10 Things I Struggle with at Board Meetings
Feb 12th 2009stf6992Business & Life
(1) Sitting at a table trying to focus on the speaker and the slide deck for 90 minute intervals with 10 minute breaks (that always end up being 20 minutes because no one wants to sit for 90 minute intervals without longer breaks)
(2) Being in the board meeting from 9:00 in the morning till 6:00 in the evening
(3) Drinking 4 cups of coffee or tea in a 90 minute interval thus causing enormous fidgeting with 15 minutes left in any 90 minute interval
(4) Cookies sitting right in front of me because it’s a natural motion to reach, eat, turn page, and then reach, eat and turn page again; on a 85 page board presentation, that’s a lot of cookies
(5) Watching the briefer intensely and then realizing that you are 5 pages behind in the briefing and don’t know what has been said for the last 20 minutes or so
(6) Getting to the end of the board meeting and realizing that you took no notes and that you desperately want to remember at least one key point but won’t possibly ever remember it
(7) Everyone saying names at the beginning of the meeting when everyone knows each other in the room
(8) Getting to what seems like the last moments of the meeting and then having someone open up a very important topic that takes another half hour to discuss
(9) Realizing that the executives that are briefing followed the template perfectly and thus nothing fun, creative, or staggeringly exciting will be briefed
(10) Any comment near the end that suggests, “we’ll have to finish this tomorrow”
2 Responses to “10 Things I Struggle with at Board Meetings”
conrey on 12 Feb 2009 at 9:50 pm #
It has been my experience that most meetings aren’t worth their time. #s 7 – 10 are proof positive of this – the meeting was planned only for the sake of the meeting – not to get something really done. Imagine what the smart people in one place could do with action instead of meeting in the same time. Obviously some parts of the meeting is important, but all day?
OC_Marc on 14 Apr 2009 at 10:44 pm #
It appears to be a ritual at some board meetings to have a moment of silence/prayer…..just for fun can you imagine the impact of having the focus of the board meeting be the prayer?….can you imagine if the prayer was fervent?…can you imagine if board members continued the prayer through the entire board meeting?….