Are board meetings genuinely useful, or largely ineffective theater?

Harry Stebbings · May 6, 2022

Board meetings are largely useless and ineffective

Scope: based on the ones he has personally sat on

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Harry Stebbings · Aug 22, 2022 · hedged

Boards generally do not add much value

He has sat on many boards with great people and only about one has added value

Scope: allows that one board did add value

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Julio Vasconcellos · Sep 23, 2022

Boards are not necessary for the strategic conversations that guide a company, and being formally on a board — or only listening to board members — matters far less than most investors make it out to be

Most of the most valuable strategy conversations he's had, as founder and investor, happened outside board meetings, and the people who helped him most as a founder weren't on the board

Scope: gathering the right investors and advisors periodically to discuss strategy is still valuable

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Mike Lazerow · Aug 2, 2021

Board meetings are more important for the entrepreneur than for the investor

The prep is a forcing function: if the CEO can't clearly articulate where the company is, where it's going and what resources it needs, no one in the organization will know either — and if you can't convince yourself the plan is right, it isn't

27:56 Board meetings matter more for the entrepreneur than the investor since prep forces organizational clarity

Jason Lemkin · May 6, 2022

Until a company reaches roughly $40-50M, board meetings are at least half about the management team presenting, and that external forcing function for VPs to report against plan is one of the most valuable tools a CEO has

A CEO can only be visibly upset with a given VP once or twice a year before it demoralizes people and they quit; a board meeting every six weeks supplies the accountability without the CEO having to apply it

37:08 Board meetings serve as a valuable external accountability forcing function for executives

Jason Lemkin · May 6, 2022

VPs' nervousness about presenting to the board is an amazing management tool that founders should deliberately harness

VPs are comfortable with their founder but nervous in front of investors, so the board supplies accountability without the CEO having to yell

40:23 Vp nervousness before board meetings is a deliberate management tool for accountability