#14 - Sharyn Broer, CEO Meals on Wheels, on Leading with Purpose in the Non-for-Profit Sector

Sharyn Broer is a highly experienced and strategic executive leader in the national not-for-profit food and health sector. In her current joint roles as CEO of Meals on Wheels South Australia and Meals on Wheels Australia President, Sharyn has a passion for improving the health and wellbeing of communities through the delivery of high-quality community services and programs.  

Sharyn leads South Australia's largest community-based volunteer organisation and is responsible for 80 branches, 7000 volunteers and 60 staff delivering 4000 daily meals and supporting 11,000 people annually. In her national role, Sharyn was instrumental in the development of Australian meal guidelines promoting improved nutrition, balance and healthy choice and in influencing aged care reform to ensure communities can benefit from services like Meals on Wheels well into the future.  

Sharyn was a former Telstra Businesswoman of the Year Finalist and is leading the transformation of  Meals on Wheels South Australia to expand its social impact through new service models and markets.  

In this episode, Sharyn Broer shares her professional journey, values and characteristics that made her succeed in her career and become a CEO. Sharyn also shares her thought process on culture, leadership, life and Meals on Wheels' purpose and challenges. 

Where to find Sharyn Broer:

LinkedIn
Meals on Wheels South Australia

Recommended books in this episode:

• The power of one by Bryce Courtenay
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
• The motive by Patrick Lencioni
• Design a Better Business by  Patrick Van Der Pijl, Justin Lokitz and Lisa Kay Solomon
• Driven by Purpose by Anne Robinson, Felicity Errington, and Stephen Judd

Join the conversation on Synergy IQ LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram (@synergyiq) and please support other leaders by liking, subscribing and sharing this podcast.

Access SynergyIQ Website to get to know more about us.
Say hello to our host Daniel on LinkedIn.

Transcript

Synergy IQ: 0:00

Welcome to creating synergy where we explore what it takes to transform. Whether you are transforming yourself, your team, your business, or your community will connect you with insightful and challenging leaders who share their stories of successful transformations to give you practical ideas for your own journey. Join us for another insightful episode of creating synergy.

Daniel Franco: 0:24

So welcome to the creating synergy podcast. My name is Daniel Franco. I am your host and today we have the beautiful Sharon Broer who is the CEO of meals on wheels. So a little bit about Meals on Wheels. So I should say a little bit about Sharyn. Sharyn is a highly experienced and strategic executive later in the national non for profit, food and health sector. Her current joint roles of CEO of meals on wheels in South Australia and Meals on Wheels Australia president Sharon has the passion for improving the health and well being of communities through the delivery of high quality community service and programs. Sharyn leads South Australia's largest community based volunteer organization, and is responsible for 80 branches, 7000 volunteers and 60 staff delivering 4000 daily meals and supporting 11,000 people annually. In a national role with the iconic organization, Sharynwas instrumental in the evelopment of Australian meal uidelines promoting improved utrition balanced and healthy hoice and influencing aged care eform to ensure communities can enefit from the services like eals on Wheels well into the uture. Personally, she was a ormer Telstra businesswoman of he year finalist. And Sharyn is eading the transformation of eals on wheels to expand its ocial impact through new ervice models and markets. elcome to the show, Sharyn, hank you for being here. hanks, Daniel. So tell us a ittle bit for the listeners out here. I guess. Not everyone ould know Meals on Wheels. I now I do. I grew up with Meals n Wheels pretty much down the oad from me so but can you just ive us a little bit of ackground about Meals on Wheels nd what you guys do for the ommunity

Sharyn Broer: 2:14

For sure. So Meals on Wheels has a vision of well nourished people thriving in their communities. And we started in South Australia in the 1950s. And we had a really inspirational founder, woman by the name of Doris Taylor, she was a wheelchair user, she'd been living with a disability since her late childhood. And she she really understood the connection between eating well and being well. And, in fact, she had seen that people had been moving into institutions say in South Australia, we had a really awfully named place called the home for the incurable, which was what the Julia fasting does in the 1940s and 1950s. They call it the home for the incurable. And she also went to glenside mental hospital. And what the people there told her was that oftentimes, people who lived on their own, weren't eating well. They became unwell, they might have had depression or other sort of considerations. And, and they moved into full time care. And then once they started eating better, they actually improved but they'd lost their home, they didn't actually have anywhere to move out to and so they became institutionalized. And so she's all, you know, surely, we need to do better than that as an organization. So she so she said about organizing Meals on Wheels, so Meals on Wheels, was a concept that came out of the UK during the Blitz, and people didn't have homes and kitchens to cook in. So the women's role volunteer service got some some vans, and they fitted them out as mobile kitchens and they would drive around the bombed out areas and so that the term Meals on Wheels was coined. And, and they continued on that service after the war years supporting particularly older people and to live at home. And of course, this was before we had microwave ovens. And you know, there wasn't a lot of frozen TV dinners or anything like that. So this idea of Meals on Wheels just burgeoned around the Commonwealth, and particularly that sort of Western European and North America in the 1950s. And Doris Taylor was the one who brought it to Australia and and to South Australia in particular. So we sort of we grew out of our first kitchen in Port Adelaide, in in 1954 delivered eight meals to people. So the basic concept of Meals on Wheels is that we have a community of people who have difficulty shopping and cooking for themselves for a range of reasons it could be age, disability, post hospital, you know, they've just become a bit rundown and they need a bit of help for a little while. They might be living with a disability, they might be a carer. So there's a whole lot of reasons that might be just a short term need or a long term need. But people can't cook and shop for themselves. And so what Meals on Wheels does is we do that part for them, we, we create a three course meal that meets all their nutritional targets, particularly for older people. And most of our meals are prepared by volunteers. And they're all delivered by volunteers. We've got ad outlets around South Australia, who who deliver that lovely meal, warm companionship and a smile and some support checking on people make sure that they're doing okay, we do that Monday to Friday, you know, every week of the year, and it makes a huge difference to the community such a purpose led businesses in it.

Daniel Franco: 5:51

Yeah, has as someone who needs your service find out about Meals on Wheels? Or how do you I guess, get in touch with these people who do need it.

Sharyn Broer: 6:03

There's a range of different channels, a lot of people, it will be through word of mouth, through a knowledge of the organization in the local community site with 80 branches that you know, it's down the street, you know, a lot of people drive pastor Meals on Wheels, they kind of know who we are. But for those who don't we have, we connect directly with their market through website, phone calls, we do occasionally do some TV campaigns or other sort of publicity. The there's a lot of different government programs that subsidize the cost of the service for PayPal, and it kind of depends on your your age group. And you need to you know which program might suit you, and the majority of people who use our service 80 plus year old people. And so they are eligible, many of them for support through the Commonwealth home support program. And so there is a sort of a pathway to that service through a government contact center. But what we find most people come and chat with us first, we'll work out whether we have a service that's going to meet their need. And then we connect them with the government program that might assist them with the payment for the service.

Daniel Franco: 7:21

Brilliant. So it's like a subscription model.

