneficial. They now have a sense of what's going on. Our board meets once a

31:07   month year round. Um sometimes we'll miss a meeting at Christmas because there's not much to do. Sometimes we'll miss a meeting right after the fair

31:15   because the board meeting is 3 days after the fair and nobody's awake at that point. So, we won't have that meeting, but it it meets pretty regularly.

31:25   The training, can you expand on some of that orientation training that you guys provide?

31:32   The orientation trainings begins with, of course, our bylaws, the mission statement, and all those pieces that

31:39   characterize what we're built upon. We teach them about um our tax law section,

31:46   our 1099s. We pull that piece of that document out that Jay, you may remember when you first started in the business,

31:52   it was three pages. Now I think it's 69 and there's a lot of questions in there.

31:59   Just using that document to teach folks about the business side of the fair is very informative. Um they learn about

32:08   conflict of interest. We go through all of those pieces. They learn about non-disclosure, how important it is that what happens in the boardroom stays in the boardroom.

32:18   We've had situations where folks have taken information out of the boardroom.

32:23   We've had to discipline those people and in some cases, not allowed them to sit in executive sessions ever again. So the

32:33   board has to take a stand on the very pieces and premises upon which the board is built or you have a situation where there's just not going to be progress.

32:44   Right now you guys have two terms and then you have to rotate off. Are they then

32:51   eligible to come back after another rotation?

32:55   Yes. And that has happened several times over the period of time I've been here.

33:00   There's another piece of of our particular organization that we learned from some folks who are much smarter

33:06   than I am and it is that the treasurer, the secretary, the president, even the vice president

33:16   do not have to be board members. And in many cases by making them non board members, they bring another piece of

33:25   information to the table. Of course, they can't vote, but you wind up with a board of 12 members that can vote. Now,

33:33   you've got four positions where they can't vote, but they can express valid opinions that are frequently,

33:41   culturally, historically, legally important to know. And by distancing themselves from the organization as

33:49   non-members, it gives a cleaner line of responsibility to who's who.

33:57   That's a in our particular case, our treasurer is not a board member. Our secretary is not a board member, our president's not a

34:04   board member, our vice president's not a board member.

34:07   Interesting. That's an interesting concept that way.

34:12   Um, have you run into issues where you have a board member that is not

34:19   fulfilling the role or has done something a little wonky and you you really don't want that person on the

34:26   board any longer? How do you guys handle delicately either replacing them, kicking them off,

34:34   or like I don't know. How do you handle that? We've never had since in my time here to ask a board member to leave.

34:43   We've never kicked somebody off. But what seems to happen when a board member um is just really not comfortable in the

34:53   environment, not producing as a board member should, they seem to start feeling the pressure to leave.

35:02   And that has happened several times in my time here. a president of the board actually felt the pressure to leave

35:11   after his first term. Now our presidents are allowed to serve two terms also and we've learned over time that that has turned out to be a real asset because

35:20   most presidents when they get the power of the gavvel it takes them a year to learn how to use it effectively. Their

35:27   second term they are invariably more effective more efficient and more meaningful to the organization. I've had

35:34   board meetings where I've known all these board members for years and every single monthly meeting I've not heard

35:42   them say one word the entire time. So in my head I just jump to you're only here

35:49   for the front parking space and the free ride tickets for your grandkids.

35:54   Do you do you run into that kind of feeling with any of your board members or they just you know everybody's in it to win it? Well, as I look around the

36:02   table in my head, I don't think we have one of the 12

36:11   that do not speak at some point or another. Our situation is such that we have enough things going on. we're

36:19   either improving the property, improving the organizational structure, um recruiting to try to get more

36:26   agriculture and and folks like talking about those kinds of things. So, I think maybe some of the board agenda could be

36:35   the problem with folks who don't get involved. In other words, if an executive or the person who's making the agenda, whether it's a president or

36:44   somebody else, is not building an agenda that fosters controversy, conversation,

36:51   discussion, opinion setting, then they're not really doing their job. Be real easy for me to just say, "Okay, I've got all this done. This is going to

37:00   be a report. I'm telling you this stuff is finished. You got anything to say?

37:04   No, thank you. See you." But that's not what a good leader does.

37:09   A good leader finds ways to encourage folks to talk. So continuing to talk can be a problem.

37:19   When you have longtime board members who have rotated off and the new guys come on,

37:26   how do you get an older board member to pass along their knowledge of how this

37:32   all works without continuing to control the dialogue and the decisions?

