I attended a board meeting for a company that I hold a Financial Directorship and it got me thinking. Wouldn’t every business, especially a start up with big ambitions benefit from the structure and strategic focus that having a board brings?
Being a company large enough to have a board is a privilege born from size and available funds.
Regular, well structured board meetings provide a framework to the business and ensure that periodically, key senior team members meet to ensure actions are aligned with business strategy, good governance is being maintained and business objectives are set and met. They also provide opportunities to identify and overcome risk, are a melting pot of ideas and creative thinking and if made up of executive (people actively involved in the day to day running) and non executive members, facilitates “seeing the wood for the trees” kind of thinking. They are opportunities to correct a course of action and keep eyes on the right prizes.
The truth is that every start up would benefit from the structure and strategy that having a board can bring, but it’s often not even considered particularly when said start up is small, often a one person rodeo with limited cash resource. So, with this in mind, how can a start up create the same opportunity for themselves?
- create the discipline Set a frequency to take time out and look at your business objectively. This could be every month or every quarter. Go offsite for fresh thinking. Switch off the phone, shut yourself away from distraction and interruption for a fixed amount of time on a monthly basis.
- set the agenda An agenda could include a review of the actions from the previous meeting, financial review, sales and marketing review, strategy review and Any Other Business but this is your board. You can tailor it as you see fit.
- prepare in advance Don’t start the meeting without having checked you’ve completed the previous meetings actions or without having a set of financial papers, such as recent management accounts. In a “real board” situation, it is disrespectful to fellow board members to be disorganised, unreliable and unprepared. It is wasteful of precious time and you should show yourself the same respect.
- have different sectors of the business represented Allow each element of your business dedicated time. This should be a finance section, a sales and marketing section, and an operations section but might also include other key business areas specific to yours.
- determine a set of questions to be answered and five key performance indicators For example, how many potential customers have you actively approached? What is your gross profit? Do your actual sales meet your sales targets. Who might lend you their expertise and guidance and join you at your next board meeting.
- finish with clear decisions & actions create a bullet point list of actions and set clear completion dates. You do not have to solve every problem in a board. Just schedule an action to set aside another time for thinking and solving.
Like all good business disciplines, applying a board mentally from the early days will set you up with a strong framework that will in turn, set you up for the best chance of accelerated, conscious success.