How effective are your board meetings? Is your board still operating on a traditional agenda or the modern one?
The traditional agenda emphasizes the historical performance of the business, past successes and bad decisions.
The minutes of the previous meeting, the reports from management and executive director’s report – all tend to focus on presenting the past performance of the organization, with limited information on the future agenda or how to influence it. The highest decision-making body of the business should put more emphasis on the future of the company because that is where it is heading.
- Who is the competition?
- How to win?
- Which channels to use to leverage on existing opportunities?
- What capabilities are needed to support the current and projected growth?
- Which customer segments or market niche to appeal?
- What kind of technology and staffing do we need to make the company competitive?
- And how do we invest in a platform business model that offers the scalability and resilience required to become competitive?
- What is the next big thing to scale?
These are questions that the board must spend a lot of time answering. And of course, how to sustain growth and avoid risks arising from non-compliance.
Traditional board agenda tend to refocus the board discussion from the future to the present challenges, yet that is a role of the executive team who must assess and provide analysis of winning possibilities to facilitate board decisions.
The board must provide long term insights which the staff and executive management do not have. And board meetings need not be reduced to reactive problem-solving forums. Share on XCopyright Mustapha B Mugisa, 2020. All rights reserved.
