Transcript excerpt from a January 19, 2025 YouTube conversation (Jason M. Lemkin and others) discussing a new board meeting format. Speakers describe a recent two-day board meeting that finished early, prioritized board-member participation, shifted focus from compliance and individual QBRs toward adding strategic value, and debated whether spending two days of executives’ time was worthwhile.
Great. I said, I want 50% of the words to be out of the board's mouth and 50% of the words of. Mm. Anyway, we put those. Jason Bus. It was really good. And normally you run, like, way over, and we skip lunch, we skip the breaks, and no one goes to the bathroom. Like, we finished early, and we covered everything. It was a terrific board meeting. Yeah. I don't know why I get on that, but I'm still on a little bit of a high of our new format. Let me ask you two questions about that.
One flipping around now, as the executive chairman.
Was it worth two days of.
Yamini's time, two days of the CEO's time? I get that there's a lot to do, but she has a big job.
See, I would have argued, historically, a lot of a board's job is compliance. Right. And a lot of what a board does is make sure you don't back. Back up over a cliff. And what I want the board to add more value. Boards give a lot of context and a lot of experience. Can the board help us navigate a little bit?
Yes.
And so historically, it's been a lot of readout, and it's been a little bit of, okay, so I'll give you a little inside baseball. One of the management team members criticized the board meeting and said, the board meeting, Brian doesn't. Isn't CEO anymore, so he doesn't get a qbr. It's basically Brian's qbr. And so we said, let's move from Brian's QBR to an actual board meeting. And I think it was mostly compliance and for the board, and this board meeting was much more for the managing team.
