Rethinking Governance: Modern Strategies for Stronger Boards & Better Decisions

Welcome to Legacy Builders, strategies for building successful family enterprises. Brought to you by Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management Limited. I’m your host, Cory Gagnon, Senior Wealth Advisor. And on this show, we explore global ideas, concepts, and models that help family enterprises better navigate the complexities of family wealth.

Today, we welcome Matt Fullbrook, Founder, Author, Agitator of Ground-Up Governance and Academic Director of the Rotman/ICD Board Dynamics Program. With 23 years of experience spanning more than 300 boardrooms, Matt has established himself as one of the most influential voices in governance innovation. His unique blend of academic leadership and practical insights through his One Minute Governance podcast has made him a sought-after advisor. As an Executive in Residence at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, Matt focuses on bridging the gap between governance theory and boardroom reality, particularly through his extensive work developing practical solutions for modern board challenges.

My goal is to be the most curious person in today’s conversation with Matt Fullbrook, where we explore his incredible work at the intersection of board dynamics, governance innovation, and decision-making effectiveness. Through our discussion, we’ll dive into how skilled leadership and authentic communication can reshape both boardroom culture and organizational success. Together, we’ll explore how boards navigate the unique challenges of corporate governance while offering fresh perspectives on building resilient decision-making processes. 

Now, let’s dive in!

Cory: Well, welcome, Matt. We’re excited to have you here today to share your wealth of knowledge and experiences with us. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Matt: Thanks, Cory. Yeah. Let’s do it.

Cory: Matt, imagine you’re delivering the commencement speech to the graduating class of 2025, and you have the chance to inspire them with your story. How would you begin your speech to convey the incredible lessons and expertise that you’ve gained along your career?

Matt: Okay, it may surprise you that I actually really prepared for this. I thought about it a lot, and I wrote something I don’t know that I’ll follow the script exactly, but I had to think hard. And I’m not the kind of person who will walk into podcasts usually with scripted answers. So I’ve reserved the right to change my mind partway.

So I imagined just for a little bit of a preface, I imagined that this audience is not any particular age. Maybe most of it thinking about them as relatively young, but not necessarily high school, not necessarily college, maybe both. I’m not sure. And here’s what I got. You’re special. You’re skilled. You have limitless potential. Despite all that, most of the success you have in your life, you’ll owe to some combination of luck, privilege, and circumstance. If you find yourself standing at the threshold of an open door with an amazing opportunity on the other side, don’t hesitate. Walk through. You might find amazing success or crushing failure, but the fact that the door existed and the fact that it was open, don’t take it for granted that you earned it. Others around you may be more skilled, more special, more deserving, and less fortunate. They’re not your competition. They’re your community. Elevate them. Find doors for them and use your privilege and accomplishments to break the doors open.

The single most important accomplishment of my career has been the cultivation of a community of intelligent, caring, talented, influential, mostly good looking, cool people who believe in me and want me to succeed. And the most important thing that I do for my community is to connect them with each other. In other words, your professional and personal networks aren’t things to be hoarded or protected. You can only unlock their power by sharing them. Whether by the accident of birth or the equally wonderful accident of opportunity, you find yourself spectacularly successful, wealthy even, remind yourself occasionally that while a person might acquire 10,000 times more money, power, or fame than another person, you can’t earn it. No person is worth 10,000 times more than another person. And while all that money, power, or fame might belong to you and you alone, its greatest potential is in using it to unlock the world for your community and beyond.

Cory: Love it! And, if you did change your mind and pivot at any point, nobody knew.

Matt: No, it’s all pretense, Cory. I’m a good actor.

Cory: You are! And so, Matt, a few key themes that I I heard there. Let’s talk about what it means to be skilled, because you talked about that there wasn’t a specific audience or population that you were thinking about. And so by delivering that message to any and it could be a commencement speech to a graduating class of kindergarteners, and you’re telling them that they’re skilled. So what does that, in your mind, look like, presenting that information to people?

Matt: The skill piece, you mean?

Cory: Yes.

Matt: It’s an interesting question because my work is in the universe of boards and senior executives, where there’s this notion that the gateway to the boardroom is guarded by skill or there’s certain levels of experience, skill, or expertise that you must have. But then those, it turns out, aren’t necessarily the things that make you useful once you get in the room. That’s just like the barrier to entry, but it doesn’t actually signal whether you’re going to do a good job.

