050 | How To Run a Great HOA Meeting

Noah Maislin: 0:00

The more prepared the board is coming to the table with their information, their facts, their ideas, their thoughts, this harbors constructive debate, you know, and as soon as people show up not prepared and are not bringing facts and you know, they're bringing what they think might be a good idea, but not necessarily true and they haven't done their homework and they don't know. That is where you start getting into unconstructive debate territory and at that point, things start to go sideways pretty quickly.

Announcer: 0:33

HOA insights common sense for common areas exists to help all 2 million volunteer board members nationwide have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions for their future. This podcast is sponsored by for companies that care about board members, association insights and marketplace, association reserves, community financials, and Kevin Davis Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 1:04

Welcome back to Hoa insights common sense for common areas. I'm Robert Nordlund. And I'm here today for episode number 50. With a special guest to talk about effective board meetings. Usually, monthly meetings are how an organization like a condo or an HOA. That's how they function. It's how a board leads that it's how they are transparent how they communicate priorities, budgets and everything you do ongoing operation at the community. Well, if you are struggling with board meetings, dreading preparing for them, or dreading participating in them, this episodes for you. I hope you enjoy last week's episode number 49 with regular co host Julie Adamen, where we spoke about the experience of being a new board member, what steps to take to improve your experience, and quickly get up to speed for you can contribute to help run the association. And that episode came from an audience question. So keep those questions coming. If you missed that episode, or any other prior episode, you can find them on our podcast website, hoainsights.org, on your favorite podcast platform or on our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes. We enjoy hearing from you. So if you have a question you'd like us to address, leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130 Leave a comment on the YouTube video or send us an email at podcast@reservestudy.com. Well, the question that prompted Today's episode was from Linda in Nashville, Tennessee, who wrote we tend to get through our meetings pretty successfully. But I have a lot of stress preparing for them. Can you help share any best practices? Well, so fortunately, today we have with us Noah Maislin founder and CEO of Minutes Solutions. You can find them online at minutessolutions that's all run together .com. And we heard from their VP of Sales and Marketing Matt McEwen back in episode number 11 On the topic of taking effective board minutes. So if you want to brush up on that topic, you can go and see that there. Now I honestly don't know any other organization that has more actual focused meeting experience than minutes solutions. It's frankly what they do. We had another episode on tips how to keep your board meeting down to 60 minutes back in episode number eight. But I ran into Noah at a recent trade show and I didn't want to miss the chance to get him on the show. So my heart aches for all the Linda's across the country who stressed about preparing for and running their board meetings. So Noah, welcome to the program. Thanks, Robert.

Noah Maislin: 3:49

Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Robert Nordlund: 3:51

So tell me what are the biggest mistakes you see boards making? Well,

Noah Maislin: 3:55

firstly, I gotta say congratulations to Linda, because running successful board meetings is no easy task. And it sounds like she's got a good handle on that now prepping for board meetings. You know, that's another question. That's obviously a daunting task that a lot of people do struggle with. So before I get into your specific question about some of the mistakes that we see, just hoping to lead off with helping Linda a little bit with being able to prepare better for some meetings. Typically, the boards that we see that have the most successful time of preparing for board meetings, have a checklist that gets circulated about a week or two prior to each board meeting, and everybody on the board understand what they need to do for their specific role to prepare for that meeting. And essentially, it's

Robert Nordlund: 4:45

not a matter of just showing up for the board. It's not a matter of just showing

Noah Maislin: 4:49

up to the board. There's a lot there's there's prep work that that goes into, you know, being ready for your board meeting. So knowing what to prepare for and Knowing how to prepare for, and using a checklist as a backbone to make sure you're doing everything prior to the meeting is definitely a helpful tip that that Linda could take away. Now in terms of what we see as some of the big mistakes that boards make. Yeah, like you mentioned, we've been involved with a lot of board meetings, we done minutes for over 50,000 board meetings in the last 10 years. And some of the biggest mistakes that we see are a boards not being prepared, boards trying to take shortcuts and not hire experts, and having board documents scattered and not in a centralized location are all issues that we see fairly common across a lot of the boards that we work with, so

Robert Nordlund: 5:47

just plain not being organized, not knowing what you're trying to do. Just Well, I think there's, in your experience that there are so many board members who get on the board because they perhaps had an agenda, or there was an emergency that they needed to help cover. And they probably didn't appreciate that there's work to do in between the board meetings, and that preparation is key to being ready to move the association forward. 100%.