Sharyn Broer: 7:24

It's it's very much a direct fee for service models, so so the consumers generally will get three or four meal deliveries a week, some people need as many as seven meals, but not not everybody does. And and so we sort of set up their services, they might have a swallowing difficulty or particular dietary requirement, we make sure they're getting the right food for them. And then the meals get delivered. And at the end of an on a fortnightly basis, we we do a charge in arrears to them. So the consumers currently pay about two thirds of the cost up to three quarters of the cost of the service. And then government funding and fundraising income and other things kind of offset the the remainder of that.

Daniel Franco: 8:13

So recently, you've been Meals on Wheels has been in the news, I guess, about that government funding, there's been a big spruce to the funding there as well.

Sharyn Broer: 8:23

We have had a campaign nationally to raise the amount of funding to Meals on Wheels services. And there's sort of a there's a range, it's an interesting program, it grew out of a program that was administered by the states. And so each jurisdiction kind of did their own thing. And then within jurisdictions, there didn't seem to be any great sense as to how one service might receive a certain price for a meal delivery service. And another service might get a very different prices, it was very opaque as to how all of that happened. But what we do know is that Meals on Wheels services nationally tend to get paid at the lower end of the range, so that the national average is around nine to $12 a mu, and most Meals on Wheels services are getting funded at $4.85. If they deliver on all of the the outputs that their grant agreement says that they should, and a few of them are falling short. So there's a little bit of cribbing of funding that way. But we paid it right at the low end of the of the range. And what that means is that the the extra cost has to be borne by the older person who's generally on a fixed income quite financially vulnerable and what would be already getting their money from the government. Yeah, and we know that that means people make they make compromises. So they might actually, you know, benefit from having five meals provided to them per week, and it's only five meals out of, you know, arguably 21 that you might be having in the way five meals a week. is costing people more than 10% of their pension if they're on the full age pension. And so don't they'll make decisions that are, oh, I'll just get three. And then they'll make one meal last two days or two meals and nutrition jobs. Yes. So that's, you know, and as a society, if we've got poorly nourished older people, their quality of life slower, their health status is worse, they're more likely to fall, they're more likely to be presenting to hospital, they're more likely to be admitted to hospital. And their recuperation period is going to be a lot longer and and also, they're more likely to need more support and care services than they would if they were better nourished. So it's that preventative health system. Yeah, never

Daniel Franco: 10:44

thought about it. Yeah, brilliant.

Sharyn Broer: 10:45

Yes. So that was that that's really our mission. So the so we've been campaigning for an increase in in funding, we think it could be as much as$80 million a year for the federal government to do that adjustment. We haven't got there yet. We've just had some news from the Minister for our senior Australians and aging that they're reviewing the pricing. So that's, that's somewhat optimistic, but I think they need another 12 months, and many of our members nationally are really up against it. We have also been able to generate some specific funding for COVID costs. So a lot of Meals on Wheels services were hit really early in the COVID pandemic with extra demand and extra cost of service delivery. And we were able to achieve a $40 million boost for bail services during the pandemic, which has, has certainly helped. But of course, you know, most of us with Meals on Wheels there, say had additional funding paid in in April and May. And by the time we got to the 30th of June that that money had gone on doing the extra work that we needed, it was it wasn't going to help us with our ongoing costs. And it certainly certainly we couldn't pass on any cost reductions to the consumers.

Daniel Franco: 12:13

Yeah. Such a purpose led business. Absolutely love it. So tell us a little bit about your journey. Have you always worked in nonprofits is yes, it is love to learn how, yeah, grind through the ranks.

Sharyn Broer: 12:28

So I graduated as an occupational therapist, and my first role was in an organization called domiciliary care. And I was a clinician and a case manager. So really, my career has been always in supporting older people and people with disabilities to live as independently as possible at home. So domiciliary care was a state government entity. And so I was a public servant, and I was in, in that role for was working for domiciliary care for about 20 years, before I came to Meals on Wheels, so I kind of described that I had three career stages. So So occupational therapy was attractive to me, because it was really practical, you could you could see that, you know, people were having some functional difficulty, you know, living independently living a good life and, and occupational therapy, equipped me with skills to be able to support, you know, to either compensate for that function that people didn't have or to regain function that, that they needed to live the way that they wanted. I'm not quite sure why I gravitated towards home and community care and in aged care, but it really resonated with me, I had, I had a stint as a acute hospital, clinician, and then as a manager of occupational therapy in, in an acute hospital. And and I discovered that, that that really wasn't for me that the little bit to do with the working environment in the sort of politics is a bit of a pecking order in, in acute teaching hospitals and allied health isn't at the top of that tree. I don't know whether things have changed much since then. But believe it has been no and I and the other thing that I found about it was certainly as a clinician, that you you might have been interacting with a patient for a couple of days, at most, maybe a week, and you'd be working towards the discharge, but you wouldn't actually get to connect with them or understand them as a person and and working in domiciliary care with a caseload of consumers at one stage I was running a program for adults with disabilities long before we had the Indy is helping you know, helping to fund those kind of services. And but you were able to develop a rapport and a relationship with people and you could really say over time The difference that your involvement was was having in their quality of life. And so that really was was a positive thing. Because I think what drives me that kind of, you know, what's my purpose, my purpose is positive impact, making a difference and actually being able to say, you know, I did this and that meant they, they gained that, and yeah, there was, there was a benefit there. So I had had this kind of three 310 years stages in my career. So first 10 years was very much sort of clinical work, working around, particularly in the northern suburbs of Adelaide as as an occupational therapist, and then became really interested in in leadership and management as a career path rather than specialty clinical work. And one of the reasons for that is that in South Australia, and particularly in public service, there was a real ceiling on how far you could go as a specialist clinician, and you could, you know, you might have been the statewide expert on spinal cord injuries. And there was a, you know, a level of classification that you could get to, and then that was basically it. And there was one

Daniel Franco: 16:13

that goes with any Yeah, really,

Sharyn Broer: 16:15

yeah, it was really, it was a very flat structure. And so the alternative was go out into private practice. And that was a bit sort of risky, and not something that I was keen to do, I was more interested in working in a public service, because that's where many of the disadvantage most vulnerable most disadvantaged people were. So I started doing more in supervisory and leadership roles, did more training, you know, went and got educated about about management and leadership. And alongside that round, about the same time, my husband and I had a retail business. So we were sort of, we had a little bit of fun funds behind us from an inheritance. And, and this was kind of his hobby that Oh, so this was in the 1990s. And you might remember some little pieces of cardboard that had photos of sports people on them and says, there was a sports

Daniel Franco: 17:16

sports card. Yeah, yes. So I've got folders and folders full of them

Sharyn Broer: 17:20

right. Beside you would have possibly been one of our customers. So we do so we had. So he had been interested in it. Probably for a few years before it boomed in Australia. And and, and we both worked in retail, so we kind of thought, yeah, that's what we'll do, we'll set up a shop, we know, we know what we're doing. But we really didn't test so we so we went into this into this business at at the top of a boom cycle. And within three years, it had absolutely bottomed out. And we we managed to leave the business without becoming bankrupt. paid off all of that creditors and, and all of that took took a bit of effort, but that was one you know, they say you sometimes your biggest lessons as a leader and as a manager, you learn from things that you did wrong. No. And and so for us, the that business and particularly for me as a leader was okay, what did we get wrong? We didn't have a business plan, we actually didn't even know what a business plan was we you know, cash flow forecast, what big entrepreneurs Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 18:36

just figure it out as we go,

Sharyn Broer: 18:37

what's cash flow forecasting? And, and then, you know, pricing structures and things were kind of it was kind of interesting, the way that people in South Australia in that business was sort of determining value and what customers which were determining as value. Getting good advisors. So we had, we had not particularly good business advisors, I think, you know, an accountant was recommended to us who did do some small business things, but really wasn't able to give us the advice that we learned or the service that we needed. Time such