It’s been an interesting experience for me to acknowledge that, and to answer your question more directly, I think it’s important to start thinking of the difference between technical skill, experience, professional and otherwise, innate talents, personalities, all these things, they’re puzzle pieces that fit together in unpredictable ways, and some of it is acquired over time. Some of it is acquired through hard work. Some of it is just sort of accidentally picked up as you wander through the world, and some of it you have without working on it at all. And it doesn’t really matter how, or why, or what the combinations are, but it is useful. And this is part of the substance of what I was trying to say in my commencement speech that just because you have something doesn’t mean you earned it. And that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it, but it is important to acknowledge that just because you have something, doesn’t mean that if someone else doesn’t have it, you’re better or different or worse than them. It just means we have different puzzles that we’ve put together in different ways.

Cory: Absolutely! And so as you paint the picture of that boardroom door that is, you know, Fort Knox and many layers of keys and puzzles to get in. Why do you think it is that way? Why have we created a world where these directors, it’s a hidden world where people really don’t understand, and what people do understand, you could ask five different people, and they’ll give you a different answer. Why do you think it is that complicated?

Matt: Yeah! there’s layers. There’s the sort of system level layers like status, and the compulsion to protect your own status once you’re there. And one way to do that is by only inviting in people who are similar to you, and that could mean skill-wise. It could mean socially. It could mean demographically. It could mean a lot of different things, but if I’m surrounded by people who are like me, that makes me feel more validated in my own belonging. But there’s other things too that are more sort of mundane. Like it’s the leaders, the key decision makers of a complex organization with a lot at stake, then isn’t it sensible to surround the board table with people who have technical expertise that’s relevant to the the operations and strategy of that organization? That’s a really defensible thing that we’ve seen from successes and failures that the professional skill sets of people around board tables isn’t very predictive of either success or failure, but still, that doesn’t mean it’s not defensible.

There’s another piece, though, and this is even more mundane, which is it’s regulated in some places. Especially in financial services, they say your board must have these measurable aptitudes around the table. And those measurable aptitudes are generally only acquired through advanced education and really difficult career paths or unique career paths. And so there’s a lot of different things here. I’m trying to avoid talking about whether any of it’s good or bad because I don’t have a strong opinion. But the layers are there to why this has become such a gatekeepy kind of place.

Cory: And Matt, that goes back to your comment about luck, privilege, circumstance. Some of these people have had career paths, and they end up at this place. I think of it and what comes to mind as we’ve been talking is, for the listeners who’ve, and Matt, I don’t know if you’ve watched Ted Lasso but you know in the last season or third season I guess we don’t know if it’s the last, but, you know, the owners of the football clubs are around the table, and the only female in the room envisions everybody as children. And, you know, I think of it as circumstance and all these individuals who are owners of these multibillion-dollar franchises. They’ve got there, you know, some of it by luck, a lot of it by privilege. It’s family money that has allowed them to acquire and steward these teams. But, circumstances, you know, sometimes they just fall into it.

And so, as people are thinking about circumstance, maybe our listeners are thinking about, you know, what it means. Maybe I am on a board or maybe I’m looking at building a board. How do they say this means success or this doesn’t?

Matt: Yes, it’s interesting. I don’t know that I have a great answer to the question, but I think there’s a couple things worth exploring. One is, there’s way more people who want to be on boards than there are seats in boardrooms. You could even imagine a world where all of those people who want to be on boards are equally deserving, which means that anybody who’s not there is just as deserving as everybody who is there. So it’s not necessarily based on the what you’ve earned or what you bring to the table. It’s just luck or it’s just opportunity. Right? Oh, you knew the people who were doing the recruiting.

First of all, if we hope to be on a board, we can’t judge success based on whether we got in the door or not because it’s just that there’s fewer opportunities than there are people. And I think it’s worth assuming that most of the people who want to be there could probably do a pretty good job.

There is another piece to this, though, which is if we take a step back and think about a group of human beings making decisions as a board or otherwise and ask the difference between someone who’s at that table doing an awesome job and someone who’s not, not necessarily someone who’s destroying value, but someone who’s just not doing an awesome job. We don’t talk about their, or we would usually not lean towards their professions. Because we might say, and we might be able to make a really compelling argument that we want a lawyer on our board. Great. That makes sense. Does being a lawyer make you a great director? Of course not. And nobody actually thinks that. And so we’ve got to say, “well, what are the things in addition to being a lawyer that we hope this person will bring to the room?”