Noah Maislin: 6:15

And you know, a lot of people, especially in the condo, and HOA space, might look at the board position, as you know, okay, it's a volunteer position, it's not a paid position, it can't be that difficult. There's probably not a lot of work involved, we'll meet you know, once a month or once a quarter, whatever the frequency of their meetings are. But that's just simply not true. There's a lot of work that goes into being a board member on a board, there's a lot of preparation work, there's a lot of educational work, there's a lot of, you know, staying in the loop on knowing what's going on in the industry, what's going on in your association. So it's definitely no walk in the park to be a board member.

Robert Nordlund: 6:52

Yeah, I got onto the board at my association. I went to my first meeting, and the President resigned. And I think I was the only homeowner in attendance. And they all looked at me and said, you want to be president? And internally I was thinking, well, a few knuckleheads can do it. I certainly can. And yeah, I thought how, how hard can this be? And you realize it's kind of like a part time job. But what I got from that was the, the experience of running an organization. And I put a lot of time into it. But I think it was a year later or two years later, I sold my unit for a very nice profit. So not only did I get benefit from it, but in my case, 70 other people got benefit from the work you plow in as being a good board member. So yeah, it may seem like you're not getting a paycheck. But when you can do something well, and elevate the association, everyone's home values go up. And that's a that's a big lever.

Noah Maislin: 7:56

100%, and it's definitely not easy. But hopefully through our discussion today, we leave your listeners with some tips and tricks on, you know, how to be a better board member how to be better prepared, and you know how to make their board life a little bit easier.

Robert Nordlund: 8:11

Yeah, well, let's talk about being prepared. You spoke about a couple weeks in advance. It seems like that's just playing an unending cycle, you have a meeting, then you preparing the minutes to document what happened, What's the action items, what things to do for the next meeting, you get those meeting minutes out, Those are reminders, then the board is then at that point, I'm preparing for the next meeting. Is that just the ongoing cycle?

Noah Maislin: 8:41

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, there's, you know, it's obviously not a full time job. It doesn't take eight, nine hours every day to be on a board. But there is continuous work for sure. You know, you got to prepare for your board meetings. And after the board meetings, you got to follow up on your action items. And you got to stay in tune with everything that's going on. And then before you know it, you're preparing for your next board meeting already. So it's definitely continuous work. It's not nonstop work, because there are definitely breaks in between. But continuous work is a great way to phrase it. Well, I

Robert Nordlund: 9:13

think one thing you said it's not a full time job. There's so many associations that have a professional manager. And that manager has the work and does perhaps the heavy lifting the repeatable tasks, but we're talking about board members, and it's their job to do the decision making and make the decisions and then perhaps tasked the manager with executing, hire that new landscaper get bids for the roofing, things like that, and so the the board members can get some extra support on that. But I'm also thinking that if your association is struggling, if your board meetings are contentious, it's going to take a little bit of time to do a little bit of fixing but once you get things going smoothly, I wonder if that's like momentum you get Good momentum going. You have board members that are contributing, you make decisions, you're nice and clear. There's no worries about the board hiding things. Do you see a momentum factor going on? Yeah,

Noah Maislin: 10:12

100%. Once you understand best practices, and once you understand the flow, and once you understand what needs to be done from meeting to meeting, and in between meetings, things definitely become easier. But something I want to mention, but let's not forget, no two boards are the same, you know, every board is a little bit different. And every Association is a little bit different. You got big associations, you got small associations, you got medium sized associations. So the smaller associations, some of them can be made up of four or 5 6 7 8 units, right. And those guys, typically, if you're on a board for a smaller Association, there's not a tremendous amount of work to do. But if you compare that to associations with 1000 2000 3000 units, there's obviously a lot more work to be done. The bigger guys have committees that gets split out. Also, I'm not trying to, you know, put things into a box. I mean, if it is in a box, it's a very big box. But again, not all two boards are the same. But there are definitely practices and processes that can be taken for from any size board, and to be utilized. No matter how big or small your your community is.

