Board Meeting Tips – How to Keep the Discussions Focused and Stick to the Agenda

Board meetings are a crucial part of a successful business. Your board of directors will be able make most appropriate decisions for your company by ensuring proper planning and follow-up. Focusing on the agenda and sticking to it is the best way to increase the efficiency of your board. This will ensure that the meeting goes smoothly and all important subjects are thoroughly covered.

Create and distribute an agenda for the board meeting prior to the meeting. This allows board members to read the agenda and show up to the meeting with a plan to share their thoughts. This also ensures that board members are on the same page so it pertains to what needs be covered and when.

Start at the right time. This will help everyone get active, engaged and energized. It will also encourage regular attendance. It can be tempting for committee members to spend a lot of their time reading reports. This can be an inefficient decision since the chair of the committee should have read these reports prior to the meeting.

Set time limits for each topic and keep the discussion focused on those items on the agenda. This shows respect for the board members’ commitment to their time and ensures that the most important discussions take place during the meeting. Consent agendas allow for non-controversial topics to vote upon, allowing more time at the board meeting to concentrate on strategic issues.

Keep the minutes as simple as possible. Make use of a template based upon the agenda which includes things like listing people in attendance, headings for the topics to be discussed and draft resolution language for the decisions to be made. Visual project management software can help you take notes at the same pace as the board discussion and later organize them to make distribution easy.

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