Managing Productivity and the Board

A board pack for a 2 hour meeting with a well functioning board of a medium-sized, relatively complex organisation will take somewhere between 20 and 30 man-hours to produce. That's an educated guess. Multiply that by the number of meetings a year, add in the hours of the meetings themselves for the staff required to attend, throw in the prep and meetings of board subcommittees, and it doesn't take long to get to 1,000 executive man-hours per annum spent on board meetings alone.

With so many hours going into preparing and running board meetings, meeting frequency (and content) must be things that the Chair & CEO, in particular, turn their minds too. After all, the time spent on board meeting preparation is time foregone from running the business by the management team.

Board meetings are critical. I'm not advocating for their elimination or suggesting they are not essential, both for good governance and for the organisation to function, but it is incumbent on the board to ensure they have achieved the right balance between time spent by management on keeping them appraised and time spent on running the business.

Here are a few questions to ponder;

1. How often does your board meet? How long does it sit for when it does? How far in advance do directors ask for papers to be provided? Can the meetings be less frequent? Or shorter? Or can papers be provided closer to the meeting date?
2. Do you have a large number of standing items on the agenda? Do they take time to prepare or discuss? Are they necessary? If you require a financial report at each meeting, can it be distilled to a few key metrics?
3. How big are your board packs? Do they need to be that long, or can they be Marie Kondo-ed?
4. If there are no items for decision on a board agenda, is the meeting necessary or can it be conducted by way of a written update?
5. Does your constitution or the law mandate how often the board should meet? If not, what led to the frequency you've chosen? If it's just "the way we've always done it" consider whether that way is still the right way.
6. How many Committees does the board have? How often do they meet? And most importantly are they necessary - are they reducing the workload of the board and management, or adding to it by duplication?
7. Do you vary the order of your board agenda to ensure matters get appropriate attention and priority? If your Risk section is always the last item, is it getting the attention it deserves at the end of a long meeting?

I've sat in my share of board meetings, both as an executive and a director. Unfortunately, I have no magic formula for meeting length or frequency. I do believe it's an essential matter to consider, and one which demonstrates a highly functional CEO/Chair relationship if it can be. Pick up the phone, have the conversation, you might both be thinking exactly the same thing...

Campbell Hedley, Principal, AGENDS