Robert Nordlund: 11:29

I want to follow up on that. But at this point in time, let's take a quick break to hear from one of our sponsors.

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Robert Nordlund: 12:08

Hi, everyone, I have a special announcement to make. As you know, the mission of our podcast is to affirm, inspire, and motivate HOA board members. One way we hope to do that is with the launch of our new board member merch store. As a gift to boards who are meeting online, we're offering dozens of free and fun zoom backgrounds, designed specifically with you in mind. We've provided a link to the new store in our show notes, please check it out. And we're back. Noah, in our break. We were talking about our experience with large and small associations. Tell me about or tell our audience about your experience with some of the consistent things. But yet some of the different things that boards of large, and small associations need to factor in as they see the scope of their responsibilities.

Noah Maislin: 13:02

Yeah, as I was mentioning to you on the break, I mean, I think, speaking from a personal situation, so you know, just knowing my situation, I live in a condo building with a couple 100 units, and knowing the needs that I personally have living in my building, and the needs that my board has and my community has differs pretty greatly to the needs of let's say, a situation of where my parents live, they live in an association, that's only four units and their association. So we often talk about, you know, what's going on with their neighbors and what's going on with their board and what their needs are. It differs drastically between these two, drastically different size associations, yet

Robert Nordlund: 13:43

amount of staff amount of issues. A four unit Association probably isn't dealing with tennis courts, and elevators, and the golf course and all those kinds of things. It may be just a step up from what you or I did when we owned a single family home. And we hired our own gardener, we hired our own landscaper to do that. So it's not a big deal to do it for the perimeter right around our little building of four units. But talk to me about how much board success actually is defined, before the meeting actually starts, having the agenda, having the board decisions already made. And so you can then just roll it through the program. I don't want to say this too casually. Is it almost like putting on a show?

Noah Maislin: 14:32

Um, yeah, I guess you could, you could call it putting on a show more or less, the more prepared you are, the better that show is going to be. So it's the same thing with board meetings going into a board meeting if you have a very good agenda clearly defined and outline purpose of the meeting. Everybody knows what's going to be talked about beforehand. That's definitely a great way to lead into you into a good meeting. But what I really like to see some of our boards do this and we find those boards to be pretty successful. Before their actual meeting, maybe about a week or so before their actual actual meeting, they'll say, they'll circulate a document, usually via email, with whatever the discussion points are at whatever is going to take place at the board meeting. And anything that needs to be voted on, is clearly defined in this email. And anything that can be agreed upon before the meeting is going to make for your meeting to run a lot smoother. So typically, what happens if a document gets circulated prior to the meeting with let's say, there's five things that are going to be voted on at the meeting? If everybody, if the board members all agree to moving forward with those votes, or they're all in favor of the votes, What happens is, once you get to the meeting, all you need to do is ratify those decisions. And those decisions and those motions are made to be binding or official record for the actual meeting. It also lets you know that if there's anything from that document that circulated before the meeting that's not agreed upon, well, then you know that that's going to be a big topic of discussion at your board meeting and board members might be able to prepare a little bit better to get into a lengthier conversation about that specific topic that wasn't agreed to before the meeting.

Robert Nordlund: 16:30

I know there's different regions in the country, different states, probably in your experience Canada, also where there's restrictions on the boards meeting privately. So I want to make sure our audience hears that we're talking about not making decisions offline, but communicating what the topics are. Is that fair?

