219. What information do we hope to receive?

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 #17: What information do we hope to receive? Building on the last episode about what conversations we hope to have, it’s hard to have a useful conversation without useful information. Now think about all the things that go into making information useful. When it comes to boards, we put a lot of energy into making sure the information we get is comprehensive, relevant and clear. All of that helps a lot. But the challenge of informing a board is obviously waaay more complicated than that. You’ve got a group of people who are guaranteed to have different personalities, preferences and lifestyles. In other words, if they could all design their own ideal pre-reads, each of them would want something different. Now layer on top of that the fact that most boards are made up of people with different skills and technical expertise, so they’d all want and need different levels of explanation and complexity or simplicity for different topics. Given all that, it’s probably impossible to hit the bullseye. But information doesn’t have to come as pre-READS, right? Sometimes using various media to convey information is like a hack to unlock the needs of different people in the room. It’s why most books now come in physical, digital and audio formats. And if you add video, images and illustrations, tables and graphs to the mix. Heck, I bet someone out there could even imagine how to inform boards through taste and smell. So ask yourselves, what information do we hope to receive, and when and how much and what medium, and every other question that might help.