Daniel Franco: 19:16

an underrated Yeah, topic. Yeah. The same that you build around you. Yeah, there's a there's a, there's Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? This is going off on a tangent, not really explaining. He often gets his biography. He often gets asked the question, but you're a self made, man. How did you get to where you, you know, and his responses on that a self made man, I did it with the team. Right? That's always his response. And my team was of the highest quality. Yeah. And so that's always something that sort of resonated with me about building a business building a team. It's about the quality of people that you use to, to their experience. Next But yes, yeah. You because You can't as a leader, you cannot know it all

Sharyn Broer: 20:04

Nay, nay. And we did we just we didn't know what we didn't know, you know, we, we we just are because you've worked in retail you clearly know how to run a retail business but we didn't we had to learn about marketing we had to learn about Contract Management, Employment, you know, industrial relations

Daniel Franco: 20:23

employing pre foundation is so much so much to it. It was it was a way to make mistakes. Yeah,

Sharyn Broer: 20:30

it was really scary. So it's so as that business was concluding I'd I'd worked my way up in, in the public service.

Daniel Franco: 20:40

Just go back to the card. Sorry. Have you still got some of those cards? Because there's an influencer on Instagram, LinkedIn, all the rest. His name's Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of him. Some people love him. Some people don't. It is one of those things. But he's, he's out there at the moment right now in today's world saying baseball cards, basketball cards, football or whatever, whatever they are, the value of these are going to skyrocket. And he's saying it's almost another, you know. We've got some curtains and folders somewhere. Who will pay a pristine dollar you go on eBay now in the market starting to rise? Oh, that's interesting. Well, we might have to go out and have a lot of things for that. Maybe shouldn't have told you that.

Sharyn Broer: 21:29

So, yes, so so we had the business. And that sort of went up and went down i i'd had a goal that I was going to be a chief occupational therapist in a teaching hospital by the time I was 30. And I achieved that goal, and realized that I just didn't like the working environment didn't feel like home to me. And luckily, it was a temporary secondment. And it was within the same health service structure that the domiciliary care was in, so I still had my substantive job in home care. And, and I was, you know, still on the same payroll and all of that. So it's pretty easy. When they advertise the chief rotate job, honestly, I'm not applying. It's not It's not for me, I don't want to do it. And I caught up with my other colleagues and I said, Can I come home, just want to come back to my old job now. That's what I want to do. And and we were ready to start a family. And so I knew that I'd be able to get the work life balance and flexible work conditions in that in that job. But we were really interesting public sector organization, because we changed the way that we operated. And there was a there was a government policy in the 90s called funder purchase or provide a split. And there's a lot of new public management theories coming out, Jeff Kenner, in Victoria with was at the forefront of a lot of this stuff. And it was basically, you know, government steers that doesn't row so government shouldn't necessarily be delivering services. And they did a whole lot of competitive tendering and contracting out and stuff like that. So we restructured our organization so that there was one part of the service that was holding the funds. And then there were service delivery units that operated as fully funded, ring fenced business units, and we had one for Allied Health, one for equipment, and one for care workers, personal carers, and at one stage or another, I lead each one of those and some of them I lead at the same time. So with a couple of other really dynamic women, in fact, one one or two of them that I'm still working with now because I've brought them to, to my team at Meals on Wheels,

Daniel Franco: 23:43

TV great.

Sharyn Broer: 23:44

We were able to set up an allied health business unit where we provided services, to domiciliary care, but also to other government funded agencies. So they needed a dietitian for one day a week we could provide that or if they just needed an assessment done. A speech pathologist could go out and assess someone's swallowing. We had, you know, we sent a physiotherapist to Port Augusta. She's to do three days a fortnight, Appert podcaster, and we had locums services and things like that. So it was really interesting. And we just grew, we grew the number of positions that we had. We we grew and in fact that

Daniel Franco: 24:24

entrepreneur

Sharyn Broer: 24:25

Yeah, yeah. And that business unit still alive. So domiciliary care was taken over by rural district nursing service rdns, a year or so ago. And they're still operating therapy solutions, which is the Allied Health business unit that we started with a little bit of about 25 years ago. So yes, so that was that was pretty cool. So so it was a really safe way to be an entrepreneur. I didn't have any skin in the game. I mean, I was a permanent employee, and we had staff who were on term contracts or other things. So it's you know, I realize that if I didn't do my job, well, these people wouldn't have their jobs. So I was pretty driven by that. And we had another business unit to do home modifications and aids and equipment. And so I ran that for quite a while. And and, and that grew. So that was sort of, you know, we had a merger and the Metropolitan domiciliary care services all became one organization. And so then I became the manager of all the of all of the clinical services, all of the Allied Health Services for the for the metro area. And this is a big organization, about 8000 clients, probably about 300 staff, I think, might have even been larger than that. And, and fairly big budget as well. So became a clinical lead, then I became the general manager of client services, then I became the executive director of domiciliary care, and reporting to the chief executive of the department who reported to the Minister so starting to do ministerial briefings and things, what do you need just on that?

Daniel Franco: 26:13

What do you think was the key characteristic to your growth in those roles? If you had to stand out above the rest to grow? Yeah, what would be some of those key characteristics that you felt?

Sharyn Broer: 26:29

That's a really great question, I think, for me, so what, you know, there were competitive selection processes all the time to get through there. So why did I Why did I get the gig and not somebody else?

Daniel Franco: 26:45

behavior skills, was it your technical skills, a bit of

Sharyn Broer: 26:48

I think was a bit of a mix? So one, was customer focus, actually understanding what was it? What were the services we were delivering? How did they need to deliver it, and there's a, there's a concept called clinical governance, that's really important for quality and safety in, in, in health in aged care. And so I was quite strong on on that sort of, you know, professional development across the spectrum of services that we were delivering. And then I think it was business now, actually, applying sensible budgeting, costing, efficiency. You know, at one stage I, I ran an efficiency drive, which reduced our waiting lists by 20%, or something like that, you know, so there were those sorts of things, which was in public service, you have to always do more with less. And I think I had some runs on the board for doing that.

Daniel Franco: 27:51

You thought outside the square? Yeah. to new ways of working?