Noah Maislin: 16:50

100% I mean, any meeting, that's not an official board meeting, you can't make an official motion or record, which means you can't really officially decide on things for the most part. But if you're talking about an official motion, or voting on something, officially, you could chat about it offline, but it doesn't become an official record until it's actually ratified at the actual meeting. Got

Robert Nordlund: 17:17

it. And then one thing I want to make sure and I'm hearing it, I want to make sure our audience is hearing it. The board meeting is not where you begin to ponder, the board meeting is where you reveal what your vote is, what your priorities are, as where you publicly show your decisions. I know in my life, my wife will say what do you think about changing the landscape in our front yard? And I'm like, Well, let me think about that. What are you actually talking about? I don't like to make spur of the moment decisions. My experience, there's too many boards who come to the board meeting, beginning to ponder things. And the pondering on thinking should have been done. days prior, like when you say when that document was circulated. Here's the proposals from landscaper, a landscaper, B landscaper, see their scope of work their pricing, and you can begin to think about what you feel about that rather than coming to the board meeting, and all of a sudden you're flipping through looking at the proposals and saying, Oh, gee, I wish I woulda read this last week.

Noah Maislin: 18:22

Exactly.

Robert Nordlund: 18:23

What about the agenda? Is it magic in setting the agenda following the agenda to the minute or is it more importantly, that a leads to B leads to C, that everything gets covered?

Noah Maislin: 18:38

I think putting together a good strong agenda is definitely a little bit apart a little bit of science as well. There are obviously things that need to be talked about out of meeting but the agendas that we like to see that we find most successful boards use our agendas that clearly outlined the points that need to be discussed, but they also associate that topic of discussion with an allotted amount of time. So if you say, Hey, we're going to talk about the landscaping, the person who's putting together the agenda should know the ins and outs of the board very well. And they should say, okay, you know, this should be a five minute conversation, or this should be a 10 minute conversation and actually putting that tank timestamp on the agenda, which will allow the entire board and especially the chair to steer the meeting a little bit better, right? If a conversation is pegged for five minutes, and you're getting into the 6 7 8 minute mark, well, you know, you know, a good chair will will step in and say okay, you know, let's table this, or let's save it for next meeting. Or if it's really important, that conversation is really good. Then a good chair will also take a look at the agenda. They'll see what they could move off and maybe move to next time or just, you know, facilitate a meeting in a way where if things are going if one discussion is running long, then maybe dialing back the other discussion.

Robert Nordlund: 20:01

Yeah, how much of a factor is being ready for the surprises when you are maybe dealing with an insurance question which has a very hard and fast deadline? And you've got to get it figured out? And you have a question from the audience saying, what about the new state law? What about the new thing? What about something else? I would think it's important to address the question, but do it quickly and succinctly. Your experience with that?

Noah Maislin: 20:31

Yeah, 100% I mean, A. you need to be very prepared for all of your board meetings for these questions that that come up that you may or may not be expecting. I send us a great word succinctly. The more succinct you could be in articulating your point, the better at the end of the day. I mean, really, to me, one of the big signs of a successful board meeting is a board meeting that could get done in a reasonable amount of time. It's very rare that you hear of successful board meetings that were pegged for two hours, but ended up going four and a half or five hours. So

Robert Nordlund: 21:06

you're getting it I'm starting to get the heebie jeebies just thinking about that, that Yeah. Sound like success to me. Exactly,

Noah Maislin: 21:12

exactly. So the more succinct you could be the better and endless and at the end of the day, if there is a question that's posed, and you don't know the answer, or the board doesn't know the answer, it's definitely okay to say, Okay, let's table this for the next meeting, or let's follow up with this tomorrow or by the end of the week. So we could actually look into what the answer is, or look into what the law is, or look into whatever it needs to be looked into, and come to the table with an actual answer. Otherwise, if they don't know what the right answer should be healthy debate is is very good. We'd love to see constructive debate at board meetings. But we all know that constructive debate can easily turn in unconstructive debate. And that's when things start to go off the guardrails a little bit.

