I'm fine with all that in principle but then you shouldn't be throwing your weight around in board meetings, probably you shouldn't be on the board to begin with because it is a handicap in trying to evaluate the potential outcome of the decisions the board has to make.
Your reasoning in this discussion is unbecoming of a board member. In your activity on that board you’re involved in a lot of open-ended conversations with a lot of ambiguity and high cost of failure. I hope you express yourself in that setting with a bit more humility and introspection.
If they didn't like board meetings they wouldn't be there in the first place. Their reputation is on the line. It's arguably more important to them than money.
I discovered that this is not the case. In general, Board meetings don't work like hollywood says they do. Usually my board meetings are pretty uncontentious.
Boards are often presented pre-packaged answers via CEOs with slide decks. They are rarely given the flat truth about reality. Good boardmembers know this and how know to smell and cut through bullshit. Sales gonna sell.
> The advice here is pretty basic: nothing happens in your board meeting. Your board meeting is scripted. The board members should have seen the information presented before the meeting (and not just because you sent the deck—half of them won’t read it beforehand—you must talk to them.) And you should know beforehand how each board member will react to the information presented. If there are decisions to be made, you already know how each board member will decide, because you told them about the decision to be made and they told you what they will decide. No surprises
This is, honestly, how one should aim for pretty much any -formal- meeting to run - as a high trust means to make a pre-existing consensus common knowledge to all the participants.
(things like design brainstorms are a completely different category, hence the 'formal' qualifier to try and make that clear)
> the board is not going to be where the real decisions are being made
Are you basing this on supposition or experience? Yes, Board business happens off the clock. But that's prep. If a Board member is being systematically excluded from material negotiations, that exposes the Board to a host of liability.
reply