Building a board that actually governs

Lisa Weitzel: You might get a new board chair in who says, "Well, this year we're going to do this great initiative. We are going to set up a new workforce program with our community college and we're going to partner with them and we're going to make this happen." And then next year you get a different board in who says, "Well, wait a second. I don't care about that. We're going to do this other thing." And so the role of a strategic plan is to make sure that you don't get board chairs coming in every year and saying let's change our focus every year because most of these initiatives are not short-term. You can't set up, implement and accomplish a goal in a matter of months. Often times it takes time to figure out what you want to do, set it up, and then see the rewards from the work that you've done.

Ted Wind: Hi, I'm Ted and I build software for chambers of commerce. For the past decade, chamber tools were all built the same way. One clunky system for every chamber. But if I've learned one thing, it's that no two chambers are alike. That's why on this show, we go beyond the ribbon cut with top chamber leaders to share the unique programs, processes, and what makes their chamber work and to give you new ideas you can take back to your chamber. This is Beyond the Ribbon Cut.

Hello and welcome back to Beyond the Ribbon Cut, the podcast for chamber leaders. I'm your host, Ted Wind from Diagonal for Chambers, and my guest today is Lisa Weitzel, CEO of the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives. Lisa, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Lisa Weitzel: Well, thanks for having me, Ted.

Ted Wind: It's a pleasure to have you on. We're super excited for this one. So, let's kick things off right away and get into it. For anyone listening not from Illinois, paint us a picture of the IACCE. What do the chambers you serve look like and what is the association actually do for them day-to-day?

Lisa Weitzel: Our chamber members, we have about 145 chambers who are members of IACCE and we exist to support the chambers through education resources. We have an annual conference, seminars, webinars. I have a lot of resources that I provide them. I get a lot of folks who just call me looking for help, advice, questions, bouncing things off. It's a pretty robust chamber community in Illinois. And it's pretty cool to be here.

Ted Wind: I love that. And could you dive a little bit more into kind of what the chambers that you serve actually look like. Obviously Illinois, you have the big city Chicago. You also got some smaller suburbs and rural areas. What does those kind of chamber breakups look like?

Lisa Weitzel: As you mentioned, we do have the big cities. So we certainly have the large chambers, the Chicagoland Chamber, but the city of Chicago has 60 70 neighborhood chambers that might encompass a square mile and many of those are our members.

The suburbs, of course, depending on the size of the suburb, have chambers, and some of those larger suburbs have larger chambers. I would say the majority of our chambers statewide have three or fewer employees who are members of IACCE. We certainly have the big metro chambers who are members.

In addition to the Chicago neighborhood chambers and suburban chambers, there are chambers of of course all around the state and some of the bigger areas have larger chambers as one would imagine. Springfield, Bloomington-Normal, which is the McLean County Chamber, the Champaign County Chamber, and then all the different towns that make up the rest of the state all have their own chambers. And it's a pretty diverse population, but we all share the same struggles and successes.

Ted Wind: I love that. I love that. And as far as your team at the IACCE, how big is that? What does the kind of internal staff look like there?

Lisa Weitzel: You're looking at it. It's just me. Sometimes we have an intern. Many people remember our most recent intern. She was so phenomenal that I've been hesitant to have another one since then. But we do have a supportive board of directors. I do try to follow the traditional governance model of the board governs and the staff manages and not impose too heavily on them. We do not have a working board. So I pretty much manage all of the day-to-day work.

Ted Wind: Love it. Love it. And definitely something a lot of our chambers of one can resonate with. It's not just it's not just you guys, it's the state associations as well. You aren't alone there.

Lisa Weitzel: That's right.

Ted Wind: I love that. So let's dive in a little bit into your story then as well. You came into IACCE around like 2011. Can you tell us about the road that that got you there?

Lisa Weitzel: I started well in 2011 there was still this thing called print newspapers that still had job ads in them and actually I answered an opportunity in our local newspaper and started working at the time for the Illinois Chamber who managed the state association and I started as a part-time employee managing pretty much the day-to-day work of IACCE at that time. We had a few other staff of the Illinois Chamber who also assisted in the day-to-day work a little bit.

