I don’t think I’ve met a founder that loves board meetings. They are a critical part of running a startup, but then can easily become low ROI activities consuming a ton of the time of the CEO and executive team and not helping the company move forward in a meaningful way.
To make a board meeting effective, you need to enable an environment of brutally honest conversations. You want to facilitate transparent, direct, and constructive conversations. To do this, many folks focus on the board presentation and notes.
But over time More and more execs and people internally are included in creating and delivering the notes. Additionally, at Reforge we publish the board notes for the rest of the company. This can create a few challenges:
The larger the group, the more a board can feel uncomfortable asking you the CEO super direct questions in front of the rest of your team.
Sometimes you as a CEO can’t be as direct with an underlying challenge with one of your execs.
You as the founder/CEO may have a feeling/intuition on some things that are hard to capture in notes or presentation.
But when things go unsaid, they will blow up in your face in a bigger way at a later date. So how do you solve this?
Dave Balter, Founder/CEO of Flipside Crypto and Venture Partner at True Ventures joined as a board observer for Reforge at our Series B. He gave me a very simple suggestion that I’ve found extremely valuable. The CEO Report to The Board. Here are real examples from both Dave and I:
Breakdown Of The CEO Report
Shape The Conversation
The purpose of the CEO Report is to use it as a tool to shape the board meeting conversation. You:
Surface your deepest concerns in the most direct and honest way.
Give context that might not be captured in the board meeting notes directly.
State where you need help, engagement, and feedback.
Let’s go a little deeper.
Green / Yellow / Red
The main sections to the CEO Report are:
Overview - Provide a summary. Never bury the lead. Put the most important takeaway at the top.
Green - This section is for areas that are going well.
Yellow - This section is for emerging complexities and potential future issues. These are not things you need to take take care of right now, but you want to be in the back of people’s heads as they engage in the board meeting.
Red - Immediate challenges that need work and focus. This is where most of the focus and discussion will be.
In addition, in my version I add a section at the bottom to aggregate questions from the board and a summary of my thoughts. It provides a good historical reference to look back on. The key areas that should be covered are Finances, Product, Sales, Strategy, and especially People.
Discuss Privately Pre-Board Meeting
As Dave mentions in his artifact:
“A CEO Green / Yellow / Red Report should accompany any Board meeting packet. It should be delivered to the Board privately. It is NOT for broader management consumption, nor other team members. It is for Board Members + CEO Only.”
The report should be discussed privately live, pre-Board meeting and set the tone for the meeting - how is the CEO feeling, what areas need focus? Delivered well, it should direct the Board to where they should focus during the meeting.”
Discussing before the board meeting gives you a chance to answer the boards questions and gives you an opportunity to enlist them in shaping the board meeting conversation.
Surface Team Challenges, But Be Careful
A common topic in these reports are challenges with other execs. You need to be extremely careful about how you surface these challenges. As Dave says:
“If there is a challenge with someone on your team, you may help the Board understand the challenge and ask them to work with you to address effectively in the meeting. But the minute you state that an exec is not good, or not a culture fit, the Board will lose confidence and it will be hard to gather it back.”
If you do bring up a challenge with a team member, also talk about how you are working to resolve it. Engage in a discussion with your board on the feedback you want that person to hear and enlist the board in helping you deliver that feedback.
Sugarcoat and You Lose
You can use this report to build trust with the Board. The moment the board feels like you are sugarcoating something, you will lose that trust. Being open and transparent will help you work with the board to solve challenges.
The questions I like to ask myself is - What is keeping me up at night? What are issues I don’t feel ready to talk about with other execs?
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