The need for evaluation of the effectiveness of so much of what we do is a business maxim.
Yet we spend a lot of time in Board and Committee meetings and how much time do we spend evaluating their effectiveness?
Asking a few simple questions at the end of a Board or Committee meeting can not only help in assessing the effectiveness of the meetings we attend, it can also help sharpen the focus of our work and save us all some of that precious commodity we can never have enough of; time.
Some of the below are suggested questions and other prompts and approaches to help you get the most out of your meetings. Both Peakstone Global and Westlake Governance work across the Tasman to support organisations in their aim towards Better Board Performance.
From Simon Rumore, Peakstone Global Managing Director and Co-founder
There is little available in the Australian marketplace on the few pertinent questions that can frame meeting evaluations, so I have created the list below.
The first relates to meeting processes, both pre meeting and post meeting:
- How do we rate the quality of the agenda, including Directors having an opportunity to provide input to the agenda?
- Are we happy with the timeliness and quality of the meeting papers?
- How is our post-meeting effectiveness regarding timing of the draft minutes and an updated action register with clear accountabilities for Board and Management or even Board committees?
The second relates to meeting outcomes:
- How many decisions were made by the Board that progressed the strategic priorities of the organisation and/or addressed key risks and key opportunities?
- How could the Chair have been more effective in eliciting and including the diverse perspectives of Directors, Management, customers/participants and employees into discussions and decision making?
- To what extent were Board discussions dominated by a few Directors? If that is the case, what do we need to do to ensure that all Directors voice their views?
The third relates to the Board dynamic and the dynamic between the Board and Management:
- Did the discussions build trust and confidence between Directors?
- Was there the right amount of tension between the Board and Management i.e. Directors applying appropriate tone of questioning and in a way that is supportive of Management and the organisation’s strategic priorities?
- Were the discussions in line with the organisation’s values?
While the above may take too much time to do at every Board meeting, instituting this level of evaluation at least quarterly or bi-annually should result in time savings in the long-run.
From Richard Westlake, Westlake Governance Managing Director and Founder
If time is not an issue
- Nominate/ask a Board member at the start of the meeting if they’ll take some notes during the session to provide their overview on:
Agenda
- Did we have the right things on the agenda, in the right order?
- Did we deal with them, reach a conclusion, and complete the Agenda within time?
Content
- Did we stay on topic, or did we allow ourselves to digress/repeat ourselves?
- Was our discussion at the appropriate level, predominantly strategic/high level, drilling into detail only where necessary?
Process
- Did we reach clear decisions, with genuine consensus, that everyone can live with, even if they may not fully agree with them?
- Did we ‘disagree agreeably’, not treating dissent as disloyalty?
- Did we ensure that ‘we played the ball, not the player’?
- Did we give everyone adequate opportunity to speak, but not to dominate?
Feeling
- At the end of the meeting, do I feel like a valued and constructive member of the team?
- Anything else on my mind?
If time is constrained, use the following express approach
- The Chair asks a Director or the full Board (or, on occasion, the CEO) the following questions:
“We’ve been here for the last ‘x’ hours: is the organisation better off than it was when we walked in?” If so, how; how has the Board added value? If not, why not, and what was the point of our being here today?
We hope you find the above helpful for your own Boards and Committees. We would love to hear your thoughts on these approaches on Simon and Richard’s respective LinkedIn pages.