37:40   Well, some of that happens um during our shadowing. We want our junior board members to shadow a board member and our

37:48   new board members when they come on. We had two brand new ones come on this past year. Those two hooked up with longtime

37:57   board members, hung out with them during the fair, experienced the kinds of things they were doing during the fair,

38:04   and hopefully institutional knowledge and operational strategies and duties and responsibilities and all of that

38:12   minutia transferred to the new board member. Can't say for certain that it did, but I can say that it likely did.

38:20   It's very helpful for people to to see what's going on and it's necessary for the existing board members to role model

38:27   behavior for the rest of the board and especially the new board members. We have a um a young woman who just left

38:35   the IRS. She retired as a tax accountant for the IRS. She's now a board member.

38:42   She scared the crap out of me the first time I found out what she did for a living because now we're going to be accountable for whatever she knows that I don't know. But that's not happening

38:52   at all. She has embraced her responsibility. I expect to learn more from her over time. And um she's going to be a great board member.

39:00   That's excellent. We just want to make sure that the the older guys don't use their experience over the top when um

39:09   like directing somebody in something be because that's the way we've always done it. If the new guys doing it some different way, don't blow them up over

39:18   it. Be open to the change because it can get frustrating for the new people when especially when you got two or three or

39:26   four or five different people coming them telling how to do something and they're all completely different. So, that can be frustrating. I want to take

39:33   another moment to uh recognize our sponsor, Pilot Rock, which this uh show is made possible by. Announcer Mike, you

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39:48   And maintenance guys don't like that. No, they do not.

39:52   All right. Do you have a [music] campground for your vendors? I mean, maybe they could use a fire ring or a grill at the site.

39:58   Yep. We don't need them to burn the fairgrounds down, though, do we?

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40:22   That's pilotrock.com. [music] All right, welcome back for our final section of the show today. Uh, Marty,

40:29   um, the click. You always have the parking lot meeting after the board meeting, which is full of drama and divisiveness.

40:39   And how do you have the new board members coming in not feel like they're an outsider when it's easy to get drawn

40:47   into that kind of drama, but you want them to kind of stick to the program and make them feel welcome? like how would

40:53   you handle situations like that in in our particular environment because

41:00   you have to be a life member before you can be a board member. You have to have volunteered 200 hours of service before you can become a board member.

41:11   Right?

41:11   It's rare, but it happens that all the people in the board member room don't know each other because they've all

41:18   worked over 200 hours to get to where they are. So that click thing frequently turns into, oh, we got a new click

41:27   member. Let's see what we can do to change his or her attitude. And that's the piece that you're talking about. How

41:34   do you handle it? Generally speaking, those kinds of situations that I've experienced will come to the boardroom

41:42   and it will be very obvious what's going on. The board has to be objective. Look at every idea for value. Make a decision based on value. And life is what it is.

41:55   I I have to say this that a person who sits in an executive seat at a at a at a fair has to be pretty thick skinned.

42:05   That's piece number one. You've got to be able to take a shot and know how to handle it. You also can't be fearful of being fired. If you're doing your job

42:14   and doing the right thing, you're going to be there forever. People will appreciate that. Even if they disagree with you, you're doing the right thing.

42:24   Life will be fine. Another piece of our discussion we didn't touch on in terms of how do you get people prepared for change and accept change.

42:34   the International Association of Fairs and Expose, the Maryland Association of um Fairs and Expositions. By

42:43   participating at those meetings, you learn very quickly what you're doing wrong, validate what you're doing right,

42:51   and steal, and I'm using steal, good ideas from other fairs. Because there's not a fair in the country that I've ever met that wouldn't share their successes

43:00   and their good ideas. There are times we've taken 24 people to the international conference. Those folks come back laden with more good ideas.

43:11   Some of them about management, some of them about operations, some of them about personnel related matters. It's

43:18   all good stuff. And I think folks who don't get involved at the uh at the conference level locally or internationally are missing an opportunity.

43:30   Yeah, they are. It's a great organization and great training.

43:33   Continuing education, our industry is vital. You got to stick with it. Now, sometimes you run into issues with

43:41   older board members or established board members. You guys have had the whole 200 hour thing going on. When you have somebody who's also been 200 hours, but

43:50   they've been waiting for their opportunity to get on the board because they have a very different vision of what the fair can be than some of the

43:57   old ones. How would you handle that kind of conflict to kind of smooth that over and make that transition?

44:05   Truth be said, I embrace that kind of conflict because by having conflict, it

44:11   causes folks to see both sides of an equation. And generally speaking, board members have to learn, and we we teach

44:20   this to folks early on, it's not about being right or wrong. It's about finding compromise. Everything that goes on at a

44:29   fair in some way or another is a compromise. Our board has discussed this over the years and we pretty much try to

44:35   live with it. If there is a vote on a matter that is decided by one vote,

44:42   it's an absolutely bad decision because the board has to be together.

