DTB MEMBER GRAHAM STACEY TAKES US BEHIND THE SCENES. WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY DO?
Since I joined the board, I’ve been asked a lot of questions. And I’ve always tried to answer them as openly as possible – it’s something I strongly believe that we, as a board, should try our best to do. But the most common question is what do we actually do? So I thought it might be vaguely interesting to give you an idea of how a monthly DTB meeting unfolds in real time. A bit like the TV series 24, but just slightly shorter…
January 19, 6.30pm We’re kicking off early in the hope that we might finish before midnight. The downside, as a single parent, is that it means finishing work at 6pm, dishing out Pringles all round for supper and logging in to Teams without so much as checking I haven’t sat on my phone and tweeted anything inappropriate from the DT account. Kris is chairing the meeting and we’re off to a flyer; everyone appears to be here. Freddy has already won the Best Dressed award with a shirt that oozes ‘Tahitian divinity’. Kris runs through protocols and then we’re onto agenda item one: the approval of minutes.
6.35pm There’s a debate over how much detail should go into the minutes – should it be a record of every line spoken, or a brief summation? This moves us on to how to best communicate with members. Various ideas are pitched, such as a quarterly newsletter.
6.45pm Things move on to a bit of personnel chat which I really can’t share because of, well, HR law. But it went a bit like “****** did ****** with ****** and ****”
7pm Investment chat. All very exciting but, again, you’ll have to take my word for that – it’s redactworthy because we’re talking names and progress. I hate redacting. I have failed you.
7.15pm Finance. I need to focus because maths both goes over my head and hurts my brain. We talk about ‘sweating the asset’ and weigh up potential options.
7.30pm We start bundling together questions for the PLC – the operational oversight board.
7.45pm Luke makes a terrible ‘banging the drum’ pun. Yellow card. I think we’re debating musical instruments in the ground.
8pm I have a little ramble, but can’t say about what (that HR thing), but I thought it was great.
8.30pm Comfort break.
8.35pm More comfortable, having eaten something that isn’t Pringles. Onto ‘rotas’. We have rotas for everything – from manning the DT kiosk at games to hosting away directors. Freddy puts himself forward for all duties in the week he is flying over, and we pencil in drinks – but I’m not sure that’s committed to Excel.
9pm We follow up on a ‘priorities’ meeting earlier in the month and we’ve still got some tasks to assign.
9.30pm A very brief chat about Fair Game. Everyone nods in approval, because it’s ruddy great.
9.33pm Comms next. There’s work to be done here… I’d argue that comms are more important at a fan-owned club than any other.
9.50pm We’re overrunning now. We were due to finish at 9.30 but there are another five items on the agenda, including AOB.
10.20pm And one, two skip a few… That’s a wrap. It has been just shy of four hours in total.
But the fun doesn’t stop here. The next day there’s a PLC meet. Then on Friday we are hosting a Meet the DTB event. And before any of that, there’s a page to write for the Ipswich programme. At least I can tick that one off…