And maybe soft skills is too abstract a term, but they’re things like we want somebody who is a careful listener and able to synthesize multiple perspectives. We want somebody who is interested in how to engage the people around the table in conversations. We want people who have the courage to disagree with what might be popular opinions, or to change their minds when presented with new information or whatever. And so it’s no matter what status, expertise, skill, or experience you bring in the room, it’s usually not enough to be great. And it’s those other sort of more subtle personality style vibe things that are the difference between someone who might be great and not. And I’m not directly answering your question, but I think there’s something in there that ties it together.

Cory: Yes. And to me, I like that you, I was really going for what is the success once you’re there, you know, not the success of getting there. As you say, there’s so many people who could be great at it. And so some of those skills, those softer skills as you say, if we look at that and we put people together who can ask really good questions, who can understand different perspectives, what does it look like when they’re all operating together? Because you’ve got this one unique or complex combination of great skills. But when you add that all together and you’ve got a group of people, what makes them actually work well together now?

Matt: There’s a lot of answers. I’ll talk about some of them and just to give some ideas. I’ll use the board as, like, a construct, but you could substitute in any group of people making any kind of decisions, frankly. The thing about boards that’s interesting is that the stakes can be really high. There’s a real scarcity of time. There’s a real information asymmetry that makes the situation kinda gnarly, which is fun. So let’s just imagine that there’s a chunk of our time together as a board, where the board just needs to know stuff. We need to acquire information. Then what success looks like is making sure that the information is carefully designed so that it’s most likely that the people in the room will hear it, understand it, and be able to synthesize it into decision-making. And that may not involve any conversation or questioning necessarily. It might, but it might not. But success just means that people in the room gain as much understanding as possible about the thing that they’re supposed to learn.

So that’s one type of success. Another type of success might be that we’re exploring possibilities for the future. So what does success look like there? It means being receptive to multiple options and perspectives, being patient to listen and and be interested in what other people are saying, for the people around the room to be confident enough to disagree with people, but not hold on to their own perspectives too tightly to figure out how are we going to get the loud people not to take up too much space and the quiet people to elevate all these things.

But then there are going to be times when we need to choose a path, and then the variables open up even more there. What does success look like when we need to make a decision because the room is on fire and we got to get out of here is different from making a decision about what we might do a year from now. And so, I think understanding that success is hugely varied. But one of the keys to getting there is to be really clear and to have a shared understanding of what’s the point of this moment we’re spending together right now so that we can have a shared understanding of what good looks like even if it’s just for the next five minutes. Because five minutes from now, we may have a completely different thing we need to get done, and success is going to mean something different. I’m getting granular, but I think that’s still a useful way to think of it is that success comes in all kinds of varieties here.

Cory: Absolutely! Yes, and I do want to go back to that comment of the house is on fire because, if I think about it and previous conversation that you and I had, talking about that specific book, and as I’ve been listening about what it means to be to do strategic planning in today’s environment in a developed country. And so a lot of your experience with boards have been in a very let’s call it reasonably stable economy. What about that skill set of geopolitical risk? There’s a lot going on in this world, and the change of guard with our American friends and our Canadian friends probably feeling very similar. And there’s change. As you said, that scarcity of time and boards aren’t together so often, but maybe the house is on fire.

Maybe the smoke detector hasn’t gone off yet. How do we adapt in that circumstance?

Matt: I would never try to pretend like I can actually answer this question. I’ve got thoughts about it. But if I could say, well, how does an organization or a board thrive in circumstances of extraordinary uncertainty? I think the answer is there’s no guarantees. That’s what uncertainty is. So I think that step one is acknowledging that you can’t take a bad or a good result, look back and say with confidence, therefore, we did a great job or an awful job. We don’t know for sure. And so I think that’s useful to say, what are the inputs into this process? Because that’s what we have control over. We don’t have control over the result except in terms of what we put into it. So be really careful about understanding the variables that you have at your control, which are hugely varied. All the operational stuff in the company, all the circumstances that affect the way that human beings engage in decisions. We have control over a lot of these.