And then a few years later, the person who I reported to retired and I became the CEO of the association. And a few years after that, our board made the decision to separate from the Illinois Chamber in order to offer more learning opportunities, more time devoted to the chambers in the state, more time to help develop the local chambers around the state. And I was really happy that they elected for me to go with them. And in 2014, we took this operation remote and I've been here ever since. It's been a great journey. I have met some amazing people and had amazing experiences.

Ted Wind: I love that. And as part of that journey, you spent around like eight years on your local school board as well. Could you maybe share a little bit about like what that experience sitting on a board yourself was like and maybe what that taught you about your future work, especially when it comes to board advocacy with chambers.

Lisa Weitzel: That was a formative experience. When I was hired, I was already sitting on my local school board. And coincidentally, at the time, I was fascinated by all the governance aspects of it. And I had been a parent who had volunteered a great deal in our school district. And the opportunity to look at it from a higher level, from a governance level, was very new to me.

And I had to learn to understand my role, which is something that not all board members easily understand. But as a governance role, what that looked like, the decisions that were put in front of me, and I belonged to the Illinois Association of School Boards, which is an amazing association here in Illinois, and took all of the governance classes that they offered. I ended up sitting on their board of directors as well, and that was a phenomenal experience. And I try to replicate that with my board members, but we're a little different organization than they are.

But being on that local school board was a great learning opportunity because there's a large difference between private corporate boards like chambers of commerce and publicly governed bodies like school boards and city councils and the like. And there's a large difference between those two. And a lot of times board members who sit on chamber boards don't understand that. It's been a great advantage that I've had understanding that role, living that role, and then being able to educate board members as to the differences between the two roles.

Ted Wind: I love that. And and that's exactly where I'd love to spend most of our episode today. Almost every chamber exec that we have on the show always talks about wanting to do something bigger, right? Whether that's workforce programs, advocacy work, starting a foundation, maybe it's just a big event, but the first step of that process in the chamber world isn't necessarily getting the money together or the staff ready to go. It's talking to your board. You teach governance and ethics for the US Chamber's Institute. Why is the board the first place you look when a chamber wants to take on bigger things?

Lisa Weitzel: The board's role is to set the goals for the organization or for the chamber of commerce. And they typically do this through a strategic plan. And so those conversations have to start at the board level because without board buy-in, you are not going to be successful in anything you attempt. And it's not the staff's role to say today we are starting this new advocacy initiative. It's the board's role to make the decision to pursue an opportunity for the chamber to engage in a new workforce initiative to begin advocacy opportunities.

It just the role of the chamber leader is to bring these ideas or these thoughts to their board and then through the strategic planning process through the goal setting process the board establishes a set of goals for the chamber to follow or to achieve and then the board's role is to work with the staff to make sure they have the resources they need. And resources yes is money and but it's also time and then support the board support. sometimes the board's connections to the other community members to enable the chamber staff to accomplish what goals that the board puts together for the staff and for the chamber as a whole because this often happens maybe on the board side or the board chair side maybe as opposed to the staff side.

You might get a new board chair in who says, "Well, this year we're going to do this great initiative. we are going to set up a new workforce program with our community college and we're going to partner with them and we're going to make this happen and then next year you get a different chair in who says well wait a second I don't care about that we're going to do this other thing and so the role of a strategic plan is to make sure that you don't get board members or chairs coming in every year and saying let's change our focus every year because most of these initiatives are not short-term you can't set up implement and accomplish a goal in a matter of months. Often times it takes time to figure out what you want to do, set it up, and then see the rewards from the work that you've done.

Ted Wind: Mhm. And I think what you talked about there, that separation between the staff and the board and not letting those two get conflated like sometimes they often can is so so important there. You talked about that strategic planning session. I'd love to dive into that a lot more. you run this really unique style of strategic planning session that's gets done in one day which I think is really incredible. Can you walk us through that session start to finish?

