The agenda for your board meetings will help you achieve your goals and help make meetings more productive. It defines the tone of the meeting, defines the issues to be discussed, and ensures that everyone has the chance to take part.
Sending out the agenda well in advance will help attendees to be well-prepared and ready to participate. This allows participants to ask questions or give feedback before the meeting. It’s best to have an individual with a complete knowledge of your organization’s goals and compliance requirements as well as the current business environment responsibility of creating a well-structured agenda for board meetings. This will usually be the founder of the company or the chairperson of the board.
Start the meeting by introducing an announcement of the time and a review of the previous meeting minutes. Include a section with reports from key department or committee head (e.g. Governance Committee report and Finance Committee report). Include a section for old items (follow-ups ongoing projects or proposals) and for new items (strategic initiatives or proposals).
Don’t overdo it. A lot of details can overwhelm attendees and hinder productive discussions. It’s better to include more details in an additional document and distribute the information to attendees who are interested after the meeting, than to overburden the agenda with unnecessarily long or detailed reports. Once all open issues and new business have been discussed, the chairperson of the board or meeting facilitator will formal close the board meeting and call it off.