Sharyn Broer: 27:55

Yeah. And I think to the, the interpersonal relationships, so I was known as being you know, somebody you could work with somebody who would, you know, have have firm ideas, but but would adapt in the face of new information and, you know, be able to negotiate and, and actually understand, what's the what's the thing we're trying to achieve here? What's, what is important, or the important thing is that the people that we're trying to deliver service to get the the most people get the access to the most service in the most efficient way, the end, it's a professional service that's going to, you know, resolve the problem. Yeah, that was the most important thing. And then everything else was just what how do we how do we get there? And how do you work with different teams of people to achieve that, so that so that

Daniel Franco: 28:49

that was really being a workable person, someone was, that you can work with is such a foundational skills. So there's people that come to me sit down, look, I'm looking to grow my career, what do I do? My, what's some of your advice, and it's my first piece of advice that I think I always give to people is learn how to work with people, care about people understand people show empathy, show and listen, learn and offer value to those people. And then you start to see you're automatically flourish. You just got to change your perspective of what I know. And what I can deliver. Yeah. to how do I serve?

Sharyn Broer: 29:28

That's right. And I think the other thing for me was seeking feedback and listening to advice, listen, you know, actually trying to adapt. So, you know, often I'd have, you know, performance review or whatever, and often I would have actually asked to have it, and I'd get some feedback in it might be, you know, 99% positive and they'd be that 1% that was, you know, they'd find something. Yeah. And so I just completely ignore the 99% positive stuff. And just focusing on Oh, why did and there was a time when I was getting feedback that I wasn't actually demonstrating empathy. And I was much too task focused and just sort of, you know, treading on people's feelings much. And so I really had to step back and go, Oh, hang on, I don't think I'm that kind of a person at all. But how's that? How am I behaving? How, how's that coming over? And what do I need to modify to sort of, you know, achieve that, that better rapport with people. So, yeah, so that was, that was kind of interesting. So I've got, so I've got to the top of the tree of domiciliary care couldn't go any further in, in South Australia, right at the time that the department was restructuring their executive director roles. So I'd been acting in my substantive tenured position was like, maybe for pay grades, you know, below where I'd got to, and I did this race structure, and eight positions, were going to become four and they had all these tenured senior executives, so there was absolutely no job for me at that level. And there wasn't even necessarily one at the next level down, even though demonstrated by my ability to do that work. And, and also, I realized that the closer I got to the, you know, the, the decision maker, because I always want to be at the decision making table, that's, that's the other thing you want to have want to have influence. And, but I kind of got there. And what I realized was, my job had not had become a lot less about delivering quality services to the community of that stage, Metropolitan Adelaide. And it was much more about keeping the minister's face off the front page of the advertiser. And that was not motivating though, that dual purpose lead person did not inspire me. And in fact, I was starting to say some of the real strengths of the organization that I'd been part of, you know, for nearly 20 years at that point, those things were starting to be dismantled. And I just thought I don't want to be the leader who has to disband this wonderful organization that that I've been part of building. So I started looking outside of government. And and I applied for a job at a council didn't even get a shortlist on that one not. And, and then I saw that the the job at Meals on Wheels had come up. And it was just a really beautiful alignment between my experience and knowledge and skill session. And values. And what Meals on Wheels was looking forward the board of Meals on Wheels was looking for and what sort of organization at

Daniel Franco: 32:48

what can you expand on that? I mean, yeah, we do a lot of work with values. Yeah, understanding that at sites and under, it's something we often talk about, but we don't actually really connect to

Sharyn Broer: 32:57

Yes, so. So I've got, I guess, some of my core values, integrity, which you want every business person to have, but integrity is the absolute driver of me. compassion.

Daniel Franco: 33:11

So when you say integrity, yeah. Can you expand on? How? What do you mean? How do you act? Sure, as a result of the

Sharyn Broer: 33:20

so, for me, integrity is absolutely that it's just like the bedrock. So if I say I'll do it, I'll do it. It's so say what you mean mean, what you say and behave according accordingly. So follow it follow through on, on what you're doing. But in intrinsically, it also means coming from a place where you're trying to get the best outcome, which was like, do the greater good. So not really trying to, you know, some decisions I make might not actually be the greatest thing for Sharon Broer. But if it's the greatest hing for the organization, or he or the people who are being erved by the organization, then hat's the right thing to do. So t's, it's sort of fun following n an ethical path. But, you now, for me, if somebody said, h, yeah, you know, Sharon Broer if she says, If she makes commitment, you know, you know that she'll follow through o it. She doesn't Welch on ideals you know, she's she's, she' completely ethical

Daniel Franco: 34:29

Yeah [inaudible audio] your own brain. Yes. In the process. Yeah. Integrity is something that is a core value of mine as well. And there's, there's a, there's an element of no matter how much you might benefit from a certain situation. The way I the way I explain it best is, if I'm going to benefit from the situation, but someone is going to be affected by it in a negative way that they shouldn't be affected by it, then that's, we don't go there. We don't even think about it. And it's true to your core and then Even if you do make a decision that is in the spur of the moment, you can, it doesn't feel right. Yeah, there's something wrong. And you go, No, no, no, we need to.

Sharyn Broer: 35:09

Well, we had an example. And just a couple of hours, probably a month or two ago, we talked earlier about how we've been driving some extra funding from the Meals on wheels, and that there was some more money on the table for COVID. And I put in an additional submission, because Meals on Wheels is say, being at the low end, we got double our funding, but double, not very much is still not very much. We actually hadn't even got up to the national average. Wanted to Yeah, so I knew I needed I knew that we were spending money hand over fist trying to deliver a safe service. And, and so I had to do this extra application. And the the format of it was bit complicated. And so eventually, I got a call from the Department of Health. And they said, Look, you know, we're looking at your application, and we understand the need for the funding, but it's a really big ask. So we think we'll probably be able to give you about 50% of what you've asked for, okay, Nate shot me through an email to talk about it. And and they misread the spreadsheet that we'd sent through. And they were offering us something like $1.4 million, more

Daniel Franco: 36:20

than we actually actually

Sharyn Broer: 36:22

needed and asked for, and I had, so I had this, you know, I have this dilemma, because I'm thinking, Oh, if we get that funding, the contract conditions are such that we probably won't need to give it back. But also, we don't need it. And so it was a no brainer for me. So I kind of thought, I guess I have to tell them that they've made a mistake. And and then I, you know, I checked in with a couple of board members, so I just need you to know that. I've, I've told them that, you know, they've miscalculated and we don't need that extra funding. And so you know, the contract is going to be for what we asked for not not not for what they thought we needed. And that's going to cost Meals on Wheels, potentially, you know, over a million dollars. And I said not you've done exactly what we wanted you to do. That's That's why we hired you

Daniel Franco: 37:12

such a that's such a good story in. Because if you're taking that, then it's effectively another organization or not for profit or whatever that is missing out. Absolutely. So yes, yeah. So I don't thank you. Yeah, for the community. Yeah. And, you know, taxpayers, we're all taxpayers.

Sharyn Broer: 37:36

We don't we don't want money going there. So yeah, integrities really fun.

Daniel Franco: 37:40

I promise you the 100%.