But then there’s the other side of trying to understand what’s the range of things that could possibly go wrong here? And you may not actually have time to do that. You say that if the room is actually on fire and the smoke detector hasn’t gone off, then there’s a possibility that we’re just screwed. That we don’t like, that that’s that. We could do whatever we want, and we’re going to burn to death in the next thirty seconds. But maybe if we take it slightly less extreme and say, well, the spiral alarm is going off. What we would do under normal circumstances is we would take into consideration as many different paths as possible, assess them carefully, make sure we’ve got the problem defined well, gather data, assess the data, have conversations, and then start adjudicating the options in front of us.

But if we only have a minute to get out of the room, we’re not going to say, alright, everybody. Let’s take twenty minutes and talk about all the different options. We’re like, let’s get out of here. Let’s go right now. And so understanding the urgency is another piece.You’re talking about, I’m sorry, Devin. I don’t remember the name of your book. I’m reading it right now. I’m almost finished, but I’ve forgotten the name of it, but my buddy, Devin DeSantis, and his partner, Yvonne Landsberg from Landsberg Gersick, wrote this great book.

Cory: The Enduring Enterprise.

Matt: There we go. And they talk about this at levels of depth and complexity that are way beyond my expertise and skill set. But the what they found, and I’m oversimplifying for the sake of jamming it into one or two sentences, is that the the ability of enterprises to endure in economies where the uncertainty is way beyond Cory what you and I have experienced growing up where we’ve grown up, is kind of an amazing thing to to examine. Because we think of uncertainty as something significantly smaller and simpler than what uncertainty is in a place where you can’t even enforce a contract, for example.

And so the fact is there’s reality that you can thrive under conditions of extraordinary uncertainty, but I believe all we can do is increase the probability of survival. But greater uncertainty decreases probability of survival no matter what. Again, I think I’m avoiding your question because I’m not sure.

Cory: And maybe to go a little bit further on that, Matt, you know, my belief is that entrepreneurs are great risk managers. The reason that they succeed is because they’ve learned to assess and manage risk in a great way. And, typically, they’ve put systems and people in place to actually be able to assess that risk, monitor it. And, as I’m thinking about, maybe a founder who’s trying not to stifle that entrepreneurial spirit in their organization, but wanting to bring wisdom in some of those processes,  like a board.

In previous episodes, we’ve talked about shareholder agreements and things as far as continuity and succession of ownership, how governance really helps. I’m thinking more, okay, you know, with the people and how can we give them those tools and really utilize this mechanism, this thing we call a board, and have them truly help us manage that risk, but still be able to pivot and take opportunities. And so that’s kind of where I was going.

Matt: I like what you’re saying. So I’m going to start with, and I promise I’ll get to what you’re talking about in a second. But I think it’s useful to say out loud that out in the world of resources, about “governance,” there is very little consensus about what that word means. And so there’s no factual “okay, corporate governance, generally speaking, means x.” So I think it’s really useful to start there and just say, “look, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re wondering about what’s the point of a board? Do I want this? Or maybe I already have one, and I’m not sure how to do the governance part right.” Part of the problem is likely that you don’t know or you don’t have a specific definition of what that word is. And I like to think of it as the decision making part.

So I think of corporate governance as people making decisions in corporations, and that makes it distinct from the operations part, which is doing stuff as a result of decisions. It makes it distinct from the compliance part, which is rule following and so on. And then we think about, well, in that context, where’s the value add for a board when it comes to governance? And the fact is you’re getting a group of smart people who care about your organization, whether they are family members or independent or whatever, who are at a table and involved in whatever way you want in your organization. And the governance part of their job is decision making.

And then we’ve got this bigger question of, okay, since decisions are all made under conditions of uncertainty, what are the inputs into decision making that we can manipulate to increase the probability that we’re going to make a good decision? And the answer is, everything. Information, skill, time, physical space, mood, food, caffeine, everything. I’m making it sound trivial, but the fact is if we’ve got big decisions we hope to make in the future of our organization, then the question about a board is, well, “do I want a board or not” is a big question that I hear from entrepreneurs. They’ll often be told a bit of a myth that while at a certain complexity gate, at that point, you form an advisory board and that the next complexity gate, you form a fiduciary board and a family council and… and… and…. The fact is none of this has to do with the complexity of your enterprise at all.

Cory:  There’s a lot of great wisdom on those golf greens, Matt, that tells us that that’s what we’re supposed to do.

