Board Meeting Best Practices: 10 Steps

Once you have raised your first round of venture financing and have one or more outside investors on your board of directors, you likely will begin to consider ways to create a positive and productive relationship with your board. How should you, as the CEO, think about your company’s board meetings? How should you think about structuring your first board meeting? What best practices should you be contemplating?

Here are 10 steps to consider as you enter this stage in your company’s life cycle.

1. Meet at least once per quarter (and more often if feasible). In terms of frequency, you’ll need to strike a balance between meeting often enough to keep the board apprised of the company’s trajectory, but not too often to the point that the management team is continuously preparing for the next meeting. When scheduling your meetings, keep in mind that your investors may have busy schedules with frequent travel, so someone on your team should reach out to board members to calendar out all your anticipated meetings for 12-18 months in advance. Consider collecting RSVPs for meetings to ensure enough people will attend to make the meeting worth everyone’s time.

2. Develop a habit of scheduling regular phone updates with your board members 7-10 days before the board meeting. This allows you to preview important issues that are likely to come up at the meeting and ensures that any bad news isn’t being delivered for the first time at the meeting itself. Scheduling phone updates also sets up a clear line of communication with board members that functions outside the setting of the more formal board meeting.

3. Organize your board deck into functional areas based on what is important to your company, such as:

1. Finance (last quarter’s results, next quarter’s forecast and fiscal year forecast)
2. Operations
3. Sales and marketing
4. Engineering and development
5. Competition (both current and anticipated)
6. Organizational chart/management structure (and hiring plans)
7. Breakdown of remaining cash and future financing plans (it is always important, even if you’ve just closed a financing, to start thinking about when and how your next round will come together)
8. IP (as needed)
9. Legal (as needed)
10. Matters up for formal approval (such as option grants + 409A valuation; new material agreements; new hire employment agreements)

4. Circulate the board package at least one full day before the meeting. Avoid sending the materials immediately ahead of the meeting or late the night before. To ensure that the meeting proceeds efficiently and productively, it’s important that board members have time to digest the board package. When the meeting agenda and other materials are sent out ahead of time, attendees will know what to expect and can prepare as necessary. Also, providing the materials in advance is essential for good corporate governance and conveys a sense that your company has its act together.

5. Don’t hide the ball. Be forthcoming, candid and straightforward about challenges the business faces. This allows the board to provide feedback and guidance on the company’s strategies and priorities. Your company should benefit from the experience your investors bring to the table – it’s an important part of why you chose them as partners.

6. Limit the time frame. As an early- or mid-stage company, your regular board meetings should last no more than two and a half hours. This practice signals respect for everyone’s busy schedules and promotes the efficient use of time. Focus on what is most important to the business. When off-agenda topics are brought up, make note of them and agree to set them aside for discussion at a later date. This allows the board to stay focused on the topics included on the meeting agenda and can help prevent the meeting from going beyond the scheduled time frame.

7. Do a deep dive in one or two areas where the company is excelling, or struggling. Although your board deck should address a range of functional areas (noted above), try not to discuss all the topics in detail at every meeting. An agenda that covers too many areas dilutes them all. Instead, thoroughly focus on one or two areas that you judge to be particularly significant to the current quarter.

8. Besides the CEO and CFO (who should attend all board meetings), consider incorporating other members of senior management into the flow of board meetings. Your board should have direct exposure to the great team you are building. Each meeting, consider inviting a different member of the team to present on his or her functional area (such as sales, development, marketing or operations). Providing your board members, observers and investors with exposure to other management team members helps the board think about organizational needs and understand the areas where the team needs to be built out or improved.

9. Keep a running list of topics the board focuses on during the meeting. When board members ask numerous questions about a certain area of the business, make a note of it. After the meeting, consider analyzing these key topics further with your team; then, at the next meeting, provide the board with an update. Pulling action items from the discussion at past meetings and addressing them in subsequent meetings shows board members you are actively listening to them and want to help them understand your company better.

10. Consider hosting in person board meetings and a board dinner the night before your board meetings, perhaps once or twice a year. While it is more difficult to schedule in person board meetings (than online meetings) due to the management team’s and the directors’ busy schedules, consider making at least one board meeting per year in person. This practice promotes interpersonal connection, trust and bonding that can be important when bumps in the road come up later for the company. Further, informal dinners with the board members are a great way of building relationships and can help make future board meetings more productive.