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1/ founders always ask me what are "best practices" for board meetings especially during zoom environment. here are some thoughts:
2/ send out mat. 48-72 hrs prior. ideally use collab platform like Notion so Board members can ask q's in the doc itself. Gives founders a sense of the major questions and also addresses the tactical questions in advance. cc @voxmatt @ShmulikFishman @scclemens
3/ The collaborative approach works so much better than sending out PPT slides and folks emailing back and forth with the founder. And with platforms like Notion, you have a running chronology of the prior meetings so always easy to go back and check on something from the past.
4/ Shorten board meetings to 3 hours or less on zoom even if you need to increase quantity of board meetings throughout the year. 4-5 hour zoom sessions quickly lose energy.
5/ Have one or two focused topics where the board can go deep and ideally keep functional updates and read-outs short. Solicit these topics in advance from the board. Makes for a much more interactive and useful session.
6/ Start board meeting with a 30min "state of the union". Overall summary of the good, bad, etc. good way to frame the state of the business.
7/ End with a closed session to discuss more sensitive topics like team, comp, etc. try to avoid admin items taking up too much of closed session. as you get bigger, committees like comp cmte can do some heavy lifting on topics outside board meeting
8/ Include management team for as much of meeting as you can. great way for board to get exposure to broader team and to hear what's going on in the trenches.
9/ Encourage your team to NOT read bullet points on slides. And start the board meeting on time even if not everyone is there - that will ensure folks are on time next time! cc @00byrne
9/ End the meeting by having each board member share 1-2 sentence summary on what's on their mind coming out of board meeting.
