Feed your board with constant care and attention.

Plan 10% of your time for board relations.

Most all leaders new to the CEO position underestimate this time requirement.  It is good for the company when the CEO shares concerns, threats and opportunities with the board.  The rule of “no surprises” works well for the longevity of a CEO.  But there are always surprises. CEO’s should communicate with members of the board if not a committee of the whole as soon as possible when threats to the corporation arise.

Sometimes the CEO wants to obtain concurrence from his board for issues of particular importance to him.  It is not bad form to lobby individual board members in the form of a briefing of the issue as the CEO sees it, as long as the board is allowed the time to debate the issue, sometimes requesting an “executive session” of just the outside directors.

All of this board management is time consuming.  The CEO is also responsible for preparing the board briefing package before regular board meetings, a time-consuming task if done correctly.  The package should contain the issues to be discussed with backup materials for the board to understand the issues.  Operating statistics in detail and individual departmental issues that do not rise to the level of board discussion should be included only in an appendix for deeper reading, but not discussion.  The CEO should discuss the agenda and board package contents with the chairman (if the chair is a different person), since the chair is tasked with setting the agenda and controlling the meeting.

Does this not appear to add to at least 10% of a CEO’s time now that you’ve seen some of the elements of the task?

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