Matt: It has nothing to do with complexity, size, or anything.  It has to do with “in this moment, to what extent might a board be supportive in me making value added decisions for my enterprise? And if the answer is it could be really valuable, then you’ve got questions like, well, how much might it cost? Who would I want in the room? How am I going to run meetings? What advice do I need in getting it set up? But, again, none of that has to do with complexity.

I mean, I find it very valuable to have groups of advisers around me making decisions for my dumb little one-person corporation. It doesn’t matter. It’s about the “why.” And to me, the governance part is decisions. And if you need help with just compliance, you don’t need a board. Right? You need a lawyer. If you need help with just operations, boards can be helpful, but they’re going to get in your business. Is that cool? Okay. Great. Then use your board to get in the operations. Otherwise, hire people. I’m just trying to dispel a little bit of the mythology around the why of boards, if that makes sense.

Cory: Let’s go a little bit and maybe pull that layer back off the board versus the management team, that executive. Because what I just heard you say is you could fill your board full of great expertise, but maybe better investment is to have those expertise in your management team.

Matt: Maybe.

Cory: And so in making that decision, I want to add another aspect of this is how maybe you have great expertise on both sides, and now how are they working together? So let’s add that into the conversation as well.

Matt: There’s not a day literally that goes by in my professional life where I don’t have some conversation with a senior executive somewhere that’s struggling with the balance between the division of labor between board and management. And this is not industry-specific. It’s literally everywhere. And if this were not just an audio medium or an audible medium, I would show you some stats from what I’ve gathered that show everyone’s struggling with this.

First of all, don’t get too optimistic that you’re gonna get it right because you won’t. And that’s fine. But acknowledging that it’s a moving target and it’s difficult to balance is a good start.

And then ask yourself, you know, if there’s a board, a board is a bit of an abstraction. Every incorporated entity in the Western world has one. Whether it’s functional or not is a different story. My little one person corporation only has me as the board, and me as the one shareholder, and me as the one employee, and my board meets never or always. It depends. And so it’s more what do I hope to get done? So if I’m going to form a board with fiduciary responsibilities, I don’t get to decide what their job is. As the entrepreneur, I don’t get to decide what their job is. The board gets to decide what its job is. They will almost certainly be interested in my opinion. And if I’m the only shareholder and they choose to have a different job than what I want them to have, then I can fire them. But, fundamentally, it’s their job to choose. The board does x. Management does a, b, c, d, e, and f, and so on. That’s the board’s job. And, of course, they’re going to care about the shareholders’ input. But I think it’s a really useful thing to acknowledge because their butts are on the line legally.

Cory: Absolutely.

Matt: And not just to your happiness, but to the courts. And their duty in Canada is to every stakeholder that stands to benefit and suffer as the result of the actions of your corporation. So they don’t just have a duty to you. And if your board is functioning well, then they’re going to have a deep curiosity about defining their job really well, which they have the authority to do. So, again, I’m avoiding the question a little bit because the reason why it’s so abstract is that I think, A, we’ve done a poor job at equipping boards to realize that a big part of their role is to define their own role. Yes. And then second, to say, okay. Well, within this massive range of options where the board does absolutely nothing, or the board does absolutely everything and all that happens in between, how do we make sure that both sides of the table, management of the board and shareholders are all getting from this arrangement what they hope to get, and how do we communicate that, and how do we design information, how do we design meetings, how do we design board membership, all this stuff. So it’s a big range of questions with absolutely no evidence-based answers. 

There’s a lot of opinion. But no matter what you see, if we could talk someday about all the surveys that come out of the consulting firms. The interpretations of those surveys really, we just don’t know much. We don’t know what good is. We don’t know what awful is. So instead of looking outside and saying, “what are the surveys or consultants telling us,” we’ve got a lot of opportunity to say what do we want to get out of this and what designs might we deploy to try to get there.

Cory: I love that! A lot of it depends which is.

Matt: Well, it does. And it depends because it’s not just the usual researchers. It depends because it’s science. It’s that we sincerely have no evidence to support one path over another.

 So it’s not like, okay. In this circumstance, try this, and in this other circumstance, try this.

 So it depends on the circumstance. It’s that we just don’t know.

