“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter” is one of my favorite quotes. It is often attributed to Mark Twain, but actually started with Blaise Pascal in 1657. The underlying truth is that it takes effort to make things concise. The power of a simple message cannot be over estimated. We see it in marketing all the time. The best marketing messages are short and crisp and memorable. The analogous sales adage is ‘if you are explaining, you are losing.’ We remember clear, simple sales and marketing messages, and we forget the complicated ones.
As it relates to board meetings, the responsibility to ensure clear communication between management and the board falls on the CEO. Most organizations produce materials that go to the board in advance of the meeting, and then a slide deck to drive the conversation during the board meeting. The CEO is responsible for the clarity of the message and it is up to the CEO to keep the materials concise. Typically, functional leaders and executives create the materials that relate to their domains, and the board pack is a mosaic of what has been created. There is a general layout and template so the content hangs together, but without CEO oversight, it will be a collection of stories, and not a novel.
Functional execs are good at crafting their own story to feature their team's accomplishments, metrics, and performance indicators. Over time, questions are raised or comments made in board meetings, and typically the executives try to factor the answers into the materials for the next meeting. Board meeting after board meeting, the list of items that were asked about at some point in the past continues to grow and become preserved in perpetuity in the executives’ materials. Eventually, it will start to crowd the content that conveys the message the exec is really trying to deliver. The stories become muddled with too much noise, and the signal is lost.
The problem with gathering baggage based on questions and requests from prior meetings is that often the request relates to an issue that was timely when it was asked, but once the issue is addressed, the focus moves on. Long ago in a distant galaxy, I developed executive information systems (EIS). The target users were CEOs, and the systems were designed to provide a comprehensive view of the entire company at their fingertips. Teams poured untold amounts of data into these systems and tried to anticipate every request. What we learned was that CEOs flitted from topic to topic at the surface, and only dove deep into a topic when it was a hot-button. Once the issue was resolved, they rarely revisited it again. Teams went nuts gathering data based on prior deep dives, only to find it was a waste of effort because the CEO had moved on. A lot of board inquiries follow the same pattern.
The CEO is not a bystander going along for the ride as each exec prepares board materials. The CEO needs to step back from the details at the start of the process, and determine the theme or plot-line for the board meeting. They need to weed out the extraneous content and determine what story will be told and how the plot will be developed through the materials provided to the board. With a clear theme and story-line, the CEO is in a position to orchestrate the content and edit the various pieces to fit together.
Board members are smart people, but they are not in the thick of the day to day operations. My counsel to CEOs is to be a minimalist with board materials. Tell the whole story but don’t stray from the plot. Board members are going to consume whatever is provided, and too often someone will see something in a random extraneous slide and choose to drill into it during the board meeting. Suddenly, you are dragged down a rabbit hole and twenty minutes of board time is gone. If you don’t want to talk about it, don’t deliver it.
Board meetings are only a few hours long, and every minute is precious. It is up to the CEO to ensure that the board knows what is on the agenda in advance, and what they are being asked to consider and discuss. My best-practice recipe is to send out a retrospective view well in advance of the meeting. The content should be purely facts and historic trends, no forecasts or aspirational claims, only background information. The purpose is to give the board everything they need to be prepared for the discussion during the board meeting. Keep it concise, and make sure every element answers the question “so what?” Rather than simply delivering a piece of data with no context, answering the “so what?” question requires the author to think about why this data is important and meaningful to board members. It helps the CEO curate the package and ensure that the story hangs together. The package also needs a CEO narrative that acts as a roadmap to the data being presented, and describes the theme of the board meeting. The retrospective is the first chapter in the novel that will unfold during the board meeting.
Sending the facts in advance means you do not need to allocate time during the meeting to catch everyone up. Insist that they read the materials and come prepared. It is up to the CEO to frame the discussion, keep the meeting on track, and manage the clock.
When it comes to board communication, CEOs should heed the words of Pascal and take the time to “write a shorter letter.”