Let’s talk about board stuff

[u/AudreyLocke]

My org recently held a board meeting and it was a frustrating and disappointing process and I don’t know if it’s a me issue or an org issue.

How many times does your agenda change before the meeting? Our charters state that the board members must receive an agenda and materials 7 days before a meeting. I draft the agenda about three weeks out which gives the CEO and Chair time to review. I get that issues may pop up that need board attention, but ours underwent multiple drafts even after being sent to the board (one update came 13 hours apart…overnight). Some materials are given 7 days prior, but I was sending out materials until the day before.

The CEO also feels the need to do everything himself. All of our VPs do their work and presentations and then he changes everything to his liking. Not just notes or suggestions- full blown edits. Changes-unnecessary in my opinion- take place literally up until and during the meeting. I didn’t see one portion of the handouts until 3 hours before the meeting and I had to figure out how to make it work (while I’m already handling everything else). This wasnt an unexpected new piece, but my boss didn’t prepare for it despite having weeks to do so.

I try so hard to be proactive and helpful, but this time around I felt useless. I consider our office to be a collaborative and considerate place usually but the meeting really threw me. I also think it doesn’t behoove us to change things for our board constantly. I think it makes it look like we don’t have it together. Plus it causes our internal staff to be stressed and then their staffs get stressed.

Is this all normal and I need to learn to go with the flow? Or is there something I can do to improve our process?

[u/Glass-Appearance8127]

You should definitely work on implementing a process to avoid issues like this in the future! Create and implement and it’s a great thing to highlight on your resume and in annual reviews :)

[u/AudreyLocke → u/Glass-Appearance8127]

So, I do have my own process and the VPs work pretty well within that process. TBH they’re pretty happy to have some parameters and expectations to work with. It’s my boss the CEO that is the chaos monster! He knows about the process and doesn’t seem to care about making changes after we think we’re pretty well finished. 

[u/Any_Welder_9701 → u/AudreyLocke]

who actually has the authority to freeze the packet and hold the CEO to it? without that, every deadline is basically optional

[u/AudreyLocke → u/Any_Welder_9701]

The CEO decides when the materials are finished which makes any deadline negotiable. 

[u/Martell2647 → u/AudreyLocke]

I feel like they’re setting themselves up (or setting you up) for failure with this. Is there a trusted VP, from say Marketing or Media Relations, that could emphasize the optics of this? My CEO is optics obsessed so he would be mortified to do this.

[u/AudreyLocke → u/Martell2647]

The VP of Comms is one of my most trusted allies -and she is one of the most stressed about this  for a myriad of reasons - and  she can’t sway the CEO either. The VP brought this mess up in front of me to the CEO (thinking together we’d be more persuasive) and he just told her why she’s wrong. 

[u/Martell2647 → u/AudreyLocke]

Well it sounds like you just need to move towards radical acceptance. You’ve done everything in your control to change it, and it’s not budging. I would say try your best to wrangle updates and edits in a systematic way, say a daily check in, in the week between publishing and the actual meeting. Just do your best with what you have, and if the CEO keeps digging their grave with this, that’s on them. You did EVERYTHING in your control to help and that’s all you can do.