October 18th, 2023
Author: Simon Schaffer
Tips for Board Meeting Preparation
To ensure that everyone is on the same page, it’s crucial to prepare well for board meetings. The following tips will help you establish an organized meeting that will yield the best results each time your board meets.
During the pre-meeting it is important to review previous minutes of the board’s last meeting. The director should be asked to bring any documents or reports that should be included on the agenda. The chairperson’s preferences should be considered for the presentation and arrangement in the books for board members. Some prefer a higher amount of detail, while others prefer a traditional “dashboard approach”.
Prioritizing one or two key agenda items for every meeting is a great general rule of thumb to avoid clogging meetings with lengthy the best business software reports or other topics that are routine. In addition, avoid scheduling more than 30 minutes for each agenda item to ensure you can give each topic enough time.
It’s also beneficial to invite external board members to board meetings to bring fresh perspectives and ideas. While it might add some cost to invite independent board members, the benefits of their perspective and their outsider insights can often be worth the cost.
Finally, be sure to include the key decisions that are being made during the meeting, so that all directors are able to be able to identify and either agree or disagree with the decisions. It’s an excellent idea to assign department heads to each decision so that they can communicate the results of the meeting to their teams.
The utopian dreams of Russian-style cybernetic communism could only be turned into everyday reality within the made-in-the-USA global village.
