A well-organized meeting of your board of directors will allow you to make informed and ethical decisions. The board needs to be able to scrutinize documents, discuss and reach a common understanding on complex issues. Documentation is essential to allow for future reference and to ensure compliance. The process can be challenging to navigate but it is vital that the board makes the most of their time and resources.
Board meetings can be thrilling yet exhausting all at the same time. To ensure that meetings are productive, it’s important to avoid these common mistakes.
1. Recapitulating discussion points from previous meeting
Reliving the discussions of the previous board meeting can take up time and distract you from the most important agenda items. Being distracted by new discussion topics will also hinder you from achieving your goals for the meeting. If you’re forced to talk about an issue that wasn’t scheduled for discussion, have the group agree to bring it to the conclusion of the meeting with the promise to reevaluate and revisit whether the topic should be researched further, added to the next agenda or delegated as a task.
2. Sharing too much information
Board members should be informed. However the information they receive from them is not a comprehensive list of all the information available. Instead, it should be a set of information that encourages discussion and questions. It could appear as if the board is acting as a preschool teacher, but it allows them to concentrate on the crucial decisions.