Preparing for board meetings can be a tedious task that involves coordinating the dates of meetings with everyone, sharing important information and, perhaps most important, drafting a dynamic strategic agenda for the board www.freshboardroom.com/how-to-build-a-strategic-board-agenda/ prior to the meeting. A well-planned agenda for your board can help ensure productive discussions that lead to effective decision-making and assist you in achieving your organisation’s goals. A wrong agenda could lead to a dog’s dinner of multiple items crammed in together, leaving no space for productive discussions and making progress on key issues.
Boards should organize their agendas to start with long-term planning, and then conclude with more operational issues like policies and procedures. This helps prevent the tyranny of urgent issues from consuming and distracting board members and keeps them focused on what is feasible within the confines of a single meeting.
Ideally, you should assign the appropriate amount of time to each item on your agenda for your board meeting. This will stop the meeting from going over time and ensure that every topic receives the right amount of discussion for a desired result.
It is also helpful to include a ‘Nil’ heading on your agenda for board meetings for any items that aren’t strategically relevant or require additional clarification. This heading can encourage directors to raise new strategic questions. It can also help to remind board members of the ‘why they’re serving their company (i.e. the purpose of the organization) to draw their attention back to the bigger picture.