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Required Attendance Board Meetings
Last night at a FeedBurner board dinner we had an interesting discussion about "requiring attendance" at board meetings. I am an advocate of face to face board meetings. I know that I am not particularly useful when I am on the phone and I generally think that is true of all board members.
Matt Blumberg (whose board I am on) told the group that he "requires" board members to attend at least four meetings face to face and he structures those meetings so that he gets the most he can out of them. They generally start with or end with a board dinner.
I told Matt that I like his approach but I don't like the idea that the other meetings are "optional", which is the message you send when you make four meetings mandatory.
I suggested a similar but different approach. Strongly encourage board members to attend all the meetings, but pick four meetings each year and make them "strategic planning" meetings and have a dinner the night before. Send the message that those meetings are not to be skipped. And schedule them at times of the year when people are unlikely to have vacations and such.
As companies get more mature, its fine to switch to a different approach. Comscore does four face to face meetings each year and four board calls. That's a good model for companies that are large enough to be run on a quarterly basis. Same with Matt's company, Return Path.
But for early stage companies that are still building their businesses and revenue models, monthly meetings are critical. I like to do 10 meetings a year and have all board members in attendance. That's not going to happen at each meeting but it should be a goal. I also like board dinners, but not before every meeting. I think the idea of four "big" meetings a year with dinners the night before, and six other face to face meetings is a perfect system.
One more thing on this subject. Management often over prepares for meetings. Not mentally. But in the presentation materials. Hundred page board decks are nuts but I see a lot of them. Maybe for the big strategic meetings they make sense. But for the monthly update meetings, I think management should spend less time preparing for those meetings than many do. If you are spending a month a week preparing for a board meeting, something is wrong.
Comments (11) | Posted December 13, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
Agree completely. If people want to prepare big board decks they should get them out a few days ahead of time so people can digest them, and then have a more free ranging meeting - unless there are clear priorities that the CEO needs to cover. Also, as someone who is on a CA board and live in CT, it is tough to be out there for 10 board meetings a year, but going to the 4 keynote meetings is always doable and helpful.
Posted by: Harry DeMott | Dec 13, 2006 9:25:40 AM
Totally agree with the face to face meeting concept. Moreover, I'm a big fan of the 'no cell phone/BlackBerry' rule during such meetings as well. Nothing says you're not engaged like allowing yourself to take calls and emails during a 1-2 hour meeting.
Posted by: CoryS | Dec 13, 2006 9:26:53 AM
Good board meetings cover 2 - 4 key points and get resolution. Board meetings should never be used to repeat information that can be read without the company execs in the room.
Posted by: Wil Schroter | Dec 13, 2006 9:53:47 AM
Just a quick question (since I just took my Bus. Orgs. final... :) I was under the impression that as a board member, you were required to attend meetings or you were violating your "duty of care" and not meeting your obligations as a member of the board, potentially subjecting yourself to liability.
Or when you say "requiring attendance" are you speaking about attendance *in person* rather than via conference call?
Posted by: Dave! | Dec 13, 2006 11:09:57 AM
Have "Board" meetings, not "BORED" meetings....got it. :)
Posted by: Andy | Dec 13, 2006 11:13:11 AM
I have a rule for every meeting I attend - no email of any kind. By definition if the meeting is structured such that I can be doing email in it, the meeting itself is/was a waste of my time. If I am chairing a meeting in which people are doing email, I have failed by either inviting too many or the wrong people, or not creating an effective agenda. I have found this to be a pretty good rule of thumb for planning my time.
Oh, and if someone invites me to a meeting that they have organized and *they* use an email device, I will say something, or simply reject future meeting requests.
Posted by: Steve | Dec 13, 2006 1:20:53 PM
Good post. I think a lot of management teams tend to "over-prepare" for a lot of events where they have a presentation. The formal deck should be a guide for the discussion...not contain the entire discussion.
Here's some tips we give CEOs and CFOs for investment conference appearance. Also good fodder for board meetings.
# Keep it simple. Focus on your core competencies, your markets, your growth strategy, and your financials.
# Keep it short. Twenty slides MAX for a half hour. Leave time for questions at the end too.
# Speak to the slides. There's no need to put EVERY WORD you say on the slide. Keep it to three to four bullets, and expand on them in your spoken portion.
# Key financials. Show the metrics that matter to your business, not every metric in your business.
# Find a good template. There are a lot of really fresh, good-looking PPT decks out there. Take some time and find one that looks good with your branding or corporate logo. You spend a lot of money to brand yourself, carry it into your investor communications!
Posted by: Paul | Dec 13, 2006 1:47:26 PM
If we only had a month a week - we actually had time for everything including weekly board-meetings !
The rest makes sense to me...
(referring to last line of article)
Posted by: Ben Forcevive | Dec 13, 2006 2:20:52 PM
I recommend to all my Boards - 'let's just invite the folks at WSJ! - Heck, let's webcast it live!!'
Why spend time worrying about leaks? We embrace transaprency, fluidity of ideas with our competitors and we have no pretense about things like trade secrets. We call it the 'reality tv business model'.
Posted by: yogi | Dec 13, 2006 4:05:36 PM
I agree with everything you say in this post and elsewhere on boards (pretty much).
With early stage companies your chances of success are much increased by having an effecive board, so this stuff is worth fighting for.
Posted by: Nic Brisbourne | Dec 14, 2006 5:20:33 PM
I have always thought that face to face meetings had way more advantages than the current teleconference software out there today.
Posted by: Dustin | Jan 3, 2007 10:17:10 AM
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