4 Tips for Running Your Board Meeting Effectively
Board members and executives never want to leave a meeting feeling like they wasted their time because they didn’t accomplish anything or contribute anything. Unfortunately, these feelings of frustration and disappointment are common after board meetings. Only 12% of executives feel that these senior-level meetings result in strategic decisions. The goal of board meetings should always be to make strategic decisions. If you are just reading presentations or reporting results, you are not using your board and your CEO’s time wisely. So how do you get to be in the 12% that is effectively making strategic decisions?
Set an Agenda and Follow It
Writing potential topics for discussion at a board meeting is easy. Setting the right agenda that meets the needs of your board members is a lot more challenging. An agenda needs to be focused and tailored to your board to be effective.
Best practices for agenda setting include:
- Ask for input on topics to be discussed before the meeting.
- Make sure you have input from all your board members even if it requires multiple follow-ups — this can save your meeting from meeting derailed
- Focus on no more than three topics and assign time limits to presenters (no more than 10 minutes)
- Ensure your agenda leaves time for discussion
- Send the agenda in advance
- Ask for a commitment to the agenda at the beginning of the meeting
- Stick to your agenda – you’ve gotten input and consensus, so use it to stay focused
Choose the Right Topics - Less is More
The worst outcome for a board meeting is that presentations run long, go off-topic, and board members feel there is no time for discussion or strategic decision-making. The CEO must be responsible for selecting those two or three big “meaty” issues, with advance input from the board, and sticking to those issues.
Only the top two or three issues which the CEO identifies and introduces should be discussed during the board meeting. Every topic should be given 25 to 30 minutes during the board meeting. This time includes a presentation of no more than 10-minutes leaving the remainder of the time for questions and determining the path forward. This allows time for high-quality thinking and collaboration and delivers value to what matters the most for this senior audience and what their role requires them to do for the company.
If there are more than 2-3 big strategic decisions, the CEO must select 2-3 and then communicate in advance how additional items will be addressed – via email, topics for future board meetings, etc. It’s always tempting to add “one more thing” to the agenda, but that often results in less getting accomplished than more.
Any topic that can be reported on and doesn’t require discussion should not be on the board meeting agenda.
Running the Meeting - Collaboration and Boundaries
If you don’t already have a set of board meeting rules or they aren’t being followed, make that the first agenda item at your next meeting. You likely have intelligent, Type A, opinionated board members, so it’s far too easy to get off-topic and go down a rabbit hole. If everyone is committed to following the meeting rules, that will help you achieve actual strategic decision-making.
Collaboration can also happen more naturally when you understand the different personalities of your board members. You have likely sought various experts to be on your board, and they will probably have different communication styles. This can make it all the more important to have rules that foster collaboration and boundaries if personalities and communication styles may naturally conflict. Learning more about each board member outside the boardroom can help you find the right strategies to manage those personalities in the boardroom. The board chair and the CEO may be the facilitators for these conversations outside the boardroom.
After the Meeting - Effective Follow Through
If your board meeting was effective at driving strategic decision-making, then you should have concrete next steps. Board meeting minutes should be more than a recap of what was said. They need to effectively summarize the specific recommendations of the Board and resulting follow-up items. The next steps should be actionable, with clear roles, responsibilities, and timelines.
Mastering the follow-through sets the stage for planning your next board meeting. Board members and the C-Suite will respect transparency and bias towards action before, during, and after the meeting.
Ready to Drive Strategic Decision Making at Your Board Meetings?
Changing how you run your board meetings isn’t easy. But working with a top-rated coach can help. Mahesh coaches Fortune 100 technology leaders and CXOs around the world. Mahesh M. Thakur is an experienced Board Member, Technology Exec, and Executive Coach.
