How Much Value Was Added by the Directors at Your Last Board Meeting?
How productive was your last board meeting?
A friend of mine, Alex, and I have been talking about Boardroom ROI – boards adding the most value in the short time they have together.
After a recent strategic planning meeting, Alex found herself replaying the discussion, trying to pinpoint where the board had genuinely added value. And where it might have chipped away at it.
She decided to give the meeting a “board value factor” score out of 10 – a subjective but honest view of how much the board improved the quality of management’s thinking and the organization’s direction. Her verdict: 8/10.
Why?
What management brought to the table
Management had prepared a SWOT-style analysis, similar to the structure in my strategic planning guide, that clearly laid out:
The key problems to solve
The opportunities ahead
The proposed focus areas for the coming year
They also brought draft objectives and metrics flowing from that plan. It wasn’t a fully baked, glossy strategic plan. Instead, the board could see management’s thinking: what they were prioritizing, what they were consciously not focusing on, and the trade-offs behind those choices.
That level of transparency gave the board something meaningful to react to.
Where the board added real value
Looking back, Alex felt the highest-value questions from directors were about prioritization.
The board quickly agreed with primary goal for the year that management had identified, then spent time probing the secondary focus areas:
Was the logic behind them sound?
Were they truly second-order priorities, or were they competing for attention?
What would the organization stop doing or defer to honour the agreed focus?
The board also encouraged management to stay nimble. A potential future event (expected, but with uncertain timing) could create an opportunity to influence or respond. The message was: “Keep this on your radar and be ready to pivot if the timing shifts.”
The board then:
encouraged management to re-check the prioritization of individual objectives so they reflected the agreed focus areas; and
acknowledged that some lower-priority objectives still belonged on the list because they moved the organization in the right direction, even if they weren’t “top three”.
Alex also felt the board broadened the aperture of the lens in three ways:
Focus – asking the organization to monitor how well it stayed focused on its priorities.
Stakeholder perception – encouraging management to track how the organization’s activities and ideas influenced key stakeholders.
Organizational capabilities – putting more attention on whether the organization had the right internal resources and risk management practices to deliver the plan and protect the organization as it grows.
In other words, the board didn’t rewrite the strategy. It sharpened it.
Where the board reduced value – and how that was managed
It wasn’t all perfect.
Alex noticed moments when the board ventured into rabbit holes and brainstorming that was too unfocused to be useful. Some directors also monopolizing parts of the conversation, without leaving enough space to gather other views.
However, the CEO and Chair were generally quick to ask: “Is this something we need to explore now, or can we park it?” Where detours weren’t useful, they offered a brief explanation or management view, then pivoted back to the higher-value parts of the conversation.
The distractions were there, but limited. They didn’t derail the meeting.
The 8/10 – and the missing perspective
On balance, Alex gave the meeting an 8/10 board value factor, because:
The key elements of the strategic plan were improved by the discussion
The objectives and focus areas were sharpened
The board reinforced some important capability and stakeholder considerations
And the distractions, while real, were relatively minor
Of course, what Alex can’t know is whether the CEO would score it the same way. It’s hard for a board to objectively assess its own performance, and management is unlikely to tell directors, “That really wasn’t helpful,” even when they feel that way.
Still, the exercise was useful. It forced Alex to move beyond “That felt like a good meeting” to: “Where, specifically, did we add value – and where did we get in the way?”
So, how would you rate your last board meeting? If you had to give it a “board value factor” score out of 10, what would it be – and why?