QUESTION 10: How Do We Get the Most Value Out of Our Limited Time?

The Most Important Issues on the Agenda Come First

Ram Charan pushes back on the common boardroom practice of presenting financial reports and minor agenda items first—just to get them out of the way. The problem: the board’s mood and psychological energy level sags. “That’s why I suggest that the most important issues on the agenda come first,” Charan writes.

This is not unlike the coaching competency trumpeted in The Coaching Habit: “Cut the intro and ask the question!” Starting strong is powerful, the author writes. “No James Bond movie starts off slowly. Pow! Within ten seconds you’re into the action…and the heart is beating faster.”

The Power of Moments asks, “How do you refresh a meeting that’s grown rote?” Chip and Dan Heath respond: “Break the script.”

QUESTION 10 of 14: How Do We Get the Most Value Out of Our Limited Time? Owning Up: The 14 Questions Every Board Member Needs to Ask, by Ram Charan (Order from Amazon)

It seems that by chapter 10 in most books, most authors are writing on fumes—just eking out the requisite word count. Not Ram Charan! He’s just warming up. This chapter is packed with practical boardroom wisdom:

• ROUTINE VS. IMPACT. “In some cases, boards feel too much time is spent on routine items and resolutions, and not enough on the issues that have a significant impact on business—things like strategy, risk, and succession.”
• 5 MILLION DECISIONS? “Boards don’t make five million decisions over the course of the year; there are usually only a handful of issues and decisions that significantly impact the business.”
• 4 OR 5 PRIORITIES. “The CEO and the board’s leadership should identify those four or five, at most six, items that should constitute the bulk of the board’s time and energy in the coming year.” And “Every board should consider for its twelve-month priorities some kind of strategic dashboard…”

“If you have more than five goals,
you have none.”

Peter Drucker

• PLAN B. “Discuss management’s plan B to address changing conditions.”

Your meeting time—and your board members’ time—is precious and always limited. So is it time to step back and restructure the meeting agenda? The length and frequency of your meetings? The location and setting? Time to ramp up the Kingdom expectations? Chapter 10 (just nine pages) will help you refresh your meeting. Three more ideas:

• END-OF-MEETING DISTILLATION. “The purpose of the distillation is for the CEO to test the items he perceives to be at the center of the whole board’s deliberations, and that require follow through. The board can validate that the CEO has covered all the important bases.”
• SOCIAL TIME. “…take care not to squeeze out unstructured time together.” Charan encourages adequate social time (pre-meeting and post-meeting meals, etc.) so board members know each other better—which also builds trust.
• CEOs MUST COACH PRESENTERS. Direct reports to the CEO should be coached on effective boardroom presentations. Charan suggests a 50/50 time split between presentations and discussion.

See also the advice in 15 Minutes Including Q&A: A Plan to Save the World From Lousy Presentations. And…click here to read why Max De Pree warned, “The chairperson should not permit anyone to read to the board.”

Time is short and “a lot is expected of us,” whines a board member in chapter 10. “Deal with it!” responds Ram Charan. This jam-packed chapter will help boards maximize their limited time—and, for Christ-centered boards, it will also be a reminder to recruit board members who are already Kingdom stewards of their time.

Proverbs 16:33 (The Message) cautions, “Make your motions and cast your votes, but God has the final say.”

BOARDROOM DISCUSSION: How do we get the most value out of our limited time? What should we add, enhance, change, or drop?

CHECK OUT THESE HELPFUL ECFA RESOURCES

• READ: The board at Warm Beach Camp and Conference Center schedules a “Heavy Lifting” segment in every meeting—to address “big rock” agenda items. Read “Decrease Staff Reporting and Increase Heavy Lifting. Consider the good, the bad, and the ugly.” (From: Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom. Click here to read Lesson 36.)

• TOOL: See how a “Heavy Lifting” segment—the best use of the board’s time—is incorporated into a quarterly board meeting. Read the blog here and order the book to download the meeting agenda template, “Tool #12, Quarterly Board Meeting Agenda and Recommendations,” in ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board. 

TOOL 12 – Quarterly Board Meeting Agenda and Recommendations

Plan a Robust “Heavy Lifting” Segment at Every Board Meeting

What are the key elements of an effective agenda and board meeting? This tool lists four ingredients:
• Advance Materials (arriving seven to 10 days before the meeting)
• Advance Preparation (unexcused absences are rare—because thoughtful agendas signal why every meeting is important—and board member prep is thorough)
• Balanced Content (relational and inspirational; good news and bad news; due diligence and faith-stretching; and much more)
• Strengths Are Leveraged (the board chair and the CEO lead the board in leveraging everyone’s 3 Powerful S’s: Strengths, Social styles, and Spiritual gifts)

TOOL #12: QUARTERLY BOARD MEETING AGENDA AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Use this agenda template to signal the board, seven to 10 days in advance, that this board meeting is important—and their insights are needed.

Tool #12 in the new resource, ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance, is one of three tools in Part 3, “Reporting to the Board,” in this jam-packed 271-page resource. The tool suggests, as an example, how to conduct an “assumptions exercise” during the regular “Heavy Lifting” session of the board meeting.

If your standard board meeting agenda template arrived with the Mayflower, maybe it’s time to refresh your agenda and refresh your board’s engagement and impact. Ed McDowell, executive director of Warm Beach Camp and Conference Center, Stanwood, Wash., works with his board chair to allocate one to two hours at each quarterly board meeting for what they call “heavy lifting.” Here the board practices generative thinking and wrestles with a big ministry opportunity or dilemma.

This tool also references four strategic planning steps noted in Rumsfeld’s Rules, including “Step 2: Identify Your Key Assumptions.” In my experience, many strategic plans—approved by boards—miss this critical step. Donald Rumsfeld writes:

“The assumptions stage of strategic planning tends to be one of the most neglected. Assumptions are often left unstated, it being taken for granted that everyone around a table knows what they are, when frequently that is not the case. The assumptions that are hidden or held subconsciously are the ones that often get you into trouble.” He adds:

“It is possible to proceed perfectly logically from an inaccurate premise to an inaccurate and unfortunate conclusion.”

Experiment with a heavy-lifting hour on “assumptions.” Then ask your board for ideas on your next four board meetings as you plan robust “Heavy Lifting” segments at each meeting.

Include time, of course, for prayer, discernment, silence and solitude, and listening. Read Lesson 11: "Tap! Tap! Tap!" in Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom, because “the arms of your CEO may be weary.” Remember in Exodus 17:12 “how Aaron and Hur held up Moses’s hands, one on each side” until sunset. That’s heavy lifting!

Order the tools book from Amazon by clicking on this title: ECFA Tools and Templates for Effective Board Governance: Time-Saving Solutions for Your Board, by Dan Busby and John Pearson. The book gives you full access to all 22 tools and templates—formatted as Word documents so you can customize the tools for your board’s unique uses.

BOARD DISCUSSION: Warm Beach Camp board vice chair Bob King suggests that boards “decrease staff reporting and increase heavy lifting.” (Click here for his guest blog.) He notes that better board agendas will eliminate wasted time and help you focus on heavy-lifting topics. How could our board better maximize our board meeting time—so we are more effective stewards of God’s work?

MORE RESOURCES: Do you have agenda clutter? Ralph Enlow, president of the Association for Biblical Higher Education, used that descriptive malady in his guest blog for the Lessons From the Nonprofit Boardroom Blog. He writes, “…I find that the fatal combination of passivity and agenda clutter conspires to crowd out efforts to walk the talk of continuous board development.” Click here to read Enlow’s guest blog for Lesson 1.