From Ho-Hum to High-Impact: Transform Your Next Board Meeting

Another quarter is in the books. Many executives are actively preparing to discuss results and progress with their boards.

Business benefits from periodic review.

Of course, board meetings are a fiduciary and regulatory obligation. Certainly, the business benefits from periodic review to manage risks effectively and keep strategy on track. Yet, while considering what’s happened is important, directors and CEOs tell me they spend too little time looking ahead.

Boards can also help CEOs to navigate forward.

A well-constructed board provides a rich, diverse perspective that adds tremendous value to CEOs and their team. To capture this value, the executives I advise actively invite the board to challenge both conventional wisdom and the status quo. They create space on the board’s agenda to discern what’s on the horizon (both near and far) and what’s needed next.

Include these three things on the board’s agenda:

Feed Forward Conversation: Reviewing results (the past) naturally prompts feedback. Feed forward solicits suggestions, ideas, and behaviors that help you and your business to reach your objectives. It’s future-focused. Further, partnering closely with the board and taking suggestions for the future strengthens the relationship and expands thinking. For example:

• In your experience, what one thing do you suggest we change, add, or improve going forward?
• What one or two things have you seen other companies do successfully that we should explore?
• What ideas for solutions will increase the likelihood of our achieving shared goals?

Strategic Agility: Strategy is not tied to a specific timeframe (as noted in this HBR article) and it should never be static. Identify at least one critical area where the board can help to improve agility and drive strategy forward. Perhaps build on a feed forward idea surfaced in an earlier conversation. Then in that context, ask:

• What about what we do, how we operate, and who we serve today might flourish or become obsolete in the possible futures we’ve described?
• What can we learn from other industries’ operating models?
• To what extent do leader and board behaviors enhance trust and encourage appropriate risk-taking?

Succession Thinking: Championed by the C-Suite, meaningful succession thinking includes both planning for succession and developing the people and capabilities you need. Importantly, it assures a ready supply of talent to take on the critical roles, wherever they reside. Leaders at all levels must actively participate in succession thinking – and this includes the board. In fact, the board’s external perspective is particularly useful for identifying the specialized skills or expertise that, if lost, could be devastating. Consider:

• What can we learn from recent leadership transitions at other organizations?
• Which capabilities are both critical to our success and difficult to find in the marketplace?
• In your experience, what kinds of talent partnerships are most helpful in sourcing the specialized expertise we need?

Tap the board’s external and varied perspectives.

Good governance creates a cadence that makes it easier to tap the board’s external and varied perspectives. Rather than solely reflecting on results (past), savvy CEOs literally create space for forward thinking. They invite and ask provocative questions to identify emerging and critical drivers of change for their business and explore solutions. This strengthens the company’s strategic discipline and prompts decisions and actions that accelerate progress.

Making your strategy work requires aligning strategy and operations amid an ever-changing landscape. Recast the agenda to incorporate forward-looking conversations – and transform your next board meeting from ho-hum to high impact.

For more on making your strategy work, get my book: Charting the Course: CEO Tools to Align Strategy and Operations, available on Amazon.

The executives I advise routinely make their strategies work better. I can help you too.

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?2024 Tara J Rethore.?All rights reserved.?Permission granted to excerpt or reprint with attribution.