9 Agenda Items for Board Meeting Wins
As a board observer, I often attend meetings and quarterly updates. Some startup and small business founders come armed to the teeth with data while others sadly, not enough. Some appeal to the board as a resource for help and guidance while others just telegraph what the future holds. And some make a board meeting a perfunctory exercise because they hosted a series of pre-board meetings to gain alignment in advance of the actual board meeting.
But, there is a consistent trend among all of them and that is preparation.
The best way to conduct a productive board meeting is to prepare (and stick to) a solid agenda. Here are nine recommended agenda items to optimize your board meetings:
CEO Updates
The CEO Update includes highlights (and lowlights) from the last meeting. It is sometimes drafted as a short letter and other times bulleted as an executive summary, but they always cover the agenda and set the tone for the meeting. This is an opportunity for a CEO to guide the board in their emotional response to the state of your business. By sharing your thoughts/emotions (where you’re pleased with progress, optimistic about the future, concerned about risks and challenges or upset about setbacks), you signal how the board should react. They won’t always agree, but a strong update, infused with your interpretation and outlook, demonstrates leadership and a command of the business.
Key Milestones
This is a great opportunity to champion the company’s efforts. Key Milestones can be at all levels of the business. Here are a few: (1) new leads and/or new business won; (2) productivity increases that will drive more profit; (3) new hires that will drive top or bottom line gains; (4) new board members or advisors that will drive more business or protect the business you have; (5) new product enhancements/releases that will drive more growth; (6) new acquisitions (physical capital or software) that will drive productivity. The key (pun intended) to presenting these milestones is to demonstrate their impact on the business—they should directly contribute to the increase in shareholder value.
Financial & KPI Review
A staple of any board meeting is the financial/KPI update. Each business is unique, but there should be a handful of financial and operating metrics. The financial metrics may include some income statement (P&L), balance sheet (BS) and cash flow statement (CFS) items, but usually a few lines from each will do. Few board members want to see an entire breakdown of financials but rather high-level summaries of trends and variances in tables or charts. Here are a few items that may help get you started: revenue, gross margin, and profit (P&L); assets and liabilities (BS), net changes from Operations, Financing and Investing (CFS). When it comes to operating metrics, there are two types of KPIs: Growth (KPIs around customer acquisition, retention, and Monetization) and Productivity (KPIs around volume, throughput, and quality). The key is to include the “why and so what” in your presentation. Don’t just show the metric but highlight what it means, and why it’s relevant to discuss now.
Department Updates
Letting the board know how the company is doing within specific functional areas also inspires confidence. Which departments you choose are a function of the type of organization you lead. For example, product-led, marketing-led or sales-led growth startups will likely want to provide updates on product, sales and marketing, respectively. Depending on the nature of your technology, or the maturation of the company, you may talk about development, or engineering or even efforts to strengthen the backoffice which may lead to improvements in governance and risk mitigation. Trust your instincts but be willing to give a glimpse of how the organization is functioning and specifically, the impact this will have on future outcomes.
Market Updates
While the first few items are very internally focused, market updates are all about what’s happening outside your four walls. It is a good practice to engage your audience with macro- or micro-economic trends that may impact the business, positively or negatively. This can include any of the following: (1) is there exciting news/social media in your sector; (2) are there new regulations; (3) is there interesting M&A activity; (4) are there new competitors or (5) changes in existing competitive behavior (pricing, product, etc.), etc. There is no point to bringing up trends for the sake of filling slides, but any indicators that may influence your outlook on the next 90 days are always good to include here.
Team & Talent
I like to include an update on personnel. And mind you, this can extend beyond full-time employees (FTEs). If there are any new company advisors or board members for example, this is a great place in your meeting to address their onboarding. The update should outline any changes and how those changes impact the company. For example, increased or decreased headcount impact productivity and expenses; employee engagement or satisfaction scores could impact productivity and growth; ethnic and gender diversity may demonstrate your adherence to corporate values; ratios of FTEs to contractors show your reliance on inside vs. outside help which may have their own implications. Mine your internal data for insight that will showcase your leadership and growth trajectory.
Risks & Challenges
Not everything is awesome all the time, and it is always better to be proactive about how you present the bad. It is not only honest (and we love honesty) but getting ahead of obstacles helps you control their narrative as well. And, in a perfect world, the board is there to help, so consider how they can be a resource (see Asks below, too). Challenges should be business related—trust me it warrants repeating (I once listened to a founder regale their board about their sleep schedule) and can easily be drawn from the categories outlined above. For example, key milestones are achievements, but are any of them at risk or might they be short-lived? Are there any concerns or indicators that financial metrics/KPIs will look worse in the future? Is there anything in the market or within a department or its people that may pose a risk or challenge? Being able to relate items here to the categories of information you already discussed is helpful to keep a tight narrative and agenda for your quarter.
Plans/Objectives
Plans & Objectives roll your entire quarterly review into a “here’s what we’re doing about it” update. Consider what the board should look forward to hearing about in future meeting(s). To brainstorm, consider what you’ll “START, STOP, & CONTINUE” doing between now and the next meeting (or beyond if they’re longer-term initiatives). There will likely be a number of new initiatives, followed by a few you’ll realize it is time to sunset and several that have been working and should continue to work over time. When introducing new initiatives, consider how many in total you’re managing — how will new plans and objectives drive growth, profit, or workflow efficiencies? And at what cost? Be ready to show (or answer) how you prioritized these initiatives to maximize scale and/or shareholder value.
Asks
Finally, the board is there for a reason. Most boards we’ve seen want to be used so feel free to ask for help. It doesn’t have to be a long discussion and may tee them up for meetings following the update where ideas are explored further. You might need intros to new client prospects, partners and/or other investors. You may want a review of some of your plans/objectives or to dig into some ad hoc business problems. Keep it short and consider that board members often dislike surprises so if you’re going to call on individuals, a heads up in advance is more often welcome than not.
Board meetings don’t have to be stressful. Most board members want to know that you have things under control. This can be demonstrated with a tight agenda that covers a high level overview of where the business is, how it’s functioning some ups and downs and especially what you’re doing about it and if possible, where you can benefit from outside advice. Try to land on an agenda and try sticking to it for a few quarters as the repetition will also help overall. And consider the value of socializing highlights to individuals in advance so that the actual meeting goes a little more smoothly.