A founder should communicate with board members constantly between meetings, sharing wins and problems early so the board can actually help instead of just hearing reports. This turns board meetings into strategy sessions instead of surprise announcements.
I observe a lot of founders being frustrated with the work with their board, right? So now they have a board. It may be a professional board. It may not be a board, but they're really worried about the board meetings. And they go into the board meeting spending tons of hours preparing and they're really concerned something bad's gonna happen. And the reason that happens is they actually don't have communications with the board meetings, with the board members in between the meetings. And that's what they should be doing. So if you have a board, your number one job is essentially no surprises, right? So when you get to the board meeting, there are no surprises. What that means is you spend time in between meetings to share with your board members the good and the bad, full transparency. That's another mistake, by the way. You know, people think that, oh, I can only tell the good stuff. No, tell them everything as soon as you know, because then they can help you. So a lot of communication in between the board meetings, getting everybody dressed, making sure they have all the information, making sure they have read all the information. So what happens at the board meeting is not like you reporting of what's going on, but rather a discussion of what you're going to do about what's going on. And I think if more founders thought about their board meetings in that way, they'd be more successful in having, you know, the benefit of having a board, but they'd also worry a lot less and they'd spend a lot less time preparing you know, reams of paper and reports that nobody's going to read in time and not be prepared for.
