Frequency of Board Meetings
I read Brad Feld's blog periodically and he has a series going about how to run and participate in a board of directors. His most recent post was on how often board meetings should happen. Of course that varies based on the where the company is at in it's evolution. But, at an early stage he suggests monthly in-person meetings. From experience I can tell you that monthly meetings seem like a lot of work and I know there is a lot of time put into preparing for them every month (sometimes it feels like roughly a week every month we are preparing for them since we really start concentrated thinking and effort about a week before the meeting). But, I also know that monthly meetings keep us on our toes. Sometimes we get to a week prior to the meeting and wonder how much we could possible have to talk about since it has only been three weeks since the last meeting; then we start talking and thinking about it and almost always have loads to say and can show how much progress we have made. So, even though it seems like a pain sometimes, having those monthly board meetings is a good thing. First we get very quick feedback and input on our direction and what we are thinking. But also, it forces us to concentrate on progress and it shows us just how much progress we are making. It use to be we had weekly status meetings in the software engineering world; those have moved to daily stand-ups in the agile development world. The same is true at the management level; we use to have quarterly board meetings, but in the more agile world we have to live in, monthly meetings are more appropriate. Of course as a company grows and matures, those meetings should get less frequent and can sometimes be done remotely.