Lisa Weitzel: Well, I do say that when we talk about this that we could get it all accomplished in one day. Having said that, there is prep work that I do ahead of time. So, I'm not walking in going, I don't know anything at all about this chamber of commerce and here we go. Evaluating where they are up until that point. So taking a look at an existing mission statement, existing vision statement, values, purpose statement, an existing strategic plan if they had it, if they have one, conversations with the board chair, with the leadership of the chamber before we walk in that day.

So once we're on site, I have very structured conversations with the board of directors about every topic area that might have come up in previous conversations either through a board survey, often times through board conversations that I've held. And it gets a little messy because I tend to use those like big post-it notes and have board members write on different things and then we chart them and we work work through it. But chamber of commerce work usually falls into some pretty well-defined pools and that I've just been aware of over the years. And so collectively as the day progresses that becomes more a little more obvious to me. So as they're working in their groups and reporting out I'm also taking notes on what I think is probably going to go into a final plan.

And then the board is only going to tolerate 4 hours maybe 5 hours of conversation and they're done. And that's great. I have participated in longer sessions. It's just that people need a break. In this day and age, people are busy and they just want to be able to move on to the rest of their day or the what other commitments they have.

After that, usually I'll take some time to sit down and think about and try to put together what exactly I've heard and it's fresh in my mind and we talk about the different and I'll probably ask the chamber director to stay with me and say, "Okay, well, this is what I've heard. this is what I'm thinking and I try to write it out and then talk with the chamber director about it and if they're like yes okay this makes sense then I can write it up a little more formally and we could hand them a potential working strategic plan to bring back to their board the very next board meeting sometimes it doesn't work out quite that smoothly and we need to do a little more massaging and we do take a little bit longer than that but as far as the board's role it's a one day kind of in and out and they're which is good for them because they come come in, they're able to hold a lot of conversations with each other, as I said, guided conversations, and then I'm going to take all that material back and make a recommendation back to them.

Most of the time, I will write a plan, maybe have some tweaks by the leader of the chamber and then present it back to the leader of the chamber and they present it to their board and they approve it. Once in a while, the board needs a little bit more information or they want a little bit more clarification on to where something came from or why I thought the way that I did. and then we either adjust it or they accept it and we go from there. But I would say about 80% of the time we can get that done in a day.

Ted Wind: That's incredible. It's kind of like a scientific research or something. You know, you meet with the patient for one day, but then behind the scenes you're studying the petri dish, figuring out what's going on, and then come back to them with this finalized report, which is great. You mentioned in there that there's a couple pools that you've kind of recognized that chambers fall into when you're running these sessions. What are those pools? What do those actually look like?

Lisa Weitzel: It's usually based one will be around revenue and what drives that revenue and often times it's membership or events and so those can be either one pool collectively. Often times they're two pools. So membership efforts, what does the membership of the chamber look like? Do initiatives need to be taken to enhance the current membership basis of the chamber? And that could take a look at revamping their dues structure, moving to a tiered dues structure.

And then their events. Are there events meeting the needs of the business members of the chamber? A lot of times you'll have chambers who host community-wide events and community-wide events. My question is why are you hosting a community-wide event? Sometimes if you look at a Chicago neighborhood chamber, most of those chambers have agreements with the city of Chicago to actually do that, to provide special programming for community-wide events. And the same thing with chambers outside of the city of Chicago and Illinois. They'll have agreements to do that. Those community-wide events can bring in a lot of revenue and revenue is always something that chambers need and it's always going to be part of their strategic plan in some shape or form and but evaluation of their events. Some chambers have been doing the same events for dozens of years and why are those doing those events and what purpose do those events serve and are those events making money? So you've got those two pools often times or one pool depending on what it looks like per chamber.

Advocacy efforts is often times and I would say that you'll lump that in not just advocacy of itself but you as you mentioned earlier say workforce or education attainment a lot of those types of initiatives don't bring in revenue for our chamber. So what does that look like? Most importantly, how is it serving the business community in the neighbor in the community? Because first and foremost, a chamber of commerce is exists to serve its business community and all of the other community work in a chamber's role has to feed back into supporting the business community. What does that look like? So workforce obviously you're helping, you're working with your schools, whether that K-12, K-20, whatever that looks like to provide workers for your community. advocacy, you're promoting business friendly policies and what does all that look like? So that could be another pool.

