Currently, I'm an active board director on six boards, and a past director of 17 others over the years. During that time, I've learned a couple of things about board responsibilities and a few "Rules of the Road". Some of these seem like common sense...now...and some of them took shape only after maneuvering through the difficulties of hitting a couple of speed bumps both personally and corporately as a director.
Coincidentally, over the same last few weeks, I've had a couple of other board-related activities that have peaked my interest in thinking about being a director.
The first was a recent blog in HBR, that asks the question of...
Basically, this post provides four general directives that may seem somewhat obvious; however, my experience is that rarely do CEOs think about #3, restructuring their boards, or #4, evaluating their directors.
I recently went through a restructuring process on a board where I had been chairman for 10 years, and although the end result was a revitalized board, in asking for the resignations of a couple of directors, I didn't win any popularity contests. I also made a (difficult for me) decision at the same time to step down as chairman and resign from the board simply because it was time... way past time, actually.
As I've continued to noodle around board responsibilities and various structures over the last couple of weeks, I was asked by Rob Adelson, a senior law partner at Engel & Schultz, to be part of a Boston ENET panel discussing board formation and related issues. The format was a small panel which included two heavily experienced investors and excellent board members in the startup community, Travis Connors from OwnerIQ and Jean Hammond, a well known early stage investor and a partner at Learn Launch. We all had an opportunity to show a few slides and most importantly to engage with the 100+ people in the room.
You can click on to the ENET site to view our slides which will give you a number of very practical ideas to think about and a few "Rules of the Road" to consider.
The event was held last week at Microsoft in Cambridge, and, both in the preparation for it, and then in the actual discussions with the entrepreneurs in the audience, it got me to thinking specifically about the role of sales management in presenting to and working with their board members. As a result, I thought that I would share a few "Do's & Don'ts" to consider prior to going into your next board meeting:
I'd like to hear your own "Rules of the Foad" regarding boards and directors, and especially what you would recommend to sales management in their interactions with directors.
Just jot down your comments in this post. In the meantime...
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