The Board Code: Running effective board meetings

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Naman Lahoty

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

planning your board meetings

pre-board meeting

during meeting

during quarterly meetings

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As a founder, you’re constantly juggling between multiple priorities on a day-to-day basis. And amidst the daily chaos, you find yourself planning your board meetings. While board meetings may seem like a dreaded calendar event, you can turn these meetings into a source of tremendous value.

That’s why we’re introducing The Board Code — a guide designed to make your board meetings work for you.

Drawing from Mark Suster’s insightful framework on running effective board meetings, we’re focusing on the 4 key roles of a board meeting.

‍70% of your board meeting should be centered around Advice and Strategy. Make the most of your board's experience in every meeting by seeking advice for important business decisions. Strategic discussions may not happen often—usually once a quarter or every six months—so it's crucial to ensure these discussions are filled with meaningful debate.

30% of the board’s time should focus on Updates and Approvals. Provide quick synopsis of the company's key highlights and lowlights, ideally, share it in a one-pager document before the meeting to ensure quality discussions. Get approvals on important/ governance-related processes from the boards, this should be addressed towards the end of the meeting.

When presenting to the board, Varun follows a '4+1' framework: four normal goals and one stretch goal, each backed by data and projections from the internal team. These plans are revised every quarter because, in a startup, nothing stays constant. Founders who successfully marry strategic planning with real-time insights significantly improve their chances of success.

Rahul Chowdhri on Varun Alagh, Co-Founder of Mamaearth

planning your board meetings

Decide the frequency of your board meetings and the format of your MIS and align your board members on the same.

Typically, board meetings are of 3 types:

Monthly: A 1-hour meeting where you share monthly updates
Quarterly or Bi-annually: 2-3 hours long meeting once every quarter or months for performance review and strategic discussions on the business
Annually: Ideally an in-person meeting to set the annual business plan

Depending on the objective of the meeting, set an agenda for discussion. The agenda should largely include discussions around the business strategy and way forward, while updates can be covered within a restricted time frame.

Follow these hygiene steps before, during, and post the meeting to ensure high-quality discussions in all your board meetings.

pre-board meeting

Send a bulleted agenda of the meeting along with the MIS 2 days in advance. This gives the board members sufficient time to go through the details.
Send a note with highlights and lowlights for the month - what worked, what didn’t work, and plans for the next month
Capture the above commentary in a running Word doc where board members can comment/ask clarificatory questions before the meeting to save everyone’s time
Also, documenting it in one place makes it easy for future reference
Encourage board members to seek clarifications on MIS before the board meetings to ensure better time utilization

during meeting

Start the meeting by aligning everyone on the agenda, focus on discussing issues in decreasing order of priority
First 15 minutes, share updates or clarifications on the MIS of the previous month
Next 30-40 minutes, focus on discussions around forward-looking strategy
- Review of existing strategy
- New initiatives to be undertaken
- Key hires for leadership roles
- Discussion over any potential major investment/decision
- Expansion/new directions
- Fundraise timing, amount
- Burn & growth plans
- Organizational structure
In the last 5-15 minutes, seek help or advice from board members or discus approval-related matters