Sharyn Broer: 37:43

That would have been? Yeah, that would have would have had to have had some challenges around how do we met? How do we actually manage that. But on the plus side, I would have said, Well, the only way you know we'll be able to spend that is to cut the price to the consumers, which we'd really like to do. But we don't want to do it this year and have to jack it back up again next year. Because that's really unfair on on people as well. So, so, yes, so we so we got to got to apply for the job at Meals on Wheels. And one of the things I'd known about Meals on Wheels, because there was in South Australia, if you for years and years, if you were an older person or a person with disability, and you wanted to live in your own home. Generally, there were three services, who if they clubbed together, could could provide you with a great level of support. And it was domiciliary care, district nurse and Meals on Wheels. So Dom Care. So the three the three services didn't really trade in each other's patchwork, but worked really well in in partnership. So I knew that Meals on Wheels was there to support people to live independently at home. So that's what had been driving me through my career really good fit there. And but a lot of things about meals on wheels were different. So it was my first nonprofit organization, it was my first ci gig as a first time i was reporting directly to a board and Meals on Wheels has much bigger geographic footprint and a bigger workforce. And the predominant people in that workforce are volunteers. And so that's a really different a different environment to be to be working in. But the the board knew that there was some changes coming up with the way that different government programs are going to be constructed and they really wanted somebody who understood inside out how all of that stuff work and may coming from an organization that had been funded through the same program and also having the connections and relationships in government would sort of made it a really good fish. Yeah,

Daniel Franco: 39:49

brilliant. So well done. Thank you. amazing journey. How have you found your time at Meals on Wheels, I guess yeah. Have you ever I remember we've spoken previously and you said, You've really grown and what is that? What does that growth and transformation look like?

Sharyn Broer: 40:08

It's an interesting thing, because a lot of it's below the tip of the iceberg that you that you can always use. Yeah. So So I came into an organization that was probably in a bit of a time warp in terms of organizational capability, and in the way that we do things, when in 19, what was it? 2001? Did I come 2010? When I started, we had an organization that probably had a culture that was more like a 1980s, maybe early 1990s sort of culture. So it was,

Daniel Franco: 40:45

what does that look like? Is there still some cultures like that?

Sharyn Broer: 40:48

Yeah, so So some of the things that I observed was that we were a very volunteer centric organization. So we would make decisions based on what the volunteers believed was good and right for the volunteers, rather than what was good and right for the people that we were serving. So an example of that was that we provided a one size fits all service for everybody, which was very convenient and efficient for us, everybody got the same thing, they went through the same customer journey, they paid the same price, they got no choice about what they were eating, on any given day. And that was okay, because, you know, through the good graces of the volunteers who decided what was going to be on the menu, and we would cook what was in within the capability of the group of volunteers who were there at the day. So that was in we, we had situations where volunteers would ban some staff, a very small number of staff would be banned from going to their, to those branch sites, because the manager or the staff member might have been imposing the organizational policy on that group of volunteers, and they didn't like the policy. So they would just not do it, they would refuse. And not only would they refuse, but they'd also send the staff member away with their tail between their legs. And, and so that and the organization, I

Daniel Franco: 42:15

think that is

Sharyn Broer: 42:16

Yeah, the organization just just enabled that and allowed that to happen. And, and so some of the things that made that challenging for me were where it didn't feel like we were heading in the in the right direction, we weren't being responsive to the community, we'd had we'd been in decline, we'd had a reduction in service activity. By that such a peak, we're probably delivering about 5000 meals a day and our payment, I think we were down to four and a half 1000 by then, might have even been a little bit less. So they'd been this decline. And nobody could really put their finger on, you know, what, why, why is it that way, that there's more older people living at home, and surely there's more need, then. But all of a sudden, we're going backwards, we're losing customers. And it was all about the fact that we just left the cut, we just assume that there will always be more demand than we could possibly made. And so it didn't really matter. If we didn't treat people with respect.

Daniel Franco: 43:22

What I'm hearing is the organization forgot its purpose. Yeah,

Sharyn Broer: 43:25

yeah, I think I think they did. And even though, there were, you know, the purpose was documented, you know, we're the people that are

Daniel Franco: 43:36

living too high.

Sharyn Broer: 43:39

And, and so we started losing relevance in the community, and we'd actually stopped talking to the community. We didn't we didn't promote ourselves. We didn't remind people that we were here.

Daniel Franco: 43:50

So complacency. We just became comfortable.

Sharyn Broer: 43:53

We did. Yeah, we had the Was it the three C's of failure, complacency, conservatism and conceit.

Daniel Franco: 44:00

We had all of them me. Oh, yeah. That's amazing. But you were able to come in see that struggle? Did you? Is that one of the first things?

Sharyn Broer: 44:09

Yeah, I did. I am. I started out. Doing I didn't, I didn't deliberately come in with my first 100 days plan. But when I came, there was no documented strategic plan. And so I spent probably the first three months visiting people talking to people going out and visiting consumers, and really trying to understand the organization. And so you know, there was some things that we had that were that were good. And there was some things that we had that were were really weak and, and one of the things that I discovered probably took me a little bit longer than I'm almost embarrassed at how long it took me to realize that I didn't have the right team around me. And, and then so it probably took me 12 months to realize that I didn't have the right team around me. And then it took another and then I then I spent a year trying to develop them into the team they needed to be. And that wasn't falling on fertile ground. And then it probably took me another year or 18 months to restructure so that I could create a team that that I needed. So and this organization's but you know, we have operated on the sniff of an oily rag so so I'd say that the organization itself had this value of frugality that we would, everything would be done at the lowest possible cost, so that the person receiving the food paid the lowest possible amount for that service. And kind of affordability is really important in food security. But what it meant was that we we undercut ourselves, we actually didn't have the right level of support for the volunteers to be able to do their work well. And we were becoming more and more and more reliant on volunteers to run our local operations. And some of them, you know, 25 30 40 hours a week as a volunteer, basically managing a local service outlet, and the compliance and regulatory obligations we're building and, and, and we just didn't have enough support, you know, behind these people in the amount of risk that we were carrying as an organization, you know, risk of a food safety incident or, or work health and safety, compromising?

Daniel Franco: 46:23

Yeah,

Sharyn Broer: 46:24

it was, it was really challenging. So we needed to sort of try and restructure our cost structure, we needed to restructure our leadership structure, we needed to bring in some more people in, you know, to be able to support volunteers. So it's been over the 10 years, it's been probably three strategic planning cycles, which have just kept building the foundations. So that, you know, by this year, we are more adaptable, and more agile and better able to innovate and to implement change, then we were the year before and the year before that, and the year before that. So yeah,

Daniel Franco: 47:06

we as you know, do a lot of work in the cultural space. A common misconception is that culture can be changed. Quickly, we'll do a 12 month program or something like that. And then it will then be fine. Yeah, common belief, not so much from the senior, that really high exact senior leadership team, they're probably got a little bit more understanding, but from the lower rung, it's like, I want to build a team, I want to put some effort into my people, I want to grow my people. But you know, we've only got enough for six months, three months, whatever it is, yeah, that's it, that's all. And it often falls away. There's a really good improvement for that first three, six months. And then from there, it goes back to the way they've always sort of worked. Yeah. So your journey over 10 years, growing and stepping each stage is really fundamental tool, the message I guess we're trying to promote is that culture is a journey, it's not a, it's not a one stop shop, where you can go pull something off the shelf, and then it improves,

Sharyn Broer: 48:13

and when and when you come in to an established business, or an established organization is an established culture. So not many of us are blessed with a startup where you can actually create the culture that you believe you need from from day one. So whether you're coming into a team, as a team member, or a team leader, you know that that team already has its culture, and you might think, well to be successful, we need to shift the culture and you can put some effort into doing that. But your team's not working in a vacuum either. So there's the whole rest of the organization that's kind of impacting on, on that. And, and so we're in in so I came in and kind of discovered I didn't have one culture, I had, you know, 83 cultures, because every branch had had its own culture. And then we had two paid work sites, and each of them had their own culture and within the paid workforce, the different sort of divisional units had their own culture and there would be these, you know, the the interdepartmental rub, that you tend to get people people talk about, oh, you know, we've got silos here. And then the very people who were complaining about the silos were the ones who were perpetuating, because, you know, there was actually intrinsically something in it for them to be Yes, a silent Oh, you know, we'll just we'll just work the way that we want in our section and everybody else condenser benefits me, yeah.