Robert Nordlund: 22:04

I'm thinking that there may be a question we've talked about the landscaper, if I'm just using that as a standard type of question. What if landscaper B was not clear on if trees are included or not? You're like, Oh, gee, I should have thought of that in advance. Hopefully, that's the kind of thing you cover in your advanced preparation someone has called landscaper, B and said you didn't state it, but our trees included in. So that, again, is part of preparation. But maybe that's something that you can task, the manager to find out tomorrow. And we'll post the answer in a common area, something like that. But yeah, I would imagine there's opportunity to capture the blind side. And I think we need to thank the Homeowners who do function in that capacity for helping the board catch things that they may have missed. But I like your characterization of healthy constructive debate. That's important. And I think it's also important to remind our audience that the board doesn't have to come to a unanimous agreement. We're talking about majority rule on this. Is that fair? 100% Yeah. Okay. So what are we doing? And that requires an understanding of what are we trying to accomplish with the association? What do we want to be known for? What is our vision for this community? Are we trying to be a cost effective community? Are we trying to be the place that is the only one in our area with tennis courts? You know, what is special about your association know what you're trying to bring to the table? Real Estate Market wise? And I keep coming back to that idea of being prepared and knowing your guardrail. So, Noah, I like your idea of having the agenda. Having time allotted, and time expectations for is this going to be a minor discussion or a big discussion? But then again, comes back to how well prepared is the board? Yeah,

Noah Maislin: 24:00

100%, the more prepared, the board is coming to the table with their information, their facts, their ideas, their thoughts, this harbors constructive debate, you know, and as soon as people show up, not prepared, and are not bringing facts and you know, they're bringing what they think might be a good idea, but not necessarily true. And they haven't done their homework and they don't know. That is where you start getting into unconstructive debate territory. And at that point, things start to go sideways pretty quickly.

Robert Nordlund: 24:33

Yeah, I have a grown son and he talks about the good idea fairy, and that can ruin a meeting that is going forward when someone brings up something unrelated and says, again, using our landscape idea. Well, yeah, let's but what about delaying the landscape decision until we make the rough decision or something unrelated that or parking or something just crazy a pet restriction. Shouldn't we wait to me Make a landscape decision until we decide if we're going to do a dog run in the way back. I like wait, wait, wait, whoa, wait, wait, going I can I can feel myself going off the rails there. Is that?

Noah Maislin: 25:09

Is that what you're talking about? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay.

Robert Nordlund: 25:14

So we keep coming back to preparation. And I know that we have so many listeners that got on the board, and they're trying to maintain their work life. They're trying to maintain their personal life, and they are squeezing in their association responsibilities in the middle. So we don't want to scare them with thinking that is going to take a whole lot of time. But it does take time. And that preparation, I will say he's going to pay off just in spades and multiples in smoother running Association, those kinds of things,

Noah Maislin: 25:45

and percent. And what I will say is, you know, I'm, we're not looking to deter anybody from joining a board, because it is an amazing thing to join the board of your Association. What I will say is, using a strong management company, and having a very strong Manager helps the lives of the board tremendously, right? It will really having a good manager will really steer the board in the right direction and make the lives of the board a lot easier.

Robert Nordlund: 26:13

Yeah, I can imagine seeing that person as the coach, or almost wants to say the grown up in the room to say this is the best way. Let's stay on track, folks. We have a lot of other things to do. Let's decide. And let's move on just to be that the mature one, the experienced one, the void, that the experts, I like that. I think my last question here is, what about the chemistry? Or the the character of the board meeting itself? How can they, at the very beginning set the character for a pleasant meeting? Is it a matter of the board's smiling? Is it welcoming them? How does How can the board most effectively make this an inviting experience for any homeowner that might want to show up?

