Your board meeting agenda is the plan that drives productive meetings and helps your organization achieve boardroomadventures.com/big-meeting-planning-checklist/ its goals. It sets the tone for the entire meeting, outlines the topics that will be discussed and ensures that everyone has an equal chance to be involved.
It is important to communicate the agenda prior to the time to ensure that the attendees know what’s to come and are ready to interact. This also gives your attendees the opportunity to ask questions and give feedback in advance of the actual meeting. It is best to have someone with a thorough understanding of the goals of the organization, compliance requirements, and current business climate As the leader, you should be creating a well-structured agenda for board meetings. Generally, this will be the company founder or chairman of the board.
Start the meeting with a call to order and review of the previous meeting minutes. Include a section of reports from key department or committee head (e.g. Governance Committee report and Finance Committee report). It’s also beneficial to include an area for old business items (follow-ups or ongoing projects) and for new business items (proposals or strategic initiatives).
Don’t go overboard. Too much information could cause confusion among participants and hinder productive discussion. It is preferential to include more detail in separate documents and hand it to the attendees who are interested, than to overburden the agenda with unnecessary length or lengthy reports. The chairperson of the board is expected to officially end the meeting after all issues that are open and any new business has been addressed.
