Guy Alexander: NFP governance

A brush with cancer led Guy Alexander to CanTeen and, ultimately, into governance.

CanTeen is a charitable organisation that helps young people through the stressful and intense treatment process for the disease.

“There was a mentor that said to me look, you are someone who it could be good to have on our board,” Alexander says. “For me, it was an opportunity to give back. CanTeen had supported my family and I during some rough times and helped me grow into a teenager that could tackle life post cancer, so it was a way for me to give back what I had an abundance of, which was time.”

CanTeen’s board was a mix of organisation members and professional directors. Alexander was just 19 at the time he took the role, and served from 2009 to 2013. During this time he also served as national president of CanTeen and as a representative on the board of the Child Cancer Foundation.

“It was a bit of a laugh because the CanTeen CEO at the time used to introduce me as his boss who was younger than his son.” That would get a few chuckles.

“It is very different to working in a day job. I was fortunate [with CanTeen] in that I had started a business at a similar time so the skills I learned in the boardroom were quite applicable to me in my start up – and vice versa. I had this great crossover of opportunities and exposure to things that a lot of people my age would not have had.”

He turned his youth to his advantage, taking the opportunity to clarify issues where older board members were reluctant to ask questions.

“At a young age the hardest thing can be to ask questions that you are embarrassed to ask, you are worried that everyone is going to look at you because you should know this stuff. But actually the rest of the board probably want to know that too, but nobody was game enough to put their hand up. That is something that has stuck with me. There is never a wrong question. You have to challenge what you do not think is right and what you may not fully understand.”

Alexander's day job is in the global product marketing team of accounting software provider Xero. He says the leadership has been supportive and sees value in the new experiences he is getting outside the company. This year he is planning to add a startup to his governance portfolio. “Not a formal governance role but in an advisory capacity in an organisation that may not need a full board of directors at the moment.”

With nine years experience behind him in not-for-profit governance, he observes that it is a sector that needs a stronger commercial focus. NFP doesn’t mean run excessive deficits year after year – in fact it should be more about how we create a sustainable future, together and reinvesting surplus or profit into having an impact on the wider community, he says.

“Often the people around the table are there for the right reasons, their intentions are great, but sometimes they don't have the right skills to take an organisation where it needs to go – and those are courageous conversations to have. A lot of NFPs are member led, or member driven, which can make it  challenging when you are one of one or two people who have the commercial skills. It can be quite frustrating when you are focusing on the wrong things and your board colleagues don’t understand the business drivers. But equally it is a chance to mentor your colleagues on areas they may need to upskill on in order to sustain organisations that provide a lot of social good to our communities.”

The IoD connection

Alexander chose to join the IoD in order to improve his governance ability and demonstrate that being young was not a handicap.

“Part of that was to add some legitimacy to what I was doing. For me, saying that you are on a board is one thing but being able to say you are part of a professional body is important.

Secondly is learning some – I hate the term – best practice and being able to network with likeminded individuals. I had a similarly aged person reach out to me and say, ‘hey let’s have a coffee’. We are both interested in governance. Those opportunities crop up and it is quite fulfilling to talk to people about their challenges and to share your own, and get different perspectives.”

So it turns out that being shoulder tapped for the CanTeen board may have set him on a governance career path. Alexander is currently on the board of the NZ Aids Foundation.

“It’s not a question of if I go full time into governance or stay in management roles, it’s more about where can I add the most amount of value today, and do I get energy from doing it? I learnt fairly early on to drop the ego at the boardroom door and to constantly check your own expiry date so you don’t become the stale board member in a fast-paced conversation.”

This article is featured in Boardroom April May 2019 issue