A good board meeting is the opportunity for a discussion of key business issues and decisions, and also for establishing the company’s policies. Making the most of every board meeting requires careful planning ahead of time setting expectations on how much discussion is possible, and being consistent with the agenda.
The best method to avoid boring meetings is to set specific goals for meetings and refer back to those frequently to ensure that the meeting is in line with the goals. Being too involved with reports or technicalities that could have been reviewed prior to the meeting can hinder the chance to have the board members discuss business issues that can’t be solved by your management team on its own.
Think about creating a consensus agenda to cut down on time that meetings take. This allows the board members to approve documents quickly and reports that do not need further discussion.
Send out board packets 3 to 4 days ahead so that attendees can go through them prior to the meeting. This will decrease the time spent reading reports at the meeting and give attendees the opportunity to ask questions before the reports become more complicated.
Include an “parking lot” at the end of the board’s package in order that items that are not relevant to the meeting can be pushed off for a different meeting and not distract from the most important agenda items. This will also decrease the chance of the most important items on the agenda being moved to later in the meeting or not being discussed in any way.