Chris concludes our series on board packages.  Chris, take it away…

Now that I’ve given you an outline to what I think makes a good board package, I’m going to exercise my VC prerogative 🙂 and immediately caveat that advice. In my mind, the trick to effective board packages is less about the outline of the content and more about finding the right balance between being so deep in the details that the board book gets bloated and lost in the weeds and being so high level that it becomes perfunctory and glosses over the important things.

While it’s tempting to look for an example of a “perfect” board package and then replicate it, the perfect board package isn’t something that can be easily copied because it’s company specific and requires a thoughtful case-by-case approach.

Helpful hints:

– When you distribute your board package, assemble it into a single electronic document (in my world, ideally it’s a PDF) so your board can easily print it out, follow the flow of the board package, etc., rather than sending it as a bunch of separate documents.

– Put page numbers on every page (you can easily do this once you’ve got everything into a single PDF) so the group can stay on the same page and easily reference various sections during the board meeting.

– When in doubt, ask your board before the meeting what they want to discuss. 

This concludes our board package series.  We hope that you’ve enjoyed.