218. What conversations do we hope to have at the next board meeting?

This season, every episode of OMG focuses on a question that directors really need to answer. OMG is written, produced, narrated and scored by Matt Fullbrook.   TRANSCRIPT Question #16: What conversations do we hope to have at the next board meeting? We tend to have really careful and smart plans for board meetings. Even organizations that lean more to the informal or experimental still usually have predictable and well-structured board meeting agendas and objectives. How well we adhere to the plans is another story. It’s hard to predict how long each presentation and conversation will *actually* take. And it’s way more common for things to take longer than expected rather than going home an hour early. Either way, we plan topics, we assign speakers, we might even clearly identify certain things as being information-only, or topics for discussion (but not decision), or decision items or educational or whatever. All that clarity helps to keep us focused and informed and useful. But it misses a potentially important element: what exactly do we want to talk about? How do we want that discussion to feel and flow? Whose perspectives do we really need to take into consideration? How do we plan to ensure that we receive those perspectives? When do we want the conversation to happen, and – most importantly – what’s the actual point? As in, when the conversation is over, what do we hope we will have accomplished? After all, if this is well-defined then it becomes way easier to, for example, put a time limit on it and expect to stick to that time limit. More importantly, it increases the probability that the meeting will be useful to everyone involved.