I am sure many of us have attended a board/leadership meeting and wondered what the context for the meeting is. Yes, it can have an agenda, even a detailed one, with pre-reading even, but what is the meeting for? What is the Context for this meeting?
Is it purely functional to “tick boxes” and record items that are approved? Is it operational or is it strategic in nature? Is it about looking out into the future in a more visionary way? Is it about anchoring the Purpose and Values and checking in with behaviours and the people in the organisation?
My tip today is to set the context and be clear about it.
To explain that, I give two examples, then a reminder of how important context is, given in a story about a sporting governing body and their board meetings, and what happens when you don’t align on the Context.
Context: Operational or Strategic
One simple implementation that I loved was when, having focussed on Context in coaching the business, a client had an “a-ha” moment that their weekly leadership team meetings always dissolved into the operational details of the business, so they got frustrated that they never talked about the big picture, strategy, vision. They then made a simple decision, they set the context for future meetings. Three out of four meetings each month were set as operational in nature, but the fourth was set as strategic, and the meeting chair did not allow ANY operational conversations to be held at that one monthly meeting. This immediately transformed the conversations and everyone was on the same page in each meeting as to the types of conversations and the Context, the “Why” of each meeting. Three out of four were for addressing urgent and operational issues, the fourth was guarded rigorously and utilised only for strategic discussions.
Context: Fresh Perspectives
Another idea was to set the Context for project meetings to “fresh perspectives”. This business had monthly meetings to review proposals from within the business for investing in new projects. Over time they had realised that not only had these become perfunctory “box-ticking” exercises”, but that the success rate of projects had steadily dropped. Once we reviewed this from different angles we recognised that all the leadership team members had skills, experience and perspectives beyond their functional roles. For example, the Head of Legal on the team had a wealth of international career experience in diverse industries, so could bring those experiences in at unexpected times. We then changed the agenda for these meetings to that there were no project presentations at all. All presentation and background materials were sent and reviewed in advance. At the meetings, for each project the team went straight into asking questions from, yes, any “fresh perspectives” they may have, to look at the projects from new angles. Finally, more ideas around this, from Duelling Dragons to Red Teams are in an earlier post, “Changing and Challenging Perspectives“.
Context: Many? Confused?
When you agree on Context, this creates Clarity. When you don’t, it can set the scene for frustration, ineffectiveness, or worse, conflict.
To me this happens most in either voluntary organisations or in smaller businesses without a well-developed governance structure.
I’ve been on many voluntary boards, including sporting clubs and governing bodies. Let me tell you a story put together from a melange of rich prior real experiences 🙂
Imagine the scene. A monthly board meeting with eight board members, set to start at 7 pm (in person, this story predates covid!) and scheduled to run for ninety minutes. The agenda is a standing one set and sent out in advance, with six standing committees to report, as well as the President and Treasurer. Each of the people responsible for these eight reports was to email their report out in advance, and each member was to read all these pre-reading materials in advance of the meeting. Of course, the final standing agenda item is “AOB” or “Any other business”. So, this meeting has a detailed agenda, so one can imagine all runs smoothly and you might even finish earlier than 8:30pm?
Now, those of you who have been on such boards are, by now, normally shaking their heads, smiling and or grimacing, so let me add some colour to this painting!
Over the prior year, the 7pm meetings never started before 7:20pm and never finished before 9:30pm, often later starting and later finishing. Even when starting at 7:20, one particular board member is famous for always arriving even later, so the board has long since given up waiting for that person before starting, then, when they do appear, another 10 minutes is lost catching them up. What else?
Functionally:
- Only four of the eight reports have been emailed in advance
- Only three of the eight members have read the reports
- Three of the members are massively busy with their jobs, so a) both come to the 7pm meeting right from the office and without having eaten first, and b) you’d never guess, but they are the ones who are late
- Two of the members are retired and so look forward to these meetings, so come on time, with a flask of tea and snacks for everyone (as they know how many come unfed), and the longer the meeting goes on the better
- Three of the members have young families and feel rushed from pillar to post and race to get there for 7pm having fed the family first. No matter how tired they are though, one or more of their children are active in the sport so they need to be there to hear and vote on everything.
So, this last point leads me to Context, and let’s start with the Context of the individuals
- Four of the members are really only interested in one area of the sport so sit silently and say and contribute nothing until their subcommittee area comes up
- Two of the members are prior Presidents of office bearers and feel their role is to remind the current President and office bearers the way they used to do it
- The three members with children active in teh sport have a context, of well, what is best for their children and, as an extension, others in the same area of the sport, at the same competitive level / age
- In any one meeting, at least one or two members have a burning issue they wish to raise, so they can’t really concentrate on the meeting at all as they know they can’t talk about it until AOB comes up and, given how late the meetings overrun and how tired and hungry most of the members are, they know that by that stage the question “Any other business?” is asked while everyone is getting up to leave.
Any of this sound familiar? In my experience at least some elements of this are universal, and what a colossal waste of time and energy it is to have eight people take several hours of weekday evening time for reports and functional activities, most of which could readily have been handled in an asynchronous way by email.
Of course, when we think about Context, for the organisation, the meeting itself, plus the members attending, we could make many changes, such as honouring timings, purpose of the meeting, duration of meetings, when to schedule them, and more.
One easy change I highly recommend is to ask for any “Any Other Business” items to be emailed through to the Secretary/Chair prior to the meeting. That person can then read them out at the start of the meeting and note that time will be left within the agreed timing of the meeting to cover those items. That way, a) anyone with an “AOB” item can then focus 100% on the other agenda items, knowing they will have the attention of the others after that, and b) anyone who does not bring their item forward in advance does not get to raise it in the meeting (thus honouring the time of others).
I hope this story, the tips, and the ideas around setting context for meetings are of value to you. If you’d like to discuss more, book a call with me, I’m always here to listen to anyone with such leadership challenges and opportunities!