Board meetings are broken (and what to do about it.)

Running a company can be pretty challenging.  

Fortunately though, about four times a year, you get the distinct pleasure of building a board deck.

Not to mention that it seems the goal is to have your leadership team to spend as much time as possible dealing with your board deck only to come up with a finished product that is poorly assembled, incredibly tough to read and ultimately results in a board meeting that drives zero value.

Why is everything related to the board meeting usually so horrible?

Simply put, it's because you're doing it according to the guide called How It's Always Been Done.

Here's some quick highlights from the How It's Always Been... playbook:

1. Collaborating in a board deck is designed to be horrible for your team.
   
   But, building the deck is also a nice opportunity for your leadership team to unleash some quiet revenge by making their formatting inconsistent and the graphics unusable.  That way the CEO can spend days doing arts and crafts trying to make the deck look decent for the board.  Not only is this a terrible use of your CEO’s time, he’s the worst at design ever.
   
   
2. The deck has gotta be really really long, not surface any information that’ll lead to meaningful board discussions.
   
   Also, it's way better if it's inconsistent from one board meeting to the next.  Also, because almost no decks are mobile-friendly, it’ll be impossible to review any of it on a phone. 

3. Giving your board members time to read your deck in advance so they can actually add value is awesome.  A week is perfect.  So, don’t do it. 
   
   Send the deck two days ahead instead.  And again, make sure it’s at least 50 or 60 pages.  Also, when you send the deck add some attachments to your email…maybe updated financials, someone’s resume, stock options to check out, etc.  Also, we know that email isn’t the most secure way to send your most confidential information so keep sending it exactly that way.
   
   
4. Make sure your governance continues to be highly inefficient. If the first question asked in your board meeting isn’t ‘did we sign the minutes from the last meeting?’ then you’re doing something wrong.
   
   And, take votes but don’t record ‘em. Pretend to have some clue about compliance but don’t actually execute any of it properly…that way you can go through it all again during due diligence.

5. You’re not supposed to know what to include in your deck so best to just include everything.
   
   Report after report.  And, if you’re going to spend all this time gathering the data, don’t include any key takeaways, that way the board will have to spend at least as much time as you trying to decipher what you’re trying to say.