Comments on: Ideal Board Meetings

By: MariannaLeBourge

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By: emu on a hillside

emu on a hillside — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 05:22:04 +0000

1. I do not believe that board meetings should be more than quarterly.

2. Historical results DO matter, especially as against plan.

3. I can’t imagine why management team other than CEO and maybe CTO or CFO need to be in the Board meeting.

4. Strategy is the province of the CEO, not the Board. I am perplexed by descriptions of entire management teams discussing strategy options with the board. CEO determines strategy; Board determines CEO.

5. Assuming Board members can read and write, PowerPoint is to be avoided. I prefer lots of data, and things written out, all of it distributed in advance. PowerPoint is dysfunctional and worthless.

6. VCs should stop referring to CEOs of companies in whioch their firms (or rather: funds managed by their firms) have an investment as “my CEO”. It ALWAYS irritates the CEOs and it is silly. If you have five VC funds in your company, can they each call you “my CEO”? Do their LPs call them “my VC”?

By: wwhsu

wwhsu — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 21:24:40 +0000

“that had crappy production value, but was high content value”

I think this is a point that VC’s needs to emphasize more. Entrepreneurs and executives putting together the board packages needs to focus more on content rather than on presentation/production. Often the management spent so much time on the book that too much resources are taken up on “information exchange” rather than execution and moving the business forward. For example, for a monthly board meeting, executives must start working on their packages 1-2 weeks before hand in order to get a “McKinsey” quality presentation. This leaves only 2-3 weeks to focus on execution rather than presentation. I’ve found many CEO’s who are more focused on producing board packages than on operations/execution/personnel issues.

By: Steve Shu

Steve Shu — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:32:22 +0000

Brad wrote: “I had started to notice a disconcerting rhythm to some of my board meetings.” and “However, I�ve noticed recently that a lot of the time being spent in the board meeting was being squandered by effectively reading through the board package in real time.”

FWIW – I find that understanding why this occurs can also be telling (though perhaps not applicable in the cases of your other boards). A couple of things that come to mind when I see business meetings run like this include:
- leadership style and MO of chair (person that has run an established company vs. growth company vs. other)
- exhaustion and not enough time to be thinking proactively
- lack of clarity on where things should be going

By: steve

steve — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 15:09:05 +0000

how often do you think vc backed starups should hold board meetings? reason i ask is, having been on all sides of the table (entrepreneur/ceo; investor; independent director) i have come to believe that too frequent meetings are bad idea because the company and team spend way too much of their time on talking to directors, who can/should be kept up to date by frequent informal communications with the ceo and maybe head of bus dev. to wit, if a board meets monthly, that consumes no less than 5% of management time (one business day per month out of an average of 20 business days in a typical month) and often 10% (add one day to prepare all the presnetations and reports). furthermore, even the smartest and best intentioned directors often think off the cuff, and while inspiration does occasionally strike, more often the poor management team (who is intimated as hell by the directors) go chasing off after bad ideas (because they know they will be asked about same at next board meeting)

By: Tim Kresse

Tim Kresse — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 14:57:33 +0000

Can you share the board book template in use at these companies?

By: Chris Halligan

Chris Halligan — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 13:10:30 +0000

“Your ops review is not a slide show from your latest vacation,” said one of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked for. “Yes, I care about where you’ve been. Sure, I’d like to see the highlights of your recent journeys. But what I really care about is where you’re going now.”

Your thoughts are apropos not just to board meetings, either. Lower level staff meetings and even individual one on ones benefit greatly from standardized, time-series metrics that focus the mind on the current trend, rather than the most recent success.