How to Run an Effective Annual Board Meeting

I serve as the president for the Milwaukee chapter of an organization of IT service and support professionals. We serve help desk managers, service desk managers, and desktop support managers, as well as the people that actually do the day-to-day support in organizations. My monthly duties as president have me running meetings, making sure everything gets done, reporting back to headquarters, and making sure we are serving our members in the best way possible.

Each year we have an annual planning meeting where we discuss 3 things.

Look back – Review our past successes to see what we can do more of. Look at our past failures to see where we need to improve. Review feedback from surveys and board members to make sure we are still doing the right thing for the right reasons.

Look ahead – Look at what we need to do for the coming year to be the best chapter possible. As we are all leaders in our own organization, we also talk about what we see as challenges coming our way so we can schedule programming that meets these needs.

Set and reset expectations – We discuss timeframes, what each officer is expected to accomplish each year, and how often we will communicate with each other. We also remind everyone that it’s okay to let the rest of the board know that you can’t meet expectations, as long as you let us know early so we can pitch in and still get the job done.

Because we have 4 new board members this year, the expectations setting this year will also include what we expect each officer will be doing on a monthly basis to help grow the organization. It’s fun to have new folks because they ask questions that many of the seasoned board members take for granted that “everyone knows.”

Everyone manages their piece of the pie, and we all work together towards common goals. We have monthly membership meetings, monthly board meetings, send out a newsletter and meeting reminders, manage a website, balance a budget, have membership drives, and run annual technology fairs, Brewer game outings and more.

While it sounds like a lot of work, it’s worth it. All the skills I’ve learned help me be a better manager for my team during the day. The 3 things we do at our board meetings each year are the same things I do with my team during the day at our meetings. The more we can go over these 3 things, especially expectation setting and resetting, the more we can improve.

Do you sit on any boards? What are your best suggestions for running an effective board meeting?

Board meeting photo credit to tiarescott