Daniel Franco: 49:45

What was your approach to breaking down those silos and going from 83 different types of cultures to one, what was your method? I guess,

Sharyn Broer: 49:57

so. We've got, I'd have I'd have To say, there's not such a stark difference in cultures between our branches now than what there was. But a lot of it came back to fundamental, under, you know, making sure people understood our founding purpose, our vision, our mission, our values, as an organization work working with the volunteers and the staff to actually identify Well, what are our values? What are the things that we're living? Now? What are the things that have made us successful? And got us to here? And then, you know, what do we need to preserve and take forward? But what can we then bring into that? So, so one of the things that I did was not try and impose a completely new culture on on people and I am, I'm, I actively am not a just however, out there. our workforce is the median age is 70 years old. Yeah. And so we're certainly wise. So people have had a fair amount of time to, to decide

Daniel Franco: 51:08

how they're comfortable with where they're at, yeah, really want to change too much.

Sharyn Broer: 51:12

And some people had worked in, in the working life in in very different workplace cultures, then what we would consider is an appropriate culture. Now, you know, bullying was was, you know, accepted, I think we'd have to say, in many areas, and so some, some people didn't know how to behave differently. So we sort of start we started with the values, you know, understood the good stuff about what what we were doing, and there's a lot of good stuff, and then tried to bring in some of the new beliefs, and then link that back to behavior, and had that clear in procedures, codes of conduct, and then managed to that. So you know, previously at Meals on Wheels, there might have been conflict or inappropriate behavior, and blind eyes would be turned, or it would be sort of just swept under the rug. And when I came, there's a big lump in the middle of the rug, that kind of neat needed to be, I got landed with. And so I, I took a really deliberate approach that thing, let's be clear about the behaviors that we we want, let's encourage that. But if we see what's not acceptable, we don't sweep it under the rug, we, we deal with it. And and that's meant that we have, we've moved some people on who couldn't adapt to the appropriate behaviors of the workplace.

Daniel Franco: 52:39

There's a quote that I quote, often on the show, and it's something that keeps coming up. But the standard that you walk past is the standard that you accept. Yeah, it's, it's such a foundational quote that I live to,

Sharyn Broer: 52:52

yes. And we, and we, we use that quite frequently in our leadership group. Because when you get busy, and when you've got a large, geographically dispersed organization, it's actually you know, sometimes it's just easier to let sleeping dogs lie. But the more that you do that, the bigger problem that you're going to have down the tracks. So yeah, we've, you know, we've had some stashes with with people I've had, you know, groups of volunteers threaten to resign. In fact, I think we had one, only last month, that was a committee of a branch who had been holding out and sort of still wanting to do their own thing. And we needed to implement some change and bring them into uniform sort of policies and procedures that all of the other branches were working under, largely for risk management and customer services reasons. And they, and then they weren't happy about that. And so they all resigned. And, you know, a few years ago, people were saying that was going to be the death knell, the end of the world Meals on Wheels, there were others who would say, if a paid person comes in and coordinates our activities, we're all leaving. We've gradually had more paid people out in the trenches supporting the volunteers, and they've really loved it not, nobody's quit over that. But I've had I've had a few country branches threatened to hand the keys back to the, to the kitchen, because they didn't like a decision that we'd made. And I'm just saying, the days have gone that we don't make the right decision for the organization and the customers. Because a few volunteers aren't comfortable with that. So you know, either live to you. Well, yeah.

Daniel Franco: 54:41

So it's your purpose. You

Sharyn Broer: 54:43

and I know that some people won't be able to adapt, and that's fine and we fail, and we work to give them a dignified exit. So, you know, when they've, they're volunteers. They're here

Daniel Franco: 54:56

to have a difference.

Sharyn Broer: 54:57

Yeah. And they're here because of their commitment. and dedication and whatever. But if that if they just find that, I don't think that's, you know, I can't work in that new way, it's, I don't agree with it well, you know, then sometimes sadly, they've needed to move. But happily, most of actually stayed. You know, we we had to implement police screening, that was a really long and drawn out process. And we did, we did have quite a bit of resistance to that. And even still, you know, volunteers are finding the three yearly renewals. It's, you know, a lot of paperwork, and but unfortunately, that's not something Meals on Wheels has had a choice in and I guess that's another way that I've helped to change the culture is be really clear about, there are some things that aren't negotiable, not because the CEO says it's not negotiable, or the board says it's not negotiable, because it's in legislation, or it's in regularly, we can't, we can't compromise on food safety, we can't compromise on work health and safety without compromise on the safety of the vulnerable people that we deliver services to. But I give people that I that understanding of but we can discuss how, so the what might not be negotiable, but the How often is and so I've few of our change initiatives, I've actually got, you know, task forces of the people that are going to need to live with the change, develop, you know, let's test some things out, let's pilot it in certain areas, let's iron out the kinks. You know, I am, I implemented a choice of dishes on the on the menu. And I said, you know, that I set the, the goal, which was, you know, we will offer people a choice of their main course, that's, that's the goal. But your work out how we'll do that with the least burden for our volunteers who are who are going to need to now prepare two dishes, and that there's menus that have to be issued and brought back and collated and, you know, extra admin work that's required. But you you guys are the experts at how to do that. So you figure out the best way to do it, but there was, but the outcome is gonna happen. Yeah. And it took us a while, but we got there.

Daniel Franco: 57:18

So that was really yeah, that's fantastic. How, how is the rise of like Uber Eats in that sort of heavy? Is it impacted the business at all?

Sharyn Broer: 57:30

Those delivered meal options don't seem to have has had as much impact as the flourishing of convenient meals in supermarkets and online shopping. So. So what we find, I think, because Uber Eats menu, log delivery, those, those business models, you, you've got to be able to afford the the food expense you're ordering.

Daniel Franco: 57:59

Yes. So I've ordered a McDonald's meal for my two kids. Eight and a six year old and it was $25. Yeah, I've never spent $25 on McDonald's.

Sharyn Broer: 58:10

That's crazy. So. So that's the sort of, you know, for, for the demographic that we serve, those things would be a very occasional special trade. And in fact, prior to them, you could ring up your Chinese takeaway, or your Thai takeaway, or whatever. And a lot of those small businesses did deliver, and pizza has been delivered for years. By some, you know, SATs, I know some of our consumers.

Daniel Franco: 58:39

In the market is people yeah, food. Yeah. So it's a hierarchy of need.

