The Altitude of the Agenda

Picture a serious board meeting taking place. The agenda is packed and the discussions are deep and in-depth.

The chairperson is doing well by guiding the discourse with fairness and certainty, helping the board navigate the many different views until they finally come to a decision.

After six exhausting hours, the board manages to cover the whole agenda and come out of the meeting feeling pleased with themselves. Does this make it a good meeting?
Not necessarily.

It depends whether or not the board spent the bulk of this time discussing strategic matters.

If an agenda is not set at the right altitude, then a board has a natural tendency to descend to an operational level. Effective boards must be able to operate at both levels.
Like a pilot, a good chair helps the board navigate between these two levels.

It is sometimes necessary to examine operational details, but only to better understand the strategic picture. The board needs this ground-level intelligence to grasp the strategic landscape, but it should not dwell there for too long.

That’s why the board agenda is of critical importance.

An easy way is for the board chair to say something along the lines of: “We’re going to dive into operational details for the next 20 minutes so we can better understand the elements of this strategic challenge. We’re here to comprehend, not to manage implementation.”

When boards shift to governance decisions, they operate primarily at policy and strategic levels.

They approve directions, allocate resources and establish parameters that make implementation as clear as possible for the executive teams.

I have seen that when directors understand their roles as strategic decision-makers who occasionally need operational intelligence, management teams begin to see them as governance partners who require context to help them make wise decisions.

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