Board meetings are the driving force behind the success of any company. Ideally, a diverse group of people work together as a brains trust to determine the best strategy for your business. Their job is to help you achieve your goals in the short term and long term. This is true for companies of any size and across all industries.
Regardless of the talent around the table, too many board meetings end up being ineffective. It nearly always comes down to one reason – lack of preparation. And often, that lack of preparation is because the board did not have time to review their board papers before the meeting.
Why are directors unprepared for board meetings?
Compiling the board pack is a challenge for businesses who want to have a thoughtful meeting. A typical deck can run 50 pages or more and include:
- The CEO overview for the previous period
- A report from each executive
- Assessment of immediate risks to the business
- Updates on special projects
- Information on new industry regulations or legislation that may impact the business
- Detailed financial reports.
When the board pack is delivered the day before the meeting – or even on the morning of the meeting – board members simply haven’t been given the time to review and digest all the information. With tight time frames, they often don’t have time to investigate any of the issues further or research a topic more thoroughly.
The result is your top advisors show up to the board meeting with only a surface-level understanding of the state of your business. Unfortunately, this is a common occurrence for boards all over the world.
How Teamup can help board meetings be more productive
The big issue for board preparation is the late delivery of information and the volume that needs to be reviewed. CEOs are frazzled in the week leading up to the meeting trying to compile the board pack. The whole thing can hinge on one report being filed late or a problem balancing the financial statements.
It doesn’t have to be like this. Instead of sending the pack all at once after it is complete, what if board updates are accessible online as the pieces become available? Board meetings are often scheduled months or a year in advance. CEOs can use a Teamup shared calendar to stay organized and centralize access to the board pack for a specific board meeting long before the meeting date. Teamup’s year view allows a single helicopter view of up to 12 months of scheduled meetings, making it easy to make each entry a unique information portal for the scheduled meeting.
It’s easy for the CEOs to update agenda and file reports as they become available. This gives board members a chance to review information in a timely manner, instead of waiting for the entire deck to arrive. The latest information is continuously updated and securely accessible from one place.
If for security reasons you prefer not uploading sensitive material in a calendar event, you can put an active link to a secure folder where board members can find the information they need to prepare for the meeting.
Alternatively, in the description section you can add a secure link for each new document and notify your members when the event is updated.
Using this simple but elegant system, you can help your board members be better prepared for your next board meeting. Chances are you’ll have better meetings and experience better outcomes for your business.
Time to Act
Are you ready to make your next board meeting more efficient and productive? Dive in and get started with these quick tips:
- It’s easy to create a free Teamup calendar. Add your logo, rename a sub-calendar for the board meetings, and grant access to your board members. See our Getting Started Guide for more details.
- Once your board members have access to the calendar, they can optionally save the dates to their personal calendar if they prefer.
- As the information for the board pack becomes available, update the event details, add links to documents securely stored in your shared drive or cloud, or upload directly. Teamup can accommodate whatever is most appropriate for your team and governance situation.
Board meetings are only one way Teamup can help distribute timely information. Think about your own meetings or projects that might be suffering from a lack of current updates or information? Teamup may be the solution you need to keep everyone informed. Try our live demos and see for yourself.
"We really like your product. We use it for projects that we are bidding. The ability to add links of drawing files to the calendar is a great time saver. The new app works well also. Keep up the great work." Thank you Tim!
— teamupthanks (@teamupthanks) March 16, 2021