Cory: Absolutely! Now, Matt, I want to go back to your comment in your commencement speech of, you know, the people around you aren’t competition. They’re community, and you comment of sharing your connections in your community. Because I think that in this conversation of board members, you know, maybe they came to the board and that their membership is because they were one of those people in the community. But I think that there’s also a lot of strength in that social and relational capital that people bring to the organization. And so tell me what that looks like when somebody’s really leveraging those capitals?

Matt: So there’s a bit of an origin story to that comment. I worked at the Rotman School of Management for many, many years. And at the point where I had built a really big and very caring community, which was partly a function of the fact that I was inside an organization that was not really seen as competitive or threatening to anybody. So I had this great privilege of phoning, cold calling whoever I wanted, CEOs, board chairs, whatever, and they would at least take my call. And a lot of other people don’t have that privilege. Right? I wasn’t selling them anything. And so by the time I’d been there for a long time, I had this great community. And I built this habit by accident of just connecting people shamelessly to each other. And I kept hearing from especially MBA students, young MBA students. 

They’d say, I know you’re taking a big risk on me introducing me to this person. And at first, I was just like, syntax error. I sincerely don’t know what you’re talking about. And they’d say, well, you know, that’s a powerful person in your community. So why you know, you’re introducing me to them, and you don’t know how they’re going to feel about me. And I’d say, no. But, like, this is my friend. Right? If I introduce you to them and they don’t like you, the worst thing that might happen to me is they’ll call me and say, “Matt, I didn’t like that person. By the way, when are we going to get a beer?” So the downside is basically nothing.

And the problem with the reason I’m telling this story is these MBA students had kind of been conditioned. I don’t know if it was on purpose, they’ve been conditioned to believe that a network is A, something to build and B, something to guard. And I believe, build? Sure. Guard? That’s the greatest missed opportunity. What’s it there for if not to use it to reinforce itself and grow itself? I don’t know that I know how to directly answer your question because everybody who comes into your board, there’s no way that you could possibly know or understand their community. In fact, I don’t know or understand my community to its fullest extent. And there may be times where the communities around those people are obviously useful.

Like, for instance, we’ve got a vacancy on the board. Who knows a nuclear engineer? And, yeah, you might find somebody in the room because their communities are so broad and diverse. There might be times where you say, II want to raise money, and I really don’t want to go the venture capital route. Does anyone have any connections that they might make for me in private equity? Sure. I can introduce you to 10 people. Right? Those are obvious examples.

But there’s going to be other times where you have no idea how and when the communities of the people around the table might be useful. And I don’t hear the conversation very frequently, just sort of like, hey, does anyone know someone who A or B or C? And maybe we could invite them to dinner and get to know them. And maybe this isn’t a transactional relationship. It’s something different. And maybe I just want to meet them and just because I’m curious. I’ve been getting really stressed out about whatever, and I’d love to meet somebody who might give me a little bit of perspective or a better frame of reference or whatever. So I think that the obvious deployments of board communities, we do that really well. I don’t know that I see much curiosity about how we can kind of creatively use these really interesting communities. And I I haven’t thought about it too much other than to encourage boards and executives to invest more time in socializing in an unstructured way with each other.

Cory: There could be some surveys and research on it,  and I’m sure they get the same data that is not conclusive.

Matt: There is some really interesting work out there, and this is slightly different where the social networks inside of organizations and the structures, the ways that different people are connected inside organizations and how that affects productivity, or the distribution of power, or all kinds of different things. But that’s slightly different than this sort of less defined community element that I’m talking about.

Cory: I think there is a big connection there of that abundance mindset, and building not only the networks, but also some of those skills that are required. And, you know, going back to that, your initial, that where you are skilled, that comment is you’re skilled, and maybe you don’t have that skill. And so what can you do to build that?

Matt: You don’t need to be great at very much to be super useful. Right?

Cory: Absolutely! Now, Matt, as we near the end of our conversation today, there are a few questions that I ask each guest before we wrap up. Are you ready for the tough ones?

Matt: I am ready!

Cory: Alright. So what is one key strategy that you believe is most essential for building a successful family enterprise?

Matt:  This isn’t a strategy, so you’ll forgive me for misusing or for taking liberties. But I think maybe, and this is both anecdotally supported, but also there’s an increasing amount of science about the value and importance of changing your mind, which is something that it’s also very difficult. But a lot of our work in business is trying to forecast the best we can. And one of the greatest predictors of accurate forecasting is changing your mind as frequently as possible, or as frequently as warranted through the process.

