What Now: Board Meeting or Bullsh*t?

SpiderNet has been around for a few years and you’ve held many board meetings over this time period.  The board meetings have become routine reporting events and you are often forced to spend additional time with each board member after a board meeting to “tell the real story”.  You kind of feel that your board meetings are pretty much bullshit and a waste of time.

Most of your executive team has gotten used to providing you with a few slides that you can take into the meeting and they rarely have been requested to attend.  It has always been you, your finance person and the board at all the meetings.

Given that much of your quality time with the board has been 1:1 meetings outside the board session, and your team has not had to interact much with the board and deal with associated time commitments, this model has not been horrible for the company.  In fact, the company has done very well to date, though the product is just now coming to market.

You begin to wonder whether you need to think through a better model for board meetings.  You have on your board some of the most experienced minds in the business and—along with your executive team—you’d really like to make the most of the talent around the table.  However, you don’t know where to begin or if you need to change anything.  Do you create a new model for your board meetings or proceed with business as usual?

What now?

Board meetings are probably one of the most important yet often overlooked aspects of running a company.  When structured properly, you will have a great group of VCs along with a talented team of executives, yet board meetings are often viewed as something to simply “get through”.  In addition, they are very often ill prepared and many times, depending on the structure and format of the meeting, little real discussion ever gets done.  In SpiderNet’s case, this is why the CEO must meet with each board member outside the board sessions.  What a waste of time!

To the extent you’d like to run a more effective and productive board meeting, here are some guidelines for success:

Set clear expectations early on:

Set charter and purpose for the BOD based on individual board member responsibilities

Establish and reinforce the connections among the board members

Have at least 1-2 “outings” with only board member to help foster the bond

Don’t focus on an hourglass structure where all interactions run through the CEO

Make sure that the board understands the ways in which they can be helpful outside of the meetings and where your blind spots are

Include key executives at the board meetings—direct reports should present their material on their areas of responsibility

Be prepared and establish ground rules:

Send a complete package to the BOD several days before the meeting

Set the expectation that the package will be read before the meeting

Any questions regarding the package should be brought up beforehand

Use email threads with all the members to ensure everyone is on the same page

Set an agenda and ensure everyone knows what the meeting will consist of

Take care of the nitty gritty up front (options grants, legal issues, minutes etc..)

Create an engaging environment that allows for discourse around the table

Build in time for discussion around the key themes/issues

Make sure time is spent on the biggest challenges and how you plan on addressing them

Save time for the CEO to bring to light what’s “been on his mind”

Focus on your goals:

The focus of the meeting should be to discuss key issues that the Company needs to solve

All the members should be on the same page regarding the five things that the Company has committed to achieving before the next round of funding

The goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should be focused on the Company stage and change over time with buy-in from the BOD

Don’t focus on the past or make meetings simply about “reporting” the state of the Company

70% of the meetings should focus on the future and the issues at hand

What strategic decisions need to be made to get the Company to the next stage

Use Data to help guide the meetings

Data should be consistent and metrics/KPIs agreed upon by the members

Be sure to bring to light both the good and the bad—don’t hide the shortcomings, address them up front

SpiderNet

For SpiderNet, I would ask the CEO to reconstruct their board meetings to include all senior executives, focus on key issues and data, and make sure that most of the meeting is an open discussion designed to clarify and help solve key strategic issues.

Board meetings are critically important and can be a great strategic asset to the growth of a company and the CEO.  Use them well.