In this interview with Jeremy Glaser, who is a partner at the law firm Mintz Levin and also serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s Venture Capital & Emerging Companies Practice, we discuss the importance of managing expectations on a board of directors. A key things is no surprises when managing expectations on a board of directors. Discuss key positives and negatives with board members prior to the board meeting. Use your lead director or board chairman to help you.
Patrick: A lot of boards don’t want to feel like they’re managed by the CEO. It’s not, “I’m the CEO so I’m the boss of the board.”
In fact, it’s the opposite. The board members are my boss. It’s like any team. You need to have a quarterback and a coach. Typically, the coach is the chairman. If there’s not a formal chairman, you have someone on the board that can coach you and help you navigate through difficult situations.
Talk about your experience with managing the board, some things that you’ve seen that are effective and some things that are not as effective.
Jeremy: I have a very simple statement. No surprises. That sounds simple, yet it’s one of the most difficult things for founders and CEOs to understand. You are making a massive mistake if the first time your board members hear about an issue in the company is when you walk into a board meeting. It could be a good or bad issue. No surprises.
You should never put anything up to your board as a question that you don’t already know how it’s going to come out. If you walk out of a board meeting surprised, you blew it too. I’m a firm believer that you need to have a lead director that will help you.
Either you or that lead director need to make sure that, if you have issues that you’re bringing to the board that you’re going to ask for their vote on, before the board meeting happens, there has already been a conversation. You know what the count is going into that meeting. I can’t tell you how often I’ve seen that blown over and over again. It damages the relationship between the CEO and the board of directors.
The best advice that I can give to every founder out there is, when you’re going into that board meeting, never put something in front of the board if you don’t already know the outcome. As a lawyer, we were taught this. I’m not a litigator but I remember this from back in evidence class at Harvard Law School. We were told that you never ask a question that you don’t already know the answer to. It’s the same thing for a CEO in a board meeting.
This is Patrick Henry, CEO of QuestFusion, with The Real Deal…What Matters.