Oftentimes there's a pool around governance. How do we make a higher functioning board or how do we work toward a higher functioning board? What does that look like? What do we need? And some boards are they are high functioning already and some boards need some work and they need some handholding and they need some additional training to get to a higher functioning level. So those are your four typical pools that I'll see.

Ted Wind: And then you kind of based on those pools, that's where we kind of draw out kind of our diagnosis for, you know, what are the next steps we think would make the most sense for this chamber to do. Got it. That makes a ton of sense there.

Now, on the actual meeting itself, specifically the board meeting that these chambers are having all the time, if a chamber's board meeting is an hour or, god forbid, two hours of staff reports saying what's going on and then just 10 minutes of decisions, what do you go in and and change first?

Lisa Weitzel: Well, the first thing I always always always recommend is if you have a strategic plan, replace everything in your board agenda with the goals of your strategic plan. So, you still need the legal requirements. You still need to accept your financials, approve your minutes, you still need some sort of perhaps reporting on events that might have taken place. Put all of those into a consent agenda. Get that off. Start your meeting with that. You can always pull things out of a consent agenda. Robert's Rules call for that. There's an easy way to pull those out if you have a question about something in your financials and financials are really really important. So if board members are not 100% comfortable with that, make sure you're asking about it.

But get that out of the way in the first 10 minutes and they go goal by goal. So what is the progress that we've made toward achieving the outcomes of this goal in this last meet month or quarter depending how frequently a board might meet and what do we need to be working on next? what resources do we need to be offering our staff in order to make that happen? And then you just go through goal by goal and that's your meeting and every month that's how we run our meetings at IACCE and I always recommend that to a local chamber and if they don't have an an existing strategic plan certainly I'm happy to work with their board about it but typically they do have some sort of something that they're working toward and I would tell them to do that but it's a little more difficult

Ted Wind: 100%. We had uh Bob Thomas on from the Michigan State Chamber uh Association back in season 1 and he talked a lot about those strategic plans and building those out. And I think today's episode's really interesting because we're kind of telling that other side of the story as far as kind of the governance committee and their kind of the board's plan as well and how to run those kinds of meetings. when you're thinking about board role versus a staff role. We talked a little bit about this in an earlier question, but I think a lot of times we'll hear from chamber leaders all the time just that struggle of my board's doing things. They're stepping on toes of our staff, my staff is stepping on toes of the board. I want to tell them to stay in their lane, but I don't really know how to. Board role versus staff role. Can you give us the one sentence version an executive can say out loud in the room to their board members about here's the role of the board, here's what you guys should do versus

Lisa Weitzel: I'm reaching over and I'm just going to show you. So the board governs and the staff manages. This is a bookmark provided by Bob Harris and he is the governance guru for associations and chambers in this country. The board governs and the staff manages. So the board sets the goals and the staff executes those goals. They execute the steps needed to achieve the goals. That's it in a nutshell. I would say that 90% of the phone calls I get that are I'm having an issue are about this exact topic. Board members stepping on staff toes, board members getting in the weeds, as the saying goes.

Ted Wind: 100%. And as far as helping the staff and the executive director, the CEO of the chamber tactically kind of figure out how to communicate that, do you have any recommendations for, you know, maybe a chamber leader that's dealing with that and it's like, that's a great slogan, awesome. What's something that maybe they could do with their board to try and communicate that a bit better?

Lisa Weitzel: The easiest thing they can do is actually hold regular board orientations whenever their board so at least at minimum once a year when new board members come onto the board. Ensure that the entire board is sitting there for a board orientation.

However, having the staff CEO be the person to lead that orientation can be tricky. It depends on the relationship that that staff person has with their board. So basic basic part of any type of board orientation is going to be this is what our board does. These are the policies, here's the handbooks, this is what our program of work looks like. But more importantly is here's the role of a board, but how does a staff person say that without perhaps stepping on some toes of the board? Clearly they could bring somebody in. They could bring somebody in, but there's financial repercussion for bringing somebody in.

