Most founders deem that their relationship with their board will be adversarial and combative. I assume that the founders must get sleepless nights before the board meeting. Maybe it provides the founder flashbacks to the nights spent they spent rolling their beds as they tried to present their school report card to their stricter parent, usually their dad.
Why do I think that?
The creative ways I see founders avoiding calling (forget conducting) board meetings as if it were the plague. Founders drum up excuses for delaying the board meetings, much like my classmates and I did to avoid submitting our signed and acknowledged report cards. Founders get sick; then a family member gets sick, then the ICU and next the morgue. Next when the health issues run out, then the team members are blamed; the reporting systems cop the blame – the list is endless. It is comical to witness the founder’s unnecessary creativity. However, the board is not a founder’s dad, waiting to rap them and it does not need to be that way.
That start-up boards must not have an adversarial relationship with the founders. This relationship should not disintegrate into that abyss is the responsibility of the investor board member and the founder.
For starters, the board must not get into the day-to-day working of the company unless there is a crisis, and the board must over-ride the management – it is rare but required. How can a founder avoid this situation is to be honest, in the founder’s hands.
A first step to building trust in the board-founder relationship is for the founder to get into the habit of organizing, conducting and following-up on productive board meetings.
- A board meeting must be conducted every quarter– at the very least.
- Some start-ups may require monthly boardmeetings, but a long-term plan of conducting monthly board meetings is onerous– on the founder and their board.
An important distinction that many founders fail to make isthat a board meeting is not an investment pitch, but neither is it the investorupdate. A board meeting’s purpose is to get into the meat of things that thefounders are working on versus the sizzle that sold to current and prospectiveinvestors.
If you, as a founder, are confused about what to discuss atyour board meeting, I believe that Mark Suster’s Howto Prepare for a Board Meeting to Make Sure you Crush It is a must-readfor you.
Essential points that Mark delves into are the importance of a well-thought-out agenda, a solid deck and providing enough time to your board members to prepare for the meeting.
Now, if you’re scratching your head on what goes into a board deck, then Bryan Schreier’s post on Sequoia Capital’s website, aptly titled, Preparing a Board Deck should be in your reading list.
A start-up founder that has an adversarial or alaissez-faire relationship with its board members is losing the plot. The best situation that a founder could wish for is a well-functioning board is their sounding board and guide for the road ahead. The board gives the founder a third party and a bird’s eye perspective on their venture’s progress because founders lose their objectivity in the day to day function of their ventures.
