If you don’t start your own business then your first experience of a board meeting is probably walking into an established and mildly intimidating setup with a nicely shaped thing of water in the middle of the table and SLIDES.
This is the board meeting end game. The company running it will have started where you are now.
They went from
We aren’t the sort of business that runs a board meeting
to
Let’s run a board meeting as soon as we find the HDMI cable for this screen
They didn’t go straight to the big billy business stuff, and nor should you because the journey there is actually valuable.
The usual advice
Here’s how you’ll start running your board meeting:
- You don’t share any info before and no-one prepares because they are busy
- In the meeting you go through reports seeing things for the first time and discuss them
- Question if the report is right and if the KPIs are the right things to be measuring
- Come up with loads of ideas and go deep into problems realising you need more info to make a decision
The mature version looks nothing like this.
Here’s the way to run a board meeting:
You have a board pack that people pre-read, it has all the numbers and narrative everyone needs to know about the previous month/quarter/however often you are going to board.
Then, you spend a short time together very efficiently (even if you have a big business to run). You talk only about the things you have to talk about. Rubber-stamping decisions or mulling over a couple of options and making a call.
So if your board meeting looks like the first example then I’d advise starting to tighten them up but if you don’t run a board meeting at all then I’d allow, actually I’d encourage, the inefficient method.
Time you should have spent
The first time you’ve stepped back and looked at the business from this point of view. You haven’t spent enough time here. It will take a while to understand what you need it to be for your business. You’ve got a lot of “hang on, what’s that number?” and “where are we actually trying to get to here?” to wade through.
And that process has to happen.
If you’ve ever tried implementing a management framework (and attempting the entrepreneurial operating system is basically a rite of passage) you’ll have found it’s not as easy as the book suggests. Because you aren’t just surfacing a few numbers at first, you are realising that you need to decide what you want. It’s not a linear process.
So think of that extra time at first as paying back all the time you should have spent thinking about the business so far.
Inefficiency is growth
The bloated board meeting is where leaders are created.
First yourself. Running through and understanding all the moving parts of this business you’ve created and now need to grow. Space to ask questions and dive deep.
In the mature board meeting you don’t want to ask how net profit is calculated because, even in the friendly ones, that’s not a great look.
In your board meeting, anyone can ask how anything works (and find out that it doesn’t work properly yet, ok? we’re sorting it).
And then when it’s time to promote that superstar staff member you can invite them to come and discuss the thing they are now responsible for at the board. Depending on what you think they are ready for they can attend the whole thing.
They’ll learn how the business works.
It’s a brilliant way to get them thinking about what the board wants to see. Creating the right reports. Gaining an understanding of what matters. Listening through other functions of the business to get wider context. Learning to contribute ideas.
The bloated board meeting is a kind of rite of passage as a business matures, and it’s actually a really useful way to give up-and-coming leaders business context and a platform.
A quick thought on inefficiency
So many things in business are like this. We seek out the right way to do things and there are plenty of people willing to sell it to us. But running a business isn’t boiling an egg. The process of learning is how you find out how to apply things, mix them with your own goals and creativity, and get the outcome your business actually needs. You can’t skip it.
Something for the haters
Sometimes, unfortunately I’ve seen board meetings mocked.
I once saw an advert, or perhaps it was a postcard, with a picture of some people with surfboards and the slogan: “Ready for the board meeting?”
On the surface it’s a play on words but it actually works as a joke because it flips our expectation, when we hear “board meeting” we think of something boring, and they’re talking about surfboards, which are really exciting.
As someone who promotes board meetings I find this offensive.
I also don’t think, on average, surfing is exciting. Sure, there are people who ride 50-foot waves in the cool shorts and the hair. That’s exciting. But on average, surfing is people in wetsuits moving quite slowly and getting cold.
On average, a board meeting is more exciting than that.
Just kidding. 👁️ 🫵 🌊*
*I’ll see you in the tube