44:48   They have to be united and it doesn't mean somebody is right or somebody's wrong, but it means they have to act as a unit. And if there's a oneperson vote difference, you now have division.

45:00   There'll be controversy. There'll be arguing. It just doesn't work. So, we tend to kick a can down the road until

45:07   everybody is on board. You may have one or two descents, but we don't want to have a a close to a 50/50 vote on a major matter.

45:17   No. No. Um, everybody needs to be bought in and make sure the fair is going in the right direction.

45:24   So words of wisdom from Marty's Veric.

45:28   How can a fair who doesn't have this great system that you set up for boards, how can you create a culture where the

45:36   changes are viewed as healthy rather than threatening?

45:42   I'd say that that challenge is one that that probably hits just about every fair in the country, including ours. Trying to make sure we make the right decisions

45:50   at the right time. And I have to say the relationship between the executive folks on the board that would be the

45:58   president, the vice president, the treasur and the secretary. Those four folks if they have and if the fair has a director like myself and many fairs

46:06   don't. They don't have a person that's on staff year round looking out for the organization. So if you just have the four people in that executive group,

46:16   those are the people who really drive the bus and they have to be ready to make tough decisions. Some of those

46:22   tough decisions, I'd say in my case, for decades, volunteers got free meals here

46:29   at the fair. It became very apparent that this was not sustainable. We were entirely spending too much money on food.

46:39   Volunteers are going to eat anyway. But one of our presidents 2005 said no more. And he expressed that to

46:48   the board. The board saw the wisdom in it. Let me tell you that created more drama than you ever want to hear about.

46:56   The first year without food, the departments were organizing little cookouts outside their buildings and they were managing food on their own.

47:06   Second year there were less and less people doing it and folks were supporting the vendors. Now, now today, it's like nobody even remembers the fact

47:15   that we had free food. But board of directors, the leadership team has to make decisions that are frequently

47:23   unpopular, piss people off, but you got to do what's right for the organization every time a decision is made. Yep. It's

47:32   inevitable. You have to do it. So, all right. More more words of wisdom from Marty. This my my final question today

47:41   for you is if you were sitting across a table from a nonprofit board that knows it needs new people but is afraid to let

47:49   go of the old way of doing things what would you tell them?

47:56   I would say that it is the duty and responsibility of the leadership team to analyze the

48:05   challenges that the organization has and make the tough the tough decisions. Can we still provide free food? Can we still

48:14   provide free parking? Can we still do this, that, and this? And if it if it's not essential and there are ways to

48:23   improve the the organization by stopping certain behaviors, it comes down to the leadership has to make that call. Um, another situation

48:32   that we had years ago, um, money was disappearing.

48:37   financial pieces of any fair, especially fairs that are highly cashladen.

48:44   It's so easy without having a good accounting system. So, we built an accounting manual that basically says

48:53   how every piece of paper money, coin, whatever, is handled and goes through a process. We've spent the better part of

49:02   18 years developing this and keeping updating it. We had our insurance company come in with their risk

49:09   management people three times in the last eight years to look at how we're doing this and the accounting manual is

49:17   like essential. It has saved us so much money over time. The insurance company says nobody in their in their entire

49:24   repertoire of fairs and it's a big company K&K um who looked at our situation our processes and said that

49:32   this is the right way to do business. So handling money is a real challenge for most fairs. Mainly because same people

49:40   who handled money 20 years ago are still handling it today. And if anybody steps in and says, "Nope, we're going to do

49:47   something new. We're going to reconcile money out. We're going to reconcile money back." And folks are going to say, "You don't trust me, do you?" Well, it's

49:57   not about trust. It's about protecting the organization. And that's where all the decisions that any of us make has to start.

50:06   What's best for the organization.

50:08   What's best for the organization. Change is inevitable. Comfort is the enemy of progress. I just love all these slogans.

50:16   And uh thank you Marty for your time today. Um, I do want to reiterate that board members give their their soul and

50:25   their time and the affairs and the community appreciates them. They are loved and appreciated. And when it's

50:34   time to know when to say when, don't take it too personally.

50:39   That it's just it's just change. And it's not that your advice and your commitment or your volunteerism can still continue.

50:48   It's just with giving your your advice to the younger people to make sure that in 10 years your fair doesn't become a

50:56   rave party with weed vendors all up and down the midway because that's what will happen if you don't give them your guidance because you're valued and again

51:06   you've got your fair this far but transition is important and it's imperative also to the life and sustainability of your fair. So with

51:14   that, we'd like to thank you for sticking around today and we will see you next time on the Fairgrounds podcast.

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