So anybody who ever reaches out to me and I'm often speak with chambers who are in other states so it doesn't matter to me who they're calling from. I have a like a very simple board self assessment that a board can take. It's on paper. You could have them do that. If you could put it into a survey form so you can collect the responses and have them be more anonymous. You're not even looking at that handwriting or anything like that. And then you just feed it back to the board and just say this is what how you responded. From my point of view, it's usually pretty obvious where there might be some struggles. The real struggles come when a board member looks at that survey and doesn't see anything wrong with the results of that survey.

I am more than happy to send the chamber staff any kind of support documents. We I have lots of resources, just brief descriptions of what best board practices look like. I can send that to them. They can share that with their board. And the hope is is that the board will take those to heart and that they will understand what their role really is and that they'll continue to do the right thing by their chamber and by the community they serve.

Ted Wind: Yeah, I I love that. And if you're open to it, we can also include some of those resources or a link to link to some of those resources if they're available at the in the description below on today's episode as well for the folks listening in. The other piece around that though is you talked about board orientation and having kind of a structure on that. I think that's really important because not only is it the issue of boards stepping on toes, but even if you have the perfect Garden of Eden board that is just awesome in every single way, boards change frequently. How does that process of a chamber actually going in and recruiting new board members work? Do you have any advice for folks that are going through that process and dealing with these kind of constant change when it comes to their board of directors?

Lisa Weitzel: Absolutely. We always recommend that you have a diverse board. And while people think about like the first word that comes to their mind is DEI, I'm not just talking about that. You need a board who represents the entire business community and preferably the entire community as a whole.

So, a board that's comprised of the people if you have large businesses in your community, so you've got those types of people on your board, small businesses, if you happen to have a lot of schools in your community, you need somebody from those schools. And we're not just talking about the K-12 schools, but secondary education as well. Some of those school superintendent make amazing board members, okay? And sometimes they make really awful board members, but often times they make good board members. You have to be a little careful about that crossover when you have those types of people on your board as far as FOIA rules. But anyway, you just you need people not only from the different segments, the different business segments that your community serves, big, small, nonprofit, for-profit, all of that wide variety.

But you also need different types of thinkers on your board. So different people approach their work differently. So, some people are really, really good at sitting back and looking at the really big picture about how something's going to affect their business or affect their community. And you really need those people on your board. And those people should also end up or hopefully end up in leadership on your board. But you also need people who think about all the little pieces of any kind of implementation process. So, what could go wrong or what can go right with this type of thing? Just because we've always done it that way doesn't mean we should continue to do it that way. So, how do you get a new thinker on your board who's going to think differently? And if you have wide representation of who sits on your board, you're going to get a much better outcome and you're going to get a board who overall works better together.

And having said that, if you have this wide variety of board members, you still need an opportunity for that board to learn to get along sometimes. Maybe a better word for that is opportunities for them to engage. And again, that's why sometimes having an outside facilitator come in. If you happen to have secondary education entities in your chamber group, then a lot of times they'll be able to provide somebody who won't charge anything to come into your board and work with them. Obviously, you can always talk to your state association or others who are out there to do it. But creating those opportunities for your board to just have really high-level conversations together is what's going to make you have a successful chamber.

Ted Wind: Mhm. And I couldn't agree more when it comes to not just having a homogenized board, but yeah, like you said, a truly diverse board. And something that at Diagonal we hear a lot from chambers is the desire to have also younger business owners on the board as well and bringing in some of that age diversity. That's one that we've heard is quite difficult and obviously, you know, being a younger professional myself, I've also seen it firsthand. It is a rare case when you see a board that's a little bit wider spanning when it comes to age. How does a chamber get younger business owners onto the board without it really just becoming another kind of like token seat or something like that?

Lisa Weitzel: Well, hopefully chambers are engaging young professionals in their everyday program of work. Some chambers have actual young professional committees who schedule opportunities for young professionals. However, from what I've been hearing from many chambers is that younger demographic doesn't like to really be identified as a young professional. And so they're rebranding what that looks like is probably something that chambers need to be working on.