So if you come into it with a very set mindset, set of beliefs that you’re gonna hang on to no matter what you learn, there’s a greater probability of failure or at least poor decision making.

So some really specific examples for families would be, you know, I fail to acknowledge that my time is up. We see that a lot. Right? I’m not going to change my mind on this. I fail to accept that the family legacy, however, that might be defined, is obsolete. Both inside the family and outside. We see that a lot too. We’re hanging on to some kind of legacy that our kids don’t care about. But I’m going to hang on to it and force it anyway.

Realizing that you don’t love what you do. I see that a lot in family enterprise, and you see that across generations. And I’m going to do it anyway no matter how much it makes me miserable. Or realizing that some new thing is better than the old thing we used to do is also something that we see a lot. Being willing when presented with new information, being receptive to changing your mind is a hugely beneficial skill set or habit to form, and something that if you and I made a catalog of all the most common family enterprise gripes, a lot of it is rooted in stubbornness.

Cory: Yeah! And challenging that status quo. You know, we talked about that as a key trait for a board member. I think that’s really what you’re getting to.

Matt: Not just challenging, but being receptive when challenged. If someone is challenging me, I need to realize that it’s better to be less wrong. So if it’s possible that I’m more wrong than that person, it’s probably worth listening.

Cory: Absolutely! And important to surround yourself with people who can challenge those beliefs as well. Now, Matt, what is the most common challenge that you see family enterprises encountering? And I know you’ve done a bit of work in the family enterprise space when it comes to wealth transition and generational continuity.

Matt: I promise I’m not trying to undermine your profession, Cory, because I’m not. I actually really respect and admire what you do. That said, everywhere I go in the family enterprise space, wealth is like the capital W everywhere word. And when I ask a dumb question like, what if wealth doesn’t really matter? It’s just sort of silent. It’s a conversation that a lot of people aren’t willing to have. So I think maybe the challenge that I’d like to highlight is believing that generational wealth continuity is more important than the happiness of the people in the family, or the continuity of the planet, or the potential impact that your wealth might have on others today instead of the continuation of it over generations. And framing your identity and the identity of the family around the perpetuation of wealth, in my opinion, increases the probability that you lose sight of what actually matters like, well, everything else, honestly.

Cory: Love it! And, I think, you know, going back and if you listen to a conversation with Dave Specht, who is in the last episode, you’ll hear him talk about Jay Hughes and his definition of wealth, and the origin of the word wealth coming from well-being. And I think that’s really what you’re talking about, Matt, is it’s not about transitioning money. It’s about transitioning that well-being of the family.

Matt: The way to do that is sort of undefined. I think that it’s such a common narrative in this space to create anxiety about money transfer across generations that there’s not nearly as much sophistication around the rest of the conversation.

Cory: Yes. And in your experience, what are the top three key qualities that successful family enterprise leaders possess?

Matt: I don’t know. Success may be a word that’ll trip me up a bit. So I’ll just say people whom I admire in family enterprise, because whether that’s success or not, it’s probably me admiring them being the gauge of success is probably not the right metric. So one of the things that I find really common among the people I admire the most is a sense of wonder at what they’ve achieved rather than a sense of entitlement. So they reflect on what they’ve built and done and find it really cool and interesting and fascinating, but they don’t think of it as something that they’ve earned. And I think I’ve seen that a lot, and it’s almost always inspiring to me.

I think another one is well developed interests and endeavors and stuff that has nothing to do with the business or anything to do with the money generated by the business. This might be in terms of hobbies. It might be in terms of passion or art or whatever, any number of different things. But where they’ve got a really meaningful space carved out of their lives for something that has nothing to do with the business or the wealth. Wealth in the money sense

And this will be significantly less sexy than the other ones, but at this this weird, like, almost magic ability to generate big new ideas. Right? Like, I’m sure you’ve you meet people like this all the time where they’re the person at the table who, like, the first thing they come up with when there’s a problem, it’s maybe not the answer, but it’s like, woah. Like, that’s got a lot of really interesting layers to it, and I’m excited to talk about it. And I meet a lot of family business leaders who have that. They’re able to spontaneously put something on the table that makes the rest of us go, oh, yeah, that’s really worth thinking about. And this is not, in my opinion, something that can be learned.

