The Remote-First Board Meeting
I hate board meetings. Most of the time, people come unprepared, and the CEO drags everyone “up to date” with a lecture-style presentation, and then there is a stressed discussion on “strategy.” Board meetings were designed with compliance in mind; it is time to design them with “user in mind!”
The three key factors are:
- The best people, but without jetlag, pollution, and massive time waste.
- Informed attendees and misunderstandings cleared out prior to the meeting.
- The biggest possible return on the aggregate time investment.
So, I made as a requirement to all the boards I am part of to change to a distributed, asynchronous format: The Remote-First Board Meeting.
This document is the first version, and I hope to continue to improve it. Please comment if I need to explain or add.
1. PREPARE (PRE-MEETING)
To make sure everyone is prepared and can participate in their time and style, you send out the information material as a commentable Google Doc at least one week in advance.
Think about it as the slides you would do for a “normal” (=old school) board meeting, but in a distributed, online, asynchronous, commentable document. There is an (a) agenda part of the meeting and (b) an information package.
The information part has finances, sales, product, recruitment, etc. — the highlights, the challenges, etc., and all the other things the attendees need to understand where you are and what the current focus is.
Every business has different stage, reporting, and focus, so I can’t give you a template of what to write, but I’ve created one for investor emails that you can use as a start.
In a remote-first board meeting, the most important differences are:
Action Points
Every board meeting has a lot of decisions, so have a section in the information package on what actions you have solved and not. This way the board members don’t have to keep track of these and you get a unified document that keeps the CEO accountable.
Legal matters
You can even prepare the regular minutes and link to it in the information package. The board members can read through it before and make sure they can sign it later. Only if they disagree, do you spend time on it at the meeting.
Style
Make it “long form”, almost prose style and not just bullets. Don’t care about beautification. Important is to be succinct and not be too verbose. Don’t dump links to metric systems, CRM, other slides. Your job as the CEO is to direct focus on the information needed, which is an art.
2. COMMENT (PRE-MEETING)
Now the board members can add value! All investors are required to go in and comment and ask for things that are missing; they don’t understand, disagree with, or where they want more details.
The CEO (and sometimes distributed with @-mentions to the leadership team depending on the size of company) will respond.
You usually need to iterate on the format and content. The first times, make sure that the board members “over-comment” before the meeting so you can easily see what is missing.
Some discussions will turn out to become long chat threads or need more information clarified in the actual document. Update the document accordingly. Other participants shouldn’t be required to read the comments to get the content.
At first, this can feel like you are dragging out a 2h board meeting to a week of micro-meetings, but what you will get is incredibly productive discussions where everyone thinks before they talk because the format forces them to. I think it is worth having many comments and discussions before the meeting.
Still, discussions in writing are often different than discussions in the meeting. Therefore, the CEO should make clear decisions during the pre-meeting process and say “ok, I think this is a discussion we should take to the meeting” — and then put it on the agenda.
3. EXECUTE (MEETING)
Now the actual board time comes along, use the fact that people are very prepared and have had multiple discussions.
Screenshare a few slides with agenda so you can guide the group’s focus through the meeting.
If needed, the CEO can quickly go through the information package, ask where there is a need for more clarifications and highlight where there has been a discussion and allow for further comments. A good mantra is “If no comments, then the matter is approved without time allocated. If comments, elaborate to exhaustion. If no agreement, allocate time during the meeting.” So, just keep discussing until you have reached conclusions and don’t spend time if no one commented.
The participants are not looking at the document but the CEO is presenting and screen sharing the document or slides.
The board meeting should be for you — the CEO — not for the board to get input and guidance. To get there the structure is usually:
- Information — get everyone on the same page
- Decision points — you have a suggestion, 95% it is just a Yes, but might be some discussion. Write your suggestion in the material.
- Discussion — this is where you have one or two topics you don’t know what to do with and want a lot of input and viewpoints.
Notes & Information distribution
On each section add a “Meeting Notes” part, so it is easy to separate from the information package afterwards. This is where you write decisions, action points, and comments during the meeting.
Also, write the notes for the meeting as a part of the document so everyone can see them and potentially disagree afterward. I love information transparency, so I would recommend sending out a summary and if everyone is ok with it, record the call and distribute to the employees.
TROUBLESHOOTING
1. People don’t focus, but check email, etc.
Everyone who is not presenting, usually everyone but the CEO, turn off notifications and move their computer arm’s length away or remove their keyboard & mouse. This makes it a lot easier to focus. If you want to take notes, you could use pen and paper, or read the excellent document which is created during the meeting.
2. Sometimes it is hard to follow conversations
This is often because some people (the CEO and team) is in a room with a conference phone, and the rest call in. Every person should be in a separate room, with a separate headset.
3. How to “raise your hand” during the meeting
I like the etiquette of being on Mute and turning off Mute to show you want to talk. As with all protocols, you have to inform and get everyone to use it. The meeting needs a moderator to make sure that all get to voice their opinions. It can be the CEO but could be the Head of the Board, depending on dynamics.
4. Avoid that the process becomes a drain on the CEO’s time
Think about how to automate data gathering from different teams (which has the positive side effect that people take deliverables to the board very seriously) and ensure that all the CEO’s reporting responsibilities contribute to the board meeting without adding duplicate work. For example, if the company has investors beyond the board make sure that reporting to those investors is done at the same time as reporting to the board.
I hope this will help you get better board members, more out of the meetings, and less bored meetings.
Thanks to Anders at Aula who helped get this format off the ground.
