Are you concerned about the lack of strong leadership and value demonstrated in the boardroom? Are you frustrated with under-utilized expertise sitting at the boardroom table? What about the low level of engagement and poor attendance demonstrated at meetings? You are not alone. Many boards both public and private sector are plagued with problems like these. They are all leading indicators of poor board structure, strategic plan alignment and poor operating discipline which, with a little time and organizational effort on behalf of the Board Chair and CEO or Executive Director, can be fixed easily! In a few short months your organization could reap the benefits of a supportive, strategic and engaged Board of Directors or Trustees!
Restructuring seems like a large endeavour but broken down into key activities like a current board assessment, reviews of the composition and a number of committees, the committee terms of reference and finally, strategic plan alignment, will produce a plan to align the organization’s mission and board objectives! This type of transformation will satisfy the strategic needs of the board, owners and management of your organization. Engagement, quality of board room discussion, strategic action and finally attendance will all improve. Recently a provincially funded Higher Education institution realized that its Board was not providing the type of value that it could. Though large in numbers in both membership and committees, the board suffered poor attendance and board member engagement. Agenda scope creep, member conflict and low productivity haunted the President and Board Chair to the point that hiring a governance consultant became a necessity before it became too late. Post review and restructuring work and with a dramatic reduction in numbers (both committee and members) a transformation of the board is now underway. One that is more aligned, engaged and contributing value to the school!
So back to you…If you see the same symptoms mentioned above, the first and most important step is to acquire an independent faciliator to start the review process! Engage your Governance committee with a challenge to renew the Board structure.
Energy Management for small business owners in Ontario…How does one optimize it to improve profitability?
How does a small business owner utilize the provincial government incentives to conserve, time shift and perhaps even generate energy in the Province of Ontario? Well apparently it’s all here for you! Wind, solar, and even small hydro opportunities are all out there for consumers to consider for offset their electrical demand. Or so that’s how the Ontario Government (Ontario Power Authority) has presented the options to small and medium sized industrial users. I think we all understand however that it’s not exactly that straight forward and one really needs to start with the fundamentals and assess their demand in context of their individual business operations. But what questions do we to ask before we consider implementing changes? For one you need to know your demand profile - is my electrical demand continuous and not interruptible? Is there a energy conservation plan that can be applied to offset my peak high cost periods? Are there energy conversion options (multi fuel) to reduce the type of energy consumption at different periods? Can I load shift to change the pattern of use and save money? Understanding your business energy demand picture is the very first step towards improving costs and taking advantage of the incentives offered by your local utility.
Here in Ontario the Ontario Power Authority does do a few things right though. The Authority website is a great resource to users to investigate savings opportunities. Start with its home page and scroll through all the different programs available for consumers. Next check out the Hydro One website and review their programs. Some of the programs include:
- FiT and Micro FiT
- ICI OPA Industrial Accelerator Program for grid connected Users
- Ontario Clean Energy Benefit offered by Hydro One-One
- OPA/Hydro One Audit program incentives
Many owners think electrical demand costs cannot be optimized and that these programs really don’t fit their needs. Not only is that incorrect but many businesses, maybe some of your competitors have taken advantage of the incentives to improve their energy demand and costs. Now that’s something we need to pay attention to!