Noah Maislin: 27:01

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day boards are a combination of many different types of personalities, and quite frankly, sore companies and sore families. And actually, you know, we live our lives interacting with many different types of personalities. What I will say is, I think a good way to harbor This is to have a strong manager and a strong chair, knowing the different types of personalities that are on the board. And knowing that, you know, some people might really take to the pleasantries of, you know, introducing each other before the meeting and maybe talking about some stuff that's going on at home or, you know, Table Talk, like we like to say other strong managers or chairs might realize that they don't operate that type of board. And people want to get straight to the point, and they don't really care for the table talk. And they want to jump right into the important topics that need to be discussed. So I think it really comes down to strong leadership and strong managers, strong managers to really understand the types of personalities that are sitting sitting at the table with you. But at the end of the day, boards are a professional situation. So I think, if nothing else, professional, courteous courtesies and you know, pleasantries, always, you know, should always go a long way. But it's, you know, how long do you want to spend on Table Talk? And how quickly do you want to get into meetings will definitely

Robert Nordlund: 28:20

help. Yeah, well, I think that may run into your point earlier that boards for large organizations are going to function differently in the boards for small organizations. And if you're a small organization, then maybe you operate more like not necessarily a group of friends, but a group of very close neighbors. And so I can see the character being different, but I would think that some of the hallmarks, some of the Telltales you can give off, we are squared away, we're running your association. Well, you mentioned strong leadership from the chair from the matter. What about just playing starting on time published agenda, being prepared, I would think that would go a long ways to lowering the temperature of any anxiety of homeowners that might be entering the room to see what's going on.

Noah Maislin: 29:11

Under the sun being prepared is, you know, one of the biggest catalysts you could do for having a successful board meeting. If a member of the board is coming unprepared, but the others are prepared, you're often going to have to slow down the meeting to get them caught up and you know, the members that prepared for the meeting are going to resent start to resent that individual. Also, if you have a different type of board where you like, Alright, forget that person, he didn't prepare or she didn't prepare or they didn't prepare. We're just gonna move on and you know, let them figure it out and they'll catch up. That's not that's also not a great way to go because you might be missing out from some really important information from that person. We don't know what's going on in people's private life. You know, work might be crazy, kids this that, whatever it may be. So finding that balance, I think first and foremost is definitely being prepared, everybody should do everything they possibly can to be prepared for meeting because you're going to limit the resentment that might be built up through other board members. And it's also going to allow your meeting to move through a lot quicker than having to slow down and catch everybody up to speed on every point that you're going to talk about. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 30:19

I appreciate that. We are talking about the business of running an association. But you are neighbors, and you want to give them the grace of yes, they're taking their volunteer time. So you don't know. If one of their kids is sick. You just don't know if their car broke down the day before and they're not prepared. Give them grace. Be a nice human. But yes, let's move forward with the the business of running the association. Well, thank you. I feel like I'm a lucky guy being able to hear from all the experts we have on the program. Thanks for taking the time to join us on today's program. Any closing thoughts to add at this time,

Noah Maislin: 30:56

we did talk a lot about some of the pain points of being on a board and running board meetings. I will say you know, I think we addressed this pretty thoroughly. But the more you're prepared, the easier your job will be, whether it's being a board member or even just being active in a board meeting. I also would like to say my company Minutes Solutions, we recently put together a guide it's called 5 steps to better board meetings that we would love to share with, with your audience with your listeners. So hopefully you can put it in the in the notes, the show notes. And or if anybody wants to reach out to me directly or through you will need to have oh you send over a version of that to to all of your listeners to

Robert Nordlund: 31:35

Fantastic. Well for more information as Noah was suggesting, if you have follow up questions, you can reach minutes solutions at minutessolutions all run together .com. Well, we hope you learned some great HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. Look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 32:00

You've been listening to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas, you can listen to the show on our podcast website, Hoainsights.org, or subscribe on any of the most popular podcast platforms. You can also watch the show on our YouTube channel. Check the show notes for helpful links. If you like the show and want to support the work we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing that you can do is engage in the conversation. leave a question in the comment section on our YouTube videos. You can also email your questions or voice memos to podcast@reservestudy.com Or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130. If you gained any insights from the show, please do us a HUGE favor by sharing the show with other board members that you know. You can also support us by supporting the brands that support this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed by the podcast do not constitute legal advice. You'll want to consult your own legal counsel before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light Video & Marketing. With Stoke Light on your team. You will reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the shownotes to connect with Stoke Light.