Have lunch with your board
Wednesday, January 28th, 2009When was the last time you sat down with your board members, individually, for about 90 minutes? Getting to know them, their interests, their complaints and their considerations will help you enormously. It’s not enough to chat with them before or after meetings. Make the time to get to know them separately.
By calling and setting up lunch with each board member, you will hear things that they wouldn’t normally mention in a meeting. It might be something personal, like concern over a dying parent. It might be something professional, that they’re about to sell their company and retire. It might be that they’re offended by another board member, bored by the meetings, or interested in a different aspect of your work.
If you have this information, you can do something with it. An inheritance from a parent might in part become a donation to you. A company that gets sold might generate excess taxes unless they can make a donation. A board member who is alienated or disinterested might be turned around, but only if you know about it.
You can just have lunch and connect, or you can use it to accomplish something. You might want this person to talk to someone else on the board, or make a pledge for the year, or connect you to someone else.
You can accomplish a lot in 90 minutes. At the least, I’ll bet the board member picks up the tab! And whoever objected to a free lunch?
Do you need help with board development? Write me, Katherine Wertheim, at katherine@werth-it.com.