Ted Wind: Yeah. So going back to that like topic, I'd love if we could just dive a little bit more into how does a chamber get those younger business owners involved with the board without it just being another kind of like token seat if you will.

Lisa Weitzel: It's a very important question and what I have been hearing from our chamber folks. Well, first of all, you would hope that they're doing some sort of programming that's going to get that younger demographic. And young professionals was a traditional term that many chambers used in their leadership programming or their young professional committee, but a newer term that I have heard a lot of recently is emerging leaders. And if you look at emerging leaders, which doesn't necessarily say what the age is because you could be at any age and become an emerging leader, but it's going over really well with a younger age leader. And so we've been using that a bit and what we've been talking with our members about.

But if you have that programming to meet emerging leaders needs and one of the things I often talk about is do you have some sort of leadership program at your chamber? Again, it's not age specific. It's just are there emerging leaders in your community, in your business community who need a certain level of training how to interact with higher level CEOs, CEOs of very very large companies. What we have a large chamber in the state who does etiquette meals and so they'll have a program about bringing people together about how do you have the appropriate manners at a professional business luncheon? What does that look like? It's the old saying about what fork do I use, but it's hands-on. And so, how do you come across as an emerging leader and what behaviors do you need to know?

So if chambers are already engaging those people in their communities in the work that they're doing and in the events that they're hosting which are supporting those business people, then the next step is having those people serve on those committees and not just having a committee full of a younger demographic because again that's not necessarily going to serve the needs of anything maybe other than setting up times to go meet at a bar or something like that. But what you want to do is provide educational opportunities to bring those emerging leaders along. And then usually the at least the way that I look at it, the people who will make good leaders at a board level on your board are going to rise to the top and then you can bring them on to your board. But it's just as important to engage those folks. And there is some wisdom to be held at the other end. But I do admit with chambers of commerce that older demographic is too persuasive and too immersive and we need to be looking at a lot more younger members of our boards.

Ted Wind: And and that just goes back to that whole board the importance of board diversity and also just the value that that can unlock for your chamber. I want to go to the other side of the coin. Now one thing that I absolutely love about IACCE is this chamber certification program that you guys launched. Can you share a little bit more about what that program looks like and also what does going through it change for a chamber? What do the ones that have kind of earned this certification have in common?

Lisa Weitzel: Well, the easy answer to that is that they're operating at a fairly high level. And by high level, I mean that they are governance activities are they're allowing their board to govern and their staff to manage and that their finances are in good shape. they're running a business properly. They're running a nonprofit business properly. So the other saying in association and chamber world is that a nonprofit is a tax status, not a business model. And a certified chamber understands that you are a business and you have to be running your organization like a business.

So the US Chamber of Commerce offers an accreditation program that chambers across the country can participate in. It's a rigorous, time-intensive, resource-intensive application process. Our goal at the Illinois level, at the state level, was to provide a list of what high functioning chambers need to do in order to operate at a strong level within the state. They may not be able to do things that the US Chamber requires them for their accreditation process, but they are a well functioning, a well-run, they are a profitable chamber of commerce here in Illinois.

And when they go through the process, on one hand, it validates the work that they've done to get there to say, "Yes, you know, oh shoot, I wasn't able to apply for this last year because we didn't do things this way, and now I understand I need to be doing things this way." So once they go through that process, then they understand that they've accomplished this achievement, but more so that they can not only feel good about themselves, but I think it really sets them up for future success because they know that they're doing things the right way. They know that they just need to maybe make a few tweaks on programming or their tiered dues benefits or and just to get to the next level and just to continue.

And our program doesn't require advocacy efforts to the same extent that the US Chamber program does. And that's okay. We expect an awareness of what that might look like and beginning steps toward it. And that they understand that they're taking those steps for that would be one example. So that they know that they are taking these really strong strides toward success and that if they wish to go on for the US Chamber accreditation, they can. But not all chambers are really interested in that. They're much more interested in this regional level achievement and what they can do to make themselves be better regionally.