Sharyn Broer: 58:44

And one of the pluses about those business models that we don't have is you actually it's order on demand. So you get to choose what the food exactly what food you're gonna get. And you know, that it'll be delivered within, you know, maybe 45 minutes of you ordering. Whereas with Meals on Wheels, we are constrained by needing to deliver the meals need to be at a certain temperature when we deliver them to maintain food safety standards, and and we're kind of geared up to do a lunchtime meal delivery. And so people need to be at home to receive the food unless we're delivering them frozen meals, you know, once or twice a week. So, but here we have we haven't seen as much of an impact from the delivered meal services as we have with the large organization, the large businesses that are that are targeting people for health reasons or other reasons. Say we can you go online, you can order these products from our website, choose what you want to a minimum orders often apply and they'll get delivered to the to the door and we're seeing that Families are seeing that as a solution for their older relatives. And that's a real concern for us. Because the a lot of these businesses came out of the weight loss industry. And in most of the products that they have, even though they're saying that they're tailored for older people, they just don't have the protein and energy and calcium and other sort of things that that the Meals on Wheels products do so. And the other thing that I say about those kind of services, if you're having frozen meals delivered, or if you're doing online shopping, you've got to have the cognitive capability to actually use the internet, or have somebody do that with you and sort of work out how many things do I need to order, and what you know, you can probably figure out what food you like to eat. And it's nice pictures and things like that. So you so and you've got to have a way of paying for that. Yeah, so your order comes that gets dropped off on your porch, and you might be 91 years old, and you've got a phone box, which is, you know, five to 10 kilos, in weight that you've got to get off your porch and bring inside. So you bring it inside. And then you've got to unpack it into freezer, hopefully, you've got enough room in your freezer and your little fridge that you're running to put these things in. And you've got to manage the use by dates and stuff like that. And then that's great. So you've got food in your house, then you've got to remember that it's meal time that you've got food and that you can heat it and how to heatit. And a lot of the people that we support, that chain of of capability is brought is broken at different points in the chain. And so we were there not just to be delivering the food, of course, that's a really key part of that. We Yeah, so we're bringing, we're bringing the food ready to eat to their home. It's a sensory invitation to eat, so they get the smell of the food. And that reminds them that it is actually lunchtime, they should eat that food now, and the volunteers who are delivering make sure that that person's Okay, you know that they haven't got a big bruiser graze. And it turns out that they had a fall and nobody knew the human condition. Yes. And everyone to save lives, you know, probably nearly every day, they'd be somebody who's who didn't answer the door that we were expecting to see. And the volunteers, you know, raise the alarm, that that somebody wasn't there. And it's quite frequent that we need to get the ambulance out to somebody and sites that that that human contact, that human connection that you get with a Meals on Wheels service model that internationally has been shown that, yes, the nutritional outcomes are better for people getting Meals on Wheels, but the psychosocial outcomes are better as well. So people feel less anxious about living alone. They feel, you know that that they're more connected, they're less lonely. So there's a whole lot of you know, great data about the benefits of meals on wheels, which led to alternatives.

Daniel Franco: 1:02:58

such an amazing service. So 2020. Yeah, it's been a tough year for all bushfires, pandemics, everything you can think of, how have you guys coped and handled through this? I mean, especially with the volunteers and you say your volunteers are aging. Yes, demographic is well, given the COVID virus tends to target will have more an effect on the elderly, elderly generation, how have you guys sort of handled your way through?

Sharyn Broer: 1:03:31

Well, I'll touch on the bushfires, we we had one of our branches in the Adelaide Hills that was right in the thick of it with the the bushfires, and I don't even think they missed a day of delivery, they were able to, to continue on, despite people's you know, having fire at their own properties and so on. So, unfortunately, we weren't impacted badly by the fires in South Australia. But COVID was a has been a whole other can of worms. So the thing about COVID is that it's a disease that targets the very people who we deliver services to. And many of the people who are our workforce are also highly susceptible to that. And so we needed to be right on top of it. We We We were following news and health department warnings and international sort of experience. Probably a few weeks ahead of many organizations, I would say that the hospital sector and emergency departments and others would have been right on top of it from January or so on. late February, early March. We were really planning ahead, you know, what's going to happen when this hits and and so we needed to, to innovate at pi We had a whole lot of things we needed to change our service model we needed to have. So what we, we were really worried about losing up to half of our workers, we needed to have safe systems and safe processes for our, for the, for the delivery of meals. So we kind of had, we had a we have an emergency management team, we brought the emergency management team together. And we met daily for a long time. And but right at the outset, we we said, What are our key objectives, everyone gets fed, no one gets sick, and we don't go broke doing it. So that was so we kind of knew exactly what we were trying to do. We already had an emergency management plan that kicked in with this wasn't the first crisis that we'd had to deal with most of our other ones were food safety related, and it impacted on us as an organization, not the whole planet. But yeah, this time was was bigger so So with those, faced with those challenges, what we decided to do was to convert from primarily delivering a hot meal on a daily basis to delivering frozen meals twice a week to people. And we focused on the Adelaide metropolitan area. So our country towns are served. Usually the local public hospital will be preparing the meals and and they all confirmed that they had the capacity to continue doing it. And the volunteers all confirmed that you know that there were enough people to keep those services going. So we didn't, we didn't change up what we were doing in country towns much at all, but in the metropolitan area and and Mount Gambier a couple of the larger towns where we've got a Meals on Wheels kitchen, we needed to fairly swiftly change to frozen meal production. And, and that doesn't necessarily sound like a really big shift, except that our internal production capability was out was offline. Because we were just about to move into an average. And you purpose bill cooked your facility and corporate offices. So we did not have the internal capability to do the frozen meal production. And we needed 3000 a day 15,008, which is a really large production run, interstate supply chains were breaking down, or just the the lag time was it wasn't gonna work for us. And so we really, were trying to problem solve through this and my phone rang and it was the general manager at the convention center, and we have a relationship with them. And they said, Look, we've got all these people that have got no work and a lot of and I don't even know where the job keeper was announced at that point. Ultimately, the team wasn't eligible for job k because they're a state government entity. And so they said, Look, we we'd love to help you Is there anything that we can do and I'd been in look through their kitchens late last year and and I knew that they did cook chill that their model of food production was cooked to production and that their setup was big enough and and that they'd get the food safety, you know, seal of approval from the Department of Health fairly quickly. And so we went into partnership with the convention center and Food Bank. So the convention center did the prep, the preparation of the food and food bank did the logistics and warehousing and we needed to do that for about eight weeks until we were able to start producing food at a Hilton facility. So it was and it was much more expensive as a as a supply chain than what we would normally have because we were substituting volunteer labor with with paid pensions and it was was paying people their their usual wage.

Daniel Franco: 1:09:03

So and we had some some other costs that we wouldn't normally have incurred around, you know, cartons and pallets and all that sort of it comes back to the simple fact of what you stand for as a business and it's to make sure that these people are getting the food that they need.

Sharyn Broer: 1:09:18

Yes, yeah. And so and knowing that it was going to cost more was also you know, at exactly the same time as we sit with setting up these new systems and processes and and of course, you know, contactless delivery procedures, sanitizing and working from home and a whole bunch of other things.

