// FIELD GUIDE 01
The Board Meeting Overhaul
Most board meetings are expensive theater: weeks of prep, three hours of re-presenting a deck everyone should have read, zero decisions. This checklist is the fix I use with the CEOs I work with.
01Two weeks out
- ☐Send the pack 5+ days early — and make it a reading pack, not a re-presentation deck
- ☐Open the pack with one page: state of the company in plain language, what you need from this meeting
- ☐Flag the 1–2 decisions you need the board to make — everything else is FYI
- ☐Call each director before the meeting; surface disagreements privately, not live
02In the room
- ☐Spend under 20% of the time on the past (metrics, updates) — it was in the pack
- ☐Spend the majority on the 1–2 flagged decisions and the next two quarters
- ☐Let your executives own their topics — boards fund teams, not solo acts
- ☐Ask for specific help with specific names attached: intros, hires, references
- ☐End with a closed session both ways: board without you, you without the board
03Within 48 hours
- ☐Send decisions and owners in writing — one page, no prose
- ☐Log what each director committed to, and follow up in two weeks
- ☐Note what dragged: cut it from the next agenda, don't shorten it
04Signs it's working
- ☐Directors reference the pack unprompted
- ☐Meetings end early because decisions got made
- ☐You leave with energy instead of a recovery day
- ☐Your executives ask to present more, not less
If your board meetings fail this checklist and you can't see how to fix it from the inside — that's a thirty-minute conversation. It's free.