Board Meetings Guide
Once your company has investors, you will begin to formalize your board of directors. Your board should consist of some of your investors in addition to an independent board member or two. Your board has skin in the game; they want you and your team to be successful. They also have a lot of experience for you to leverage - as well as valuable connections - if you use them effectively.
Most investors will expect a monthly or quarterly board meeting. While these meetings are a way for your board to keep tabs on what’s going on with your company, you should be thinking about your board meetings as an incredible opportunity for you to get really smart people to help you steer the future of the company. Try to think of this meeting as you managing up, instead of them managing you.
Identify a Board Chair
Even if you have a really tiny board, it’s helpful to have a board chair. This person will be your main contact on the board and can help you prepare for meetings and act as a mediator if board issues emerge. Ideally, you want someone who has enough time to be available for a few additional meetings and also has the pattern recognition of having been on several boards before. Your board chair is a great person to ask for feedback on materials before sending them to the larger board.
Establish Norms and Expectations - Consider Hosting an Annual Retreat
It may seem like it’s not your role to lead and facilitate a board retreat once a year - but it’s definitely in your wheelhouse to initiate. A board retreat is a powerful way to build trust as a team and to align on how you want to operate as a team. You may want to involve a mediator or facilitator to help you run a board retreat so you can observe and participate. Your retreat can be just one day of meetings and a board dinner beforehand. Although we live in a digital world, these sorts of retreats are better done in person. The purpose of the retreat is to ensure that the group is aligned on what their role is and what information they need to be able to do their job effectively.
Optimizing Your Board for Strategic Advice
A great way to think about how to use a 2-hour board meeting is:
10 min - Greetings + small talk
10 min - Quick summary of what has happened since our last meeting
10 min - Quick overview of where the company is now
40 min - Strategic question #1
Providing just enough context and data to have your board help you
40 min - Strategic question #2
Providing just enough context and data to have your board help you
10 min - Wrap up + next steps
Possible executive session - your board may meet without you to discuss issues that pertain to your compensation and performance
Send Materials in Advance
You’re going to aim to send your materials a few days in advance so that you don’t waste your board meeting time with updates. You want to use as much of your time with your board getting advice and help on the things that are truly needle-moving for you and your team right now.
Think about how each board member will process your information. Is there someone who always prints out the materials? You may want to send them a binder with all of the meeting materials already printed so they can engage effectively with you. Here’s a board deck template to help you get started.
Hold Pre-Meeting Meetings
It’s always good to have a pre-meeting meeting with board members, individually, to update them, answer questions, and prime them for your strategic questions. It’s always better to have any difficult conversations quietly and alone. This allows you to use the group meeting to listen to the back-and-forth of your board discussing your strategic questions.
Tone and Executive Presence
Believe it or not, your board does not want you to be submissive and just ask them what to do. They want you to lead. That means having a game plan and asking for input or having two roads you could travel well planned-out and asking for strategic advice on which to do first. Board members will not feel their time and expertise are being used effetively if you just ask “what do you think?” They want to see you know how to identify problem, explore solutions, use data, and drive impact on your team in your field. You need to show up with confidence and think about your own executive presence. Think about your tone, your body language, and even your attire.
Send an After-Meeting Follow-Up Email
You may want to close out the meeting by sending out a “thank you” email within the next 48 hours after the meeting is over. This is a great way to remind your board that you value their support and to make sure that they know that you identified several concrete next steps that you will follow up on before the next meeting.