Let’s fix startup board meetings

Photo credits: Simon Blackley

I spend a lot of time in board meetings. Specifically, private company startup board meetings. Rooms filled with some of the most talented, bold, daring and dedicated people on the planet, devising solutions to some of the economy’s toughest problems.

Precious time and energy is frequently squandered by directors and startup CEOs.

More often than not, however, most of these board meetings fail. Despite the good intentions and great experience in the room, the painful truth is that precious time and energy is frequently squandered by directors and startup CEOs.

A good board helps the CEO and team manage their business, and provides unique counsel and support. But a board is only good if it’s managed well. Failure stems from two bad assumptions made by all in the room:

• Startup CEOs assume board directors expect them to “report” on their business.
• Directors assume CEOs know how to run board meetings.

The Board Triangle

I’m proposing a solution that I call the Board Triangle. This model is designed to give all startup CEOs a guide for topic and time management for board meetings.

The “points” of the Board Triangle are strategy, reporting and leadership.

It’s an active map to be used before, during and after the meeting to get you where you need to go. I’ve used this framework in a handful of board meetings since this fall, tested it with lots of CEOs and professional board members and screened it at the Lobby conference in October.

This post includes suggestions and feedback from many people and, while no model is perfect, this one works well. Of course, boards do lots of other administrative things, like approve stock options for employees, leases, large agreements, etc., but this post focuses on the non-administrative time spent in a board meeting.

The “points” of the Board Triangle are strategy, reporting and leadership. In this post I describe what each point means and how to use the Board Triangle to create a new model of board interaction.

Suggestions for use:

Strategy

Reporting

Leadership

Final thoughts