A board meeting that ends with six vague takeaways has not done its job. It has simply moved the work into a fog.
I’ve sat through hundreds of these, as a director and as the CEO reporting to one. The discussion is good, sometimes excellent. Strategy gets debated, numbers get challenged, and smart people sharpen each other’s thinking. Then the last ten minutes arrive and people start gathering papers.
Nothing gets written down. No one is assigned anything. The follow-up email three days later is a polished summary of what was discussed, not what was decided.
Before the room clears, three things should exist on paper:
What was actually decided. Not discussed, not explored. Decided.
Who owns the next action on each item. One name, not a committee.
The date by which that person is accountable.
That’s it. Three columns. If you can’t fill them in before people stand up, the meeting hasn’t finished yet.
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And today, with all the AI notetakers, there is no excuse for failing to send the summaries to board members with action items highlighted without effort.
Governance doesn’t require complexity. It mostly requires that someone writes the decision down before everyone forgets what it was.