Ted Wind: And the other piece I love about the whole checklist process to get the certification is it's being reviewed by other chamber professionals in the state right as well. So, you're kind of judged by a jury of your peers as well, which I think is something that's really cool and unique to that program and obviously is a testament to the work that you guys have done at IACCE to put something like that together that chambers are super excited to to partake in and obviously do a lot of work to to go through that process as well. So, longtime listeners in the show know that we love our tactical advice, especially for smaller chambers that are listening in. Let's put yourself in the shoes of a chamber exec that has a board that's stepping on toes or maybe isn't really there when they should be. What's the smallest useful first step they can take this month? And what should they maybe not try to fix just yet?

Lisa Weitzel: They just need a little bit of support call if they're a member of their state association. They just need to call that person. If they don't know who their state association is, they can ask some of their neighboring chambers. I have the information for all the states around the country. Bob Thomas, who you mentioned before, he has all that information. There's a handful of us who've been around long enough that we have that information. But reach out to somebody and just spend a little bit of time unloading and just saying, "Oh my gosh, this is what I'm going through. This is what I'm dealing with." That will not help fix their board at all.

The second step is is they need to be able to have a heart-to-heart conversation with their board chair or their board president. Typically in those small chambers, it's a board president and it's an executive director. They need to sit down and say, "Here's some information that I got from my state association. Here's a one-pager on what a high functioning board looks like. This is the primary purpose of our board and what our board should be doing. We have a one-pager and it's very simple and I'd be happy to send it to you to link to this and they could just start with that conversation with their board chair. Just have that conversation and see if their board chair is receptive. A lot of times those smaller chambers may have board chairs who are not even receptive to that and then that's a different conversation. That's a long conversation to have with your neighboring chambers or more impactfully your your association in your state.

Ted Wind: Mhm. I think that's some really great advice there. Especially that the first part about reaching out to whether it's your state association or neighboring chamber professionals. So important like we are a community here like here to help one another. I think that's really powerful. And then having that conversation with the head of the board as opposed to trying to go to everybody all at once. Start with that one person and then kind of put yourself in a little bit better position and take a little step back and breathe.

So, on that note, last question. Every guest gets this one. You know what's coming here. What's one last piece of advice you'd give to the chamber leaders at home listening in? Lisa,

Lisa Weitzel: Breathe. You are not alone. Every chamber leader has those, "Oh my god, I can't believe this just happened to me." And when that happens to you, because it will, you are not alone. Reach out to other chamber leaders. Reach out to your state associations. I don't care if you're not a member of mine. Call me. Call me. Email me and just say, "This happened to me. Can I just talk to you for 10 minutes?"

And sometimes you want to celebrate the win. And I get a lot of those phone calls, too. Sadly, not quite as much as, "Oh my god, this just happened." But you need to celebrate your wins. Need to know that you're not alone. You need to reach out to your other chamber leaders in your group. Get together with lunch. In Illinois, we've got several regional groups who get together once a month or once a quarter in person. If you can do it via Zoom or Teams or whatever, if you can't, you need support. This can be a lonely job if you have or staff, especially if you're a staff of one or one or two people. You need to have friends in this space, but you're not alone.

Ted Wind: I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Lisa. I mean, this episode we covered a lot of ground here, but I think especially too with the name of the show is going beyond the ribbon cut and we spend a lot of time talking about all these incredible programs and ideas for the future of the chamber world. But if you don't have a strong governance process in place, if you don't have that board ready to go, that's the foundation that allows you to build all these incredible things on top of. So, I really think today's episode was so so important for building that foundation of your chamber.

For folks that are listening, links to Lisa, IACCE, the chamber certification program will all be in the description below. We'll also include that one pager that Lisa mentioned as well. So, please, if you're in Illinois, you should definitely check out the IACCE. They're an incredible organization. We've talked with a lot of chambers in the Illinois area and everyone who has worked for the IACCE has only had good things to say. So that is a testament to you, Lisa, and your organization. But any state chamber association in general, really, they're there to help. Don't be afraid to reach out. They're great organizations.

But that's all from us today. Thank you so much for tuning in to Beyond the Ribbon Cut and we'll see you on the next episode.