What I’m Reading – Jon Batt

A specialist in not-for-profits and startups, Jon Batt’s MInstD board roles include Angel HQ (angel investment club) and S-Gun (startup). The Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington-based independent consultant shares why technology alone does not solve problems and how coming back to simple processes results in many benefits.

What is the name of the governance/business book you are reading or can recommend?

A big one for me is The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. Gawande is a surgeon and a journalist, and his book looks at how having clear and unambiguous instructions improves the quality of interactions, decision-making and generally getting stuff done. The book gives examples of how this impacts performance and quality in a world where we have almost incomprehensible volumes of data and information available to us.

How would you describe the style of writing?

It is conversational and relies heavily on real-life anecdotes. Not a complicated read. The first time I read it was after hearing the author being interviewed by Kim Hill on RNZ (Radio New Zealand). 

The Checklist Manifesto is based, in part, on an experiment Gawande did around using checklists in hospitals. One of the trial locations was Auckland Hospital. Listening to the interview, I was pretty sure this book would be a winner: I love books that describe simple solutions to complex problems. It falls squarely into that category.

What resonated with you the most?

The way we approach changing situations that have overwhelming amounts of information, with varying levels of skill in our teams, presents problems not just in governance but in everything we do. This book describes how life-and-death situations (such as commercial passenger flight, surgery and skyscraper construction) use checklists to unite a team and communicate clearly, lowering error rates and saving lives. I love low-tech solutions like this. There are a million apps out there solving every problem, but most of them rely on decent existing processes to provide any value. Checklists are an easy way of recording these processes.

Technology alone doesn’t solve problems. If you can implement the processes that these systems rely on, you get a massive amount of the benefit right away. And the simpler the process, the more likely it is to be successful.

This book describes examples of simple solutions, but these require massive amounts of discipline to be effective. You must follow the checklist every time, even if you think you are beyond that now.

One of the examples talks about lowering the occurrence of central line infections (central lines are like intravenous lines, but longer). By empowering nurses to stop procedures if the doctors hadn’t followed the hygiene steps in the checklist, infection rates dropped by two-thirds and the death rate in patients receiving a central line fell by 10 per cent – all from making sure the hygiene process was followed.

What is something you have taken away from reading this book that now follows you into your board roles?

Process frees you up to think about the unexpected. If you have got good reviews in place around the regular stuff – such as finance, operations and risk – it leaves more mental space to respond to the environmental or market problems that are harder to anticipate.

Having simple rules in place, such as ensuring board papers are out at least a set number of days before the meeting, or having a standard agenda template, massively impacts board effectiveness. In the NFP and startup boards I sit on, I’m not always working with people with lots of governance or senior management experience, so being able to set clear, understandable and achievable expectations is critical.

Who should read this book and at what stage in their governance career?

I’d struggle to think of someone who wouldn’t get something out of this book. The stories are great transferable lessons which can help people who are on their first day or have been doing this for years.

When you are not reading books on business or governance, what kind of books are you likely to pick up?

I’d love to have a super highbrow answer for this, but I’ve been reading the Jack Reacher novels for the past couple of months, and they are great.

What are some of the most pertinent governance issues that are top of mind for you, and why?

Much like everyone, the economy and AI are right up there. Whether it is investment funding or sales revenue, money is tough to come by now. In the NFP space, short-notice changes to government funding is making it harder and harder to continue delivering services. The loss of these has a massive impact which will echo out in our social statistics for a while to come.

I think the opportunities presented by large language models (and AI more generally) can help us to speed up some of the more commonplace tasks. While service providers are making those opportunities available, I don’t think organisations are taking advantage of them as much as they could be.

In contrast to what I said earlier about technology, LLMs (large language models) present a much more practical way of interacting with technology and large amounts of unstructured data than we have ever had before. I’d love to see more discussion around governance policies which enable the use of AI and consumer grade AI tools in business. They are sitting right there and in many cases can be accessed for free. There is massive value to be had for little investment, provided people understand how and when they can use these tools.

What has been the most surprising thing you have discovered about yourself and others while being on a board?

It took me a long time to work out that a person can be experienced in one thing and a complete novice in another. It took me even longer to work out how to do anything useful with that information. I can be quite . . . passionate in my defence of ideas. Realising that more experienced people questioning or hesitating can be based on a lack of domain experience, and that I need to slow down and explain rather than being defensive, was an important lesson.

If there was anything you want to see more of at the board table, what would it be, and why?

My board experience isn’t huge or particularly diverse, but it does cover 15 years or so. It seems that board members cluster into their groups and we don’t have a lot of cross-pollination of ideas between NFP boards and large corporate boards etc (or at least not that I’ve been exposed to).

I would like to see a wider use of something like the board ‘observer role’, but as a temporary placement for people from different governance sectors to see how the other side does it.