Thirty-five years on, the CDC widens its lens

Three days into the Company Directors’ Course at Waiwhetū Marae, Brent Reihana MInstD found an unexpected point of connection.

“I’m glad I did come here,” he says. “Seeing some of the photos of my tūpuna in this marae made me feel comfortable.”

The work around him was familiar territory for the Company Directors’ Course – financial statements, risk, strategy, directors’ duties, board papers and the line between governance and management.

Reihana was thinking about those fundamentals in terms of mokopuna.

“The cohort has a single mindset of increasing the value of their particular organisations, but its kaupapa is mokopuna thinking. It’s not thinking about profit. It’s about how we’re going to take our mokopuna into the future.”

In the 35th year of the Company Directors’ Course, that perspective is now part of a new expression of the programme.

The first public Company Directors’ Course Kaupapa Māori was delivered at Waiwhetū Marae in Lower Hutt in August. It carries the same CDC curriculum and learning outcomes, and incorporates tikanga, whakawhanaungatanga and te ao Māori throughout the week. The course is open to Māori and non-Māori participants. 

For Anita Murdoch, the setting brought governance back to questions of values.

Murdoch owns a recruitment business, is a trustee of the Star Boating Club Charitable Trust and co-chairs Te Awe Māori Business Network in Wellington. After what she describes as a difficult couple of years, taking a week away from her usual routine was a chance to invest in her own capability.

“To be in a Māori environment, it just reminds us about our kaupapa, our values and the things that are important to us as Māori,” she says.

“What are our values and how do we instil that in our work?”

The week still demanded close attention to the mechanics of governance. Reihana recalls a financial exercise in which he and another participant looked at the same inventory figures and reached different conclusions.

They brought different organisational experience to the numbers.

“Having them see different things really added value to my view of what we were talking about,” he says.

Without being given the full organisational context, each had to work from what they knew and test their assumptions against someone else’s.

“We’ve got a whole range of different things coming all of the time and we’ve got to use different eyes, different skills and different ears to look at them.”

Leland Ruwhiu MInstD arrived thinking he had only “dabbled” in governance. Over the week, he began recognising how much of the course connected with work he had already done through kōhanga reo, kura, senior management teams and other communities.

One discussion about the distinction between governance and management gave him an image for something he had previously understood less formally.

Management can require precision and closeness to the detail. A director also has to know when to pull back.

Ruwhiu thought of 'te kahu' – the hawk high above the ground, able to see the terrain.

“That’s the reverse way of coming in with some of the Māori values that have helped me see the roles and responsibilities of those on governing boards,” he says.

The legal and regulatory responsibilities of directorship were less familiar.

Ruwhiu says the course gave him “a huge appreciation for the amount of risk involved in putting your hand up to support organisations or companies”.

“If I were in those spaces, there are some yards I’ve got to do to keep myself safe and accountable to the role.”

Leilua Ailaomai has deep ties to Waiwhetū. She grew up around the marae, attended kōhanga reo and kura kaupapa Māori, and later moved into work at Te Tūāpapa o te Waiwhetū, where her roles have included office manager and secretary to the board of governance.

“I want to take away all the information I can so my iwi and hapū can benefit from it.”

Asked what she would say to someone considering the course, she says: “Take the opportunity, learn as much as you can so you can give back to the hapori through decision-making and governance.”

Sam La Hood MInstD had learnt about governance through not-for-profit organisations. She had spent time building capability while contributing to boards and wanted the chance to learn alongside a cohort with a wider range of experience.

She also knew what it felt like to learn in places where the material did not quite reflect her.

“I’ve been in spaces where you’re fighting to see yourself in the learning that you’re doing,” she says.

“I think it’s really important with governance to have these spaces where you can learn as Māori, and I’ve not been in a space where I’ve been able to do that for board work.”

Lara Manarangi-Trott MInstD, of Cook Islands and Ngāpuhi heritage came to the course with a different question. Late last year, she returned to New Zealand after 13-and-a-half years working overseas. Considering what might come next, she saw the CDC as one way to understand whether governance could be part of that future.

“I think I’ve gained an understanding and a belief in what I bring to the table as a potential director of a board,” she says.

She was learning where her existing skills fitted and where she still had work to do. “Self-affirming is a good way of describing what it is.”

The week began with pōwhiri, te reo Māori was present throughout and, Manarangi-Trott says, people arrived with different levels of familiarity with both language and tikanga.

“We’re immersed in te reo throughout the course, but there are accommodations for people like me who are only at the beginning of their te reo journey. Having that as the context for talking about governance has been really special.”

Rutger Keijser MInstD had been waiting for a course with that combination.

His wife completed the Company Directors’ Course 17 years ago and regarded it as one of the best courses she had done. When Keijser considered following her, he was looking for something that brought another perspective to the material.

“It was rather focused on a Western style of thinking,” he says of her experience. “I said, if I want to do something like that, it needs to blend kaupapa Māori with what you’ve learned.”

When the Waiwhetū course became available, “I thought, that’s exactly what I was looking for”.

“You can feel the wairua flowing through the building, through the way it’s been built up and through the people who live here.”

Kemp Reweti MInstD had been encouraged by his board for several years to complete the CDC. As a chief executive leading a national organisation, he wanted to consolidate skills he was already using and learn alongside other professionals.

“It’s important we’re able to do courses like this in a kaupapa Māori environment, certainly under the auspices of tikanga,” he says.

The opportunity was to learn the IoD’s principles while having them “underpinned by our own mātauranga” and considered through a te ao Māori lens.

Ewan Heron brought another perspective. As a Pākehā from Glasgow working in the governance sector, he was familiar with many of the ideas being discussed but had mostly encountered them through professional conversations.

At Waiwhetū, he heard those ideas discussed through people’s experience.

“This really has solidified my understanding of it,” he says.

“When you’re actually hearing people talk about it and the impact their decisions make, and the whole whānau aspect of governance being attached to it, it solidifies that and makes you think about things in a different way.

“To actually work within that sphere, within Māoridom, I need to understand it better. This has given me a great opportunity to hear directly from people about their lived experiences.”

Thirty-five years after the first Company Directors’ Course, the fundamentals remain demanding. Directors still need to understand finance, risk, strategy and their legal responsibilities. They still need to recognise when they are too close to the detail and when they do not know enough. They still have to make decisions with incomplete information and challenge what appears obvious.

At Waiwhetū, those questions were also being considered through whakapapa, tikanga, whānau and mokopuna.

The same financial figures looked different through someone else’s experience. The distinction between management and governance found expression in te kahu looking across the landscape. A photograph on a marae wall connected one participant with his tūpuna. Another participant spoke about how much he still had to understand.

Reihana sees value in holding more than one perspective at once.

“I’ve always said that Māori had to be bicultural,” he says. “I think we need to look at everything in that bicultural lens rather than a monocultural one.

“I think that gives us a greater depth.”