Cory: Right.

Matt: It’s innate, but it’s cool as hell.

Cory: Yeah. And it it might be, you know, that they’re a futurist and and can think

Matt: Maybe.

Cory: That way, or it might be that they’re just really good at brainstorming.

Matt: And Yeah. And it might be just to trivialize it a bit. It could be that they just think about everything all the time. And so it’s not spontaneous. It’s like, oh, no. I’ve been thinking about this for two years, and I finally get the chance to express myself. Right?

Cory: Absolutely! Yep. And you meet those people who have side gigs because they just think of it and say, yeah. I can use my resources and jump on that and make it happen. Now, Matt, before we conclude our discussion today, I’d like to highlight where our listeners can engage in more of the conversations that you’re having. Could you kindly provide us with where our guests can find you?

Matt: Yeah. Well, the only really comprehensive answer is mattfullbrook.com because it’s got all of the stuff that I do in one place. My life is in a significant period of flux. So if you go and check that out today, it might not be reflective of what I’m doing six months from now. But if you’re interested in the vibe, the things that I would check out from that site are my one-minute governance podcast, which is in a sort of season hiatus now, but there’s 250 something episodes for you to poke through if you’re interested in that.

The ground up governance platform, which is a collaboration with my friend Nate Schmold, who’s an illustrator, and it’s sort of trying to make gnarly governance stuff accessible, interesting, and sensible, because a lot of what we do in my space is full of jargon that nobody takes the time to define or think about, and we’re trying to cut through some of that. And then my music life, which is, I’ve got, and I’m very privileged. I’ve got a touring original band called KC Roberts & the Live Revolution, with seven studio albums. So there’s a lot to poke through there too, and those are the things to highlight.

Cory: Love it! And I wanted to make sure that we covered everything today. Is there anything else that you’d like to share with our audience that we didn’t get a chance to touch on?

Matt: I mean, , the answer is probably, but I feel like I had a lot of time to express myself, and you asked great questions. So rather than opening a whole can of worms, unless you want to, I’m happy to talk for as long as you want. I think I’ve exhausted all of the things that I needed to say.

Cory: Awesome! Well, a little bit longer than your one-minute governance podcast, but, I think that, yes, we definitely brought a lot to our audience, who will be able to poke through some of your ideas and some of the things that we touched on. Hopefully, it spurs some of that curiosity. And so with that, Matt, I want to thank you for sharing those stories and your experiences and expertise with us. Your insights have been incredibly valuable to me, and I’m grateful for that. And I know that our audience will be grateful for your contribution. So thank you.

Matt: My pleasure, Cory. Thank you.

As we wrap up this episode, we invite you to reflect on Matt’s insights about redefining governance, embracing uncertainty, and the unique value each person brings to decision-making.

Whether you are part of a family enterprise, provide consulting to family businesses, or serve as a director, Matt’s approach reminds us that true governance isn’t about following a prescribed formula, but rather about creating intentional spaces where diverse perspectives can thrive.

Throughout our discussion, we explored how effective board governance goes beyond organizational size and structure. Matt emphasized how effective decision-making requires understanding that success looks different in various contexts, from information gathering to strategic choices. We also discussed practical approaches to board dynamics, from embracing uncertainty to viewing professional networks as communities rather than competitive assets. These insights provide organizations with thoughtful frameworks to navigate board formation, foster meaningful dialogue between management and directors, and build governance structures that balance expertise with authentic connection.

For organizations and leaders looking to enhance their board effectiveness, Matt Fullbrook offers expert guidance and insight. He provides practical frameworks and strategic direction to help boards and executives create meaningful decision-making environments. We’ve included his contact information and links to the One Minute Governance podcast and more resources in our show notes to help you access his extensive library of boardroom insights and begin your journey toward building more effective governance structures.

Disclaimer: 

This program was prepared by Cory Gagnon who is a Senior Wealth Advisor with Beacon Family Office at Assante Financial Management Ltd. This not an official program how Assante Financial Management and the statements and opinions expressed during this podcast are not necessarily those how Assante Financial Management. This show is intended for general information only and may not apply to all listeners or investors; please obtain professional financial advice or contact us at [email protected] or visit BeaconFamilyOffice.com to discuss your particular circumstances before acting on the information presented.