3 minutes
In my work with over 300 boards, I’ve found four moves that can give a chairperson immediate relief in navigating their busy board agendas, managing discussion, and freeing up time for more focused dialog.
1. Use a consent agenda. Many boards are still not fully utilizing the “consent agenda.” This simple move frees up meeting time for dialog and helps the chair reduce trivial chitchat over lesser issues. Consent agendas group a set of reports, updates, or routine actions that require no discussion. A CEO’s report may go here even though there might be a larger specific agenda item later on for CEO update and discussion. An item can be pulled for board discussion if desired. A committee report should go here if no board action is recommended. The board reviews everything on the consent agenda in advance and saves precious discussion time by accepting them all as a package into the board record—usually early on the agenda.
2. Create rules of engagement. CU board members have widely varying levels of experience and leadership competencies, making the chair’s facilitation job challenging. I’ve seen board members who bully others, talk non-stop, can’t stay on topic, aren’t prepared, and have little idea of the business questions to ask. It’s not uncommon for many boards to still behave like a committee. I’ve found it helpful for boards to create a set of “rules of engagement.” This is a list of meeting behavior commitments board members set themselves as a standard of board team behavior (On my website, click “Governance Leadership” for an example). Today’s chair would be well served leading this exercise to create a template of agreed-upon behaviors. Having the board develop these also engages every board member in helping monitor and facilitate board meeting behavior.
3. Use executive summaries. More boards are moving to reframe the numerous presentations at meetings through use of “executive summaries” as a means of introducing a topic, recommendation or issue. Typically one to two pages, an executive summary captures the bottom line issue or recommendation, key issues and implications. Eliminating the need for a presentation, the executive summary can jumpstart a board in “decision/discussion” mode.
4. Use the “flipped” meeting format. In the spirit of cutting to the chase, more boards are moving to “flip” presentations. Boards read executive summaries (see No. 3, above) of key issues ahead of time and then in the meeting can jump right to discussion. This cuts out the potential for rambling, poor presentations frequently seen in board meetings; reduces “death by PowerPoint”; and frees up more time for discussion. Board members like this approach because they can digest the material in their own time and get right to the question/answer and discussion portion of the topic. Most boards appreciate converting presentation time to discussion time.
Good luck.
Les Wallace, Ph.D., the 9Minute Mentor, is president of Signature Resources Inc. and author of Principles of 21st Century Governance: Journey to High Performance.
A frequent speaker and consultant on governance leadership, Wallace will be leading CUES’ new two-day Board Chair Development Seminar, March 4-5 in San Diego. Register today!
