I had a board update call recently that inspired me to write the first of my Reinventing the Board Meeting posts.
The call was for a company that is doing great, is extremely well managed, and extraordinarily transparent. Two days before the call a very detailed update package was sent around to the board. It covered the operating characteristics of the business extensively and in a format that is consistent with all of the other reports. It was clear and unambiguous.
The company does a very nice job with the board update call. They don’t force the board to sit through a page by page discussion of the package. Instead, there’s a short overview for each section followed by any Q&A that board members have. This is a pretty good approach. After about an hour of this we spent another 30 minutes on a handful of governance and board related issues. Overall, the call lasted two hours.
When I reflect on the call, we didn’t cover any strategic issues, nor did we discuss anything that would materially impact the company. In addition, there was nothing discussed that couldn’t be handled in email back and forth or flagged for a deeper discussion at the next board meeting.
This board meeting update call is an artifact and is typical of the many board update calls I’ve been doing since I joined my first board (other than my own company) in 1994. I don’t even want to think of the number of hours of my life (which is probably cumulatively measured in years at this point) hanging on the end of the phone trying to stay intellectually engaged in a board update call.
I’ve come to believe that the board update call is worthless. There tend to be three parts – all which are easily separable:
- Business Update: At the minimum, this can be a monthly report that goes out to the full board. Assuming that all of the board members can read and are capable of writing an email, any questions can be surfaced via email. The best companies I’m involved in actually do this weekly and, if you follow Steve Blank’s “Boardroom as Bits” hypothesis, you can turn this into real time info where the board is incorporated into the information stream of the company.
- Business / Strategy Issues: For whatever reason, the vast majority of board update calls don’t have a deep discussion on any substantive issues. They are often flagged along with a shallow conversation but then deferred either to the next in person board meeting, left for interactions between individual board members and the CEO, or dropped on the floor and quickly forgotten.
- Legal / Governance Issues: Inevitably there are minutes to approve, options to approve, and other legal / governance issues to deal with. These almost always can be handled at the next in-person board meeting or by a UWC (“unanimous written consent” sent around by email.)
There were a dozen people on the call I was on including management team members. That’s a full person day of time spent on something that didn’t need to happen. Expensive.
CEO’s – reconsider how you are doing this. And to my fellow board members – challenge the CEOs and the boards you are on to engage in a more effective, continuous way. And to the CEO for every board I’m on – I’m happy to work with you to abolish the board meeting update call if you’d like.