Who should do the talking at the board meetings

I recently came across an interesting idea about board meetings. Basically, board meetings are a tool that CEO has at his disposal to communicate with investors and other board members. However quite often it's a fairly strict relationship. CEO does the presentation, board members intervene and comment in between and that's about it. I've done it, it's ok, but not great.

However one important aspect of managing the board is to open up the company to the board members.

And one of he best ways is to invite some of the team members from time to time do a presentation on particular subject.  So I'm convinced now that the rule of thumb of who does the talking at the board should be:

CEO: 20%, team members: 40%, board members: 40%

It will benefit the CEO since it will elevate the level of trust the board has in to the CEO. It will change the dynamics of the board and increase the engagement of the team members.

It's best to rotate presentations of the team members, so that on each board meeting, one or two team members do a presentation on the current state and future of various topics like product, marketing and other (depending on their area of expertise). It's actually quite easy to open 30 or 45 mins of time for team presentations and discussions. The topics need to be discussed anyway, why not just include the ones who have most hand's on experience with them.

Board meeting action items

Image via Wikipedia

Board meeting is an intense 90 minutes event that happens every month or every second month. It's the time when you get all  your investors, observers board members and management in one room, reflect on past few weeks and steer the course of your startup in the future.

One interesting side effect of such brainstorming is that even though boards often tackle more strategic issues, there are quite a few operational ideas sprouting in the same time,  like intros, sharing some docs and others. It's crucial for the CEO or whomever is taking down the minutes to adequately organise them and follows up on them with the board members. Otherwise things get forgotten and potentially helpful idea goes down the drain. 

So in order to do it right, do the following:

1. write down every single action item, if possible with a due date and the owner of the item

2. send out follow up emails to participants with their action item lists, don't expect investors to write down what they promised; I even suggest that you send one email, CC everybody and list action items per each participants

3. in due time, or every week send out gentle reminders on to each participant; in this case don't CC everybody, you don't want to make them look like kids that needs to be reminded constantly

4. on the next board meeting, report on the non executed action item, and thank your board members for the executed action items