Daniel Franco: 1:09:36

We've got a few sleepless nights in there.

Sharyn Broer: 1:09:38

Yeah, it was pretty was pretty full. And but also working closely with the Federal Department of Health about we're going to need some extra money to get through this and and to their credit, they were really quick off the mark as well and with announcements and and so on, so we we managed to get through it. We He had a really good team working together. And I think because we were reasonably well drilled, I mean, we had holes in our business continuity plan or our, you know, our white guild that we, you know, there were things, things that we there was a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff that we did on the fly a lot of assumptions that we had that didn't hold up. And, you know, now they've been thoroughly tested. And so we did a lot of iterative, rapid problem solving. And I was really impressed with with how it went. And, you know, touching back on the culture side of things, I don't think we had any resistance, we had to push through some change at the branch level, we'd been operating to customer, customer relationship management systems. And we said, we can't we cannot service two systems, while we've got an emergency going, we need to push these last few through. And we were also making some changes to the Financial Management Systems pushed a lot of those through. So that was helpful to us to do that. And, and we've got to test our existing consumers acceptance of frozen products, as opposed to hot products. And that's been a kind of interesting thing, because in the eastern states, primarily optically New South Wales and Victoria, most meals are delivered, chilled or frozen, and their consumer hates them up as they require them. Whereas we were much we're sort of 20%, frozen 80% hot, and they're the other way around. And I'd always kind of wondered, you know, what, why that was? And how much of that was organization driven? And how much of it was consumer driven. And so what we have found is there are some pockets where some consumers have gone Oh, actually, the frozen meal service works better for me, and I stuck with it. And there's a lot more who said, I could not wait to get back on meal deliveries. And

Daniel Franco: 1:12:01

but at least you've got those, those two options? Yes, actually. Yeah.

Sharyn Broer: 1:12:06

And we kept our volunteers engaged. So well, some volunteers did stay home for health read reasons, we wanted to keep them engaged. And we weren't able to do so much human connection with the people we were delivering meals to because in the end, we were literally leaving the meal on a piece of furniture outside their front door, talk to them through the front door, and then we'd go in, they'd come out and pick their meal up. And so we we engage with a bunch of our volunteers to start making phone calls. So rather than them visiting these people that they knew in their community, they would make a phone call. And then the consumers really liked it because it wasn't a stranger ringing ringing to say how they were doing with someone that they knew so so that was another positive.

Daniel Franco: 1:12:52

Beautiful, well done. Thank you. Now I'm conscious of time and your time, especially because you've got some meanings coming come after. Just to wrap it up. I'd like to ask a little bit of a few quickfire questions to show their strange question. They're the ones that I like to ask a lot. A lot of podcasts is about we talk a lot about books. educating ourselves. Yes. In development, and yes, we've stepped through some of your yes through what your ways of thinking, yeah. What is what are your favorite books that that you would turn to from a personal development perspective? Or, and or even just from a fictional?

Sharyn Broer: 1:13:29

Ah, okay. So fictional stuff would probably be something like the power of one by Bryce, Courtney, that kind of genre. I also love the Lord of the Rings, you know, some of that fantasy stuff from, you know, personal development, business development. Some of the stuff, Patrick lencioni is Five Dysfunctions of a team is and there's another one that he writes, which I can't remember, I think it's called the edge or remote is that Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:14:00

There's a few. He's got so many. So

Sharyn Broer: 1:14:02

that was good and design a better business, which is using design thinking to stimulate innovation in organizations. That's, that's a really good one as well. And another one, which is called for profit for purpose, or for purpose, and it was written by the former head of Hamon care. I can't remember his name off the top my head, but that's a really good book for nonprofit leaders. Yeah.

Daniel Franco: 1:14:32

Oh, put them in the notes. Is there one that you've sort of recommended and gifted to people more often than not?

Sharyn Broer: 1:14:40

Yes, there is. An artist can't remember the name of the one that I that I have been gifting to pay. I could go to my bookshelf and find it. But I reckon it was one of the lencioni books that that I had and, and one that I give to people when they retire was Alexander McCall Smith. The number one ladies detective agency just for something to read for pure joy and relaxation, Alexander McCall Smith's work is terrific.

Daniel Franco: 1:15:14

So what do you do for relaxation or to recharge?

Sharyn Broer: 1:15:18

I read I walk. Walk in nature. binge on Netflix. Do a bit of cooking.

Daniel Franco: 1:15:28

Yeah. Brilliant. Few had one superpower. What would it be? Ah, the super cry. Crikey. Ah. What would I want it to be? This is such a. I was watching x men with my kids last night. Yeah. And teleportation was high on their list.

Sharyn Broer: 1:15:53

Yeah, actually, I think something like that, to help me manage my time would be would be quite terrific to, to be able to. In fact, I've got a time turn of what from the Harry Potter movies when my assistant gave me a time turner, but we just haven't quite worked out how to work. Yeah. But yeah, having having having the ability to, to be in two places at once. And, you know, be doing doing more that would be that would be pretty cool.

Daniel Franco: 1:16:22

I had a conversation with Michelle and this supposed to be rapid fire questions. I never rapid fire. Michelle. Oh, you know, Michelle. So Michelle and I had the conversation yesterday is that there's not enough time to read all the books or do all the things that like, there's so many classics that I haven't read or even delved into. And the

Sharyn Broer: 1:16:40

one book that I really wanted. I'm reading Julia Guillen's biography. And she's just released a new book on women's leadership, which I want to look at. And the other one I want to read is Simon cynics the infinite game. It's great. Yes, I'm looking forward to that.

Daniel Franco: 1:16:56

I've been adopt the audio book. So I have an audio book going, I have a normal book going, and then I'd like die for five years. And one last one, if you had access to a time machine, where would you go? Ah,

Sharyn Broer: 1:17:11

I think I'd go back in time, and I'm not sure. I kind of I really like the Regency area era. And I think as a woman, that's probably a really bad. That's a really bad time to go back to, but I kind of like that. But I also think, you know, Australia in the 1950s, you know, where there was just there just seemed to be so much opportunity. And, and there was a lot of, sort of through the 50s 60s and 70s. So much social reform in Australia. So yeah, I think I think probably i'd, if I had the TARDIS, I'd probably want to go back rather than forward. Yeah. And maybe meet maybe meet some, you know, really powerful historic characters. Yeah. You know, who've shaped our world.

Daniel Franco: 1:18:02

Yeah, that would be such an interesting topic. Because I always think about going back and reading those grades. But then also, what am I not gonna see? Yes. I'm annoyed that I'm only gonna leave so many years and not be able to see what what carries on into the future. So you only had one choice, though, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you very much for your time. Amazing conversation, really great hearing about your journey. And your thought process on on culture and leadership and like and how businesses you believe should run your purpose. So thank you very much. Yeah, it's been been great having you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Bye.

Synergy IQ: 1:18:45

Thank you once again for joining us here at creating synergy. It's been great spending this time with you. Please jump on to the Synergy IQ Facebook page where the discussion continues after the show. join our mailing list, so you'll know what's happening next at Synergy iq.com.au. And of course, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast. And if you really enjoyed it, please share it with your friends.