Presidents Report

  

Bronwyn Pott ALPMA President CEO, Swaab Attorneys

 

 

There have been a lot of 'firsts' lately. Last month Swaabs hosted the first launch of the new national sponsorship package. Apart from the fact it was a nice cocktail party with lots of very keen vendors, it might not seem like a very big deal, but this was the first in a rather long list of action items to move from our current federation structure to a truly national Association.

 

It's been a pretty intense 18 months during which the national Executive (along with the State Executives) have been working through the process of amalgamation. We're now at the pointy end of it all, and you can expect to hear more over the next few weeks as we finalise all the compliance issues in preparation for a vote from Membership which will essentially wind up the existing bodes and make everyone a Member of the National Body.

 

Each time we have talked about how we would go about this over the last 9 years, we have managed to talk ourselves in a circle over the differences between each State Association, and been unable to find a compromise that met everyone's needs. In early February the National Board decided we would give it one last try, so briefing papers were prepared on the key areas of concern including Membership conditions and types, sponsorship arrangements, finance and structure, and 2 days were allocated with Nicole Donegan (a facilitator with considerable experience in amalgamating Associations) for the board to thrash out the options and come up with a heads of agreement.

Each National Board Member went to that meeting armed with their State's response to the briefing papers, and the authority to negotiate.

 

As anyone who has sat through a marathon planning session would know, two days is a long time to sit in a Conference room. But with the help of Nicole we systematically worked our way through all the identified issues and through a process of compromise, adopting best practice, and some innovative thinking we managed to come up with a blueprint for ALPMA's structure and governance post amalgamation.

That heads of agreement has now been back to the State Executives, and with some minor tweaking, is now being incorporated into the current ALPMA constitution by a pro-bono lawyer from Freehills in Melbourne.

 

So while the changes we have implemented in the last 18 months have in part been documented in this column, I thought it was timely to remind everyone just how far we have come. The process has been slow at some times, perhaps in part due to the nature of an Association that relies heavily on volunteers, but with the assistance of our Secretariats we have been moving inexorably along.

In the last 18 months we have managed to centralize Membership, finance, insurance, Conference and innumerable other small details that ensure the individual Associations are practicing good governance. In the main these changes have been administrative, but has still required the patience and cooperation of everyone involved. The big test is now, as we work through all the things we need to do to make Amalgamation happen.

 

I can never remember what my DISC classification is, or my Myers Briggs score, but I've been told often enough that I'm very good at starting things, and not so hot at completing them, to know that 'completer finisher' isn't in my skill set. My working life is saved by ensuring I'm surrounded by people who do have that skill set, and I'm very grateful for the presence of Kerrie, Jenny and Renee to perform the same function in ALPMA. As I mentioned earlier, the list of things to do is still long, and we are now running up against the end of the financial year.

 

The communication strategy for the amalgamation vote is to use e-solutions where possible, and to that end you will be receiving a recorded interview from Boardroom Radio soon where some of the National Board, and the chairs of the State Committees will discuss the issues and talk about the benefits and opportunities we will achieve from a closer Association. That audio file will be preceded by this newsletter, and followed by a Q&A session at your next monthly meeting. At this stage we hope to have all the compliance issues and formalities associated with the process sorted in early May to allow the required notice period for formal resolutions. If you have queries at any time you are very welcome to call my direct line (02-9777-8337).

 

Something else that happened recently (and was also a 'first') was the contribution by ALPMA to the Beaton client service survey. We have loaded the full report on the website, but for those who aren't up to the 40 page read, have asked Mel Chee from Beaton Consulting to summarise the report for us. Beaton Consulting survey the purchasers of professional services (about 200,000 from memory) each year to come up with each industry's 'best' client service provider. As a pro-bono exercise they also survey Members of the Associations that support the professional service providers, and this year we were very happy to participate. You may reMember getting the survey. I confess I did, and didn't complete it, but thankfully around 12% of our Members did, and their insights were very welcome. Our challenge is to improve the response rate next year, so we get an even more accurate picture of what we are doing well and where we can improve.

 

It was very gratifying to see that ALPMA was rated the highest in of our peer group for networking and building alliances. Beaton asked the 4 Associations that scored the best in the 4 attribute areas to present at a luncheon on 'what they did', and 'why they thought they had scored so well'.

It was interesting to do some navel gazing and try and come up with 20 minutes of 'why we are so good at building alliances and what others could learn from us'.. the rest of the room was made up of representative of Association with up to 60,000 Members, 100's of staff, and in some instances, $50 million in reserves.

 

But in the end I came up with a few reasons for why we are good at networking, and why it's so important to us.. essentially we do it because we have to.. our Membership fees are modest, and without selling the attention of our Members to vendors, and building those relationships and alliances, we would not be able to afford to offer the services to Members that we do. While I could have a whole argument here about what the real value of our membership is, the combination of our membership demographics, the functions our Members perform in their firms (essentially non fee earning) and the perception of our Members ability to pay, has set membership artificially low. We've overcome that by placing a value on the attention of our Members to industry vendors, and in the main, that has worked well for us.

 

The Association has moved a long way from the purely volunteer group we were some 20 years ago when I first became aware of the group, and it has been an interesting journey to participate in as we have moved from a position of viewing our industry vendors as the enemy to partners in our businesses. It's also been interesting to see the change in attitude as we have come to the realization that our Members play the role of the introducer, the recommender, the gatekeeper, the approver, and in some instances any combination or even all 4 with respect to the significant business spend of the legal industry.

 

By acknowledging and embracing these roles, and putting sensible guidelines around the interaction of our Members with our corporate sponsors and supporters, I believe we have been able to balance the needs of our Members and those of the industry suppliers to the benefit of all. The challenge when developing our new constitution was to appreciate the role of sponsorship support in the operation of the Association, but to not lose sight of the fact that the Association is for Members.

 

As part of our review of the constitution and 'the way we do things' in general, we have also had to look at the issue of succession. If you have managed to get to the bottom of my column then I hope that signals a degree of interest in ALPMA (and not just a general lack of reading material in your inbox), so I would like to invite you to make an effort to get to know your local Executive (if you don't already), and put yourself forward for a position when the new structure is announced. The current office bearers will be out asking for volunteers (or conscripts) and I would encourage you to get involved.

Linda Dulye runs a very interesting set of webinars about the 'spectator free workplace'.. My challenge to our Members this year is to create a 'spectator free Association'.. so get involved!

 

Bronwyn Pott

CEO, Swaab Attorneys

ALPMA President