Meet Steve Pell – the driving force behind BoardOutlook, a cutting-edge software platform revolutionising board evaluations and professional development. As the Managing Director, Steve doesn't just lead; he pioneers.
With a wealth of experience, Steve stands as a beacon of insight for boards and non-executive directors navigating the complex seas of governance. His expertise doesn't stop at theory; it's grounded in practicality, honed through years of refining frameworks that foster robust partnerships between boards and management.
But Steve isn't just a behind-the-scenes strategist; he's also a voice at the forefront of leadership discourse. You'll find his compelling insights regularly gracing the pages of the Australian Financial Review, where he shares his wisdom on leadership, governance, and the intricate dance of board effectiveness.
Join us as we delve more into the entrepreneurial journey of Steve, a trusted advisor and thought leader shaping the future of boardroom dynamics.
Q: Could you briefly describe yourself, your family, and your business?
On a personal level, I grew up in Melbourne before spending time living in the US and Italy. I have a wife and two young sons and enjoy running and skiing.
I started my career in finance and investment banking, where I spent time working with boards on recapitalisation and large M&A transactions across the mining and industrial sectors. Following this, I ran a successful management consulting business before starting BoardOutlook in 2018 off the back of several conversations with boards regarding their frustrations around the existing board review processes and the increasing pressures they were seeing from regulators and shareholders.
These conversations were the catalyst for the first version of our board review software product (now called BoardOutlook). We spent about six months building this, while at the same getting market feedback from every director and chair we could reach. Within this timeframe, we were able to secure three ASX20 boards that were looking for better approaches to board performance.
And then COVID hit, and while many businesses struggled during this time of uncertainty, it forced a lot of boards to rethink things digitally and substantially accelerated BoardOutlook to the point that we raised a multi-million dollar investment round from consultants, directors and other investors who deeply understand both the problems and opportunities of the space.
Since then, we’ve grown to support hundreds of boards and thousands of directors with their board processes across the Australian and New Zealand enterprise and listed markets. We also have a growing presence in the Middle East, UK, Europe and North and South America. The business currently employs 18 people and this year we’re opening an office in London to better serve our UK/EU clients.
Q: What inspired you to embark on the entrepreneurial journey?
While working in the banking/investing space with many listed businesses, I saw how easy it was to treat boards with so much reverence, as if they were infallible or had some kind of superhuman decision-making power. But when I made the move to the consulting space and spent more time working with them, the more I realised just how difficult the job that they’re charged with is, and how little support they have most of the time.
The board by design is a constraining function on the performance of every organisation. If the board doesn’t work well, the organisation generally cannot work well. In normal circumstances, great boards:
Make and don’t avoid hard decisions
Get the big decisions right
Have the most important conversations at the right time
Hire great executives and empower them
Are high accountability but low interference
We have a strong conviction that every board and organisation we work with will be better off through the use of our tools and will outperform others who do not.
But if we help boards become great, we can meaningfully improve the performance of large organisations for the benefit of:
Chairs and directors – less dysfunction, more impact
Shareholders – better returns
Executives – more empowerment, alignment and impact
Employees and society – less wastage, better use of resources
Q: What aspects of being an entrepreneur do you enjoy the most?
As someone who has done a lot of consulting throughout my career, I’ve found it enjoyable to productise our offering. I’ve found there is a huge difference between selling your time and expertise and selling a product. It’s been a challenging puzzle to put together something that works for as many people as possible and has required a lot of compromises and trade-offs. There’s a lot of work required around understanding the problems, psychology and expectations of our target audience to deliver something standardised that generates true value.
Part of this is also that we’re not playing in an existing market. We’ve created a new category, which comes with its challenges but is also highly rewarding. It means a lot when I hear feedback from clients telling us that our product has made a meaningful difference. That’s validating.
Q: What are the significant challenges you have encountered as an entrepreneur?
While COVID did accelerate our business, it was challenging in the early days. There was no clarity about what the future of the market would look like. We’d only just gone full-time in the business.
Since then, as we’ve scaled I struggled with having to say no to some clients regarding changes or customisations to the product offering. I want to solve everyone’s problems, but we do have limited time and resources.
Another challenge is moderating the views of the VC space more broadly from what was an incredibly frothy growth environment to an environment now that seems equivalently unrealistically pessimistic. I think the challenge is always maintaining your strong conviction around the business’ medium-term plan without being overly influenced by the ‘market’ noise.
Q: What motivated you to join EO?
I have a good network of enterprise-level advisors who sit on large boards and see things in the billions, as well as a pretty good network in the startup space who see things in the tens of thousands. As BoardOutlook has scaled, I’ve realised there was a gap in my network of people who were making decisions in the single-digit millions. Getting access to more of this relevant ‘scar tissue’ experience was why I joined EO.
Q: Can you share a valuable lesson you've learned from your own experience or another entrepreneur or mentor?
I’ve found that writing a strategy book and making it an internally available document has been helpful. Every time I think about strategy I try and write up the thought bubble in this online document. It not only gives context to what the strategy is today, but also where it comes from and the impetus to the current thinking. This has been particularly useful for new starters who join our executive team, as it enables them to get up to speed on years of strategy thinking in one document, where these thought processes would have otherwise been lost.
It also holds us accountable for strategic drift. We do iterate on the strategy, but this document allows us to see if we have drifted too far away from the core objectives or problems we were looking to solve.