Last week a very interesting article came down my Twitter feed, (I apologize for not noting the source), written by Les Wallace about the best board meeting he ever attended.
What made it the best meeting he ever attended was a very effective use of the time, revolving around the use of a consent agenda. I had not really heard of a consent agenda before, but fortunately the folks over at Board Source wrote up a handy guide explaining:
A consent agenda is a bundle of items that is voted on, without discussion, as a package. It differentiates between routine matters not needing explanation and more complex issues needing examination.
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With a consent agenda, what might have taken an hour for the board to review, takes only five minutes. Because it promotes good time management, a consent agenda leaves room for the board to focus on issues of real importance to the organization and its future, such as the organization’s image and brand, changing demographics of its constituents, or program opportunities created by new technology.
According to Board Source the types of things typically found in a consent agenda are the minutes of the previous meeting, confirmation of decisions, the CEO and committee reports, informational materials and routine correspondence. You don’t want to have financial documents and anything potentially controversial or requiring substantive discussion and decision making as part of the consent agenda.
It takes a fair amount of work to compile all this information. The organization has to be disciplined all the way through. Wallace mentions the work the CEO, staff and other board members did in advance to prepare the materials and have it placed it in the board section of the website for review two weeks prior to the meeting.
Wallace also mentions the board meeting moved from important to trivial matters rather than following Robert’s Rules of Order. The financial statements provided were color coded dashboard summaries of the organization’s financial position provided by the finance committee. An executive summary of staff and committee reports were provided at the meeting with more detailed information available online.
According to Wallace, this cut about 40 minutes out of the meeting and the board used that time to address strategic issues for the organization, attend to some board development and other governance issues.
The Board Source article has more information about how to use a consent agenda and exercises to use to help transition boards to this practice. It’s worth a look if this sounds the least bit intriguing to you.
One of my initial concerns was that the consent agenda could be used to hide problems amid minutiae or circumvent board members, but according to the Board Source guidance (my emphasis):
“If a board member has a question, wants to discuss an item, or disagrees with a recommendation, he or she should request that the item be removed from the consent agenda. Without question or argument, the board chair should remove the item from the consent agenda and add it to the meeting agenda for discussion.”
Using a consent agenda requires a great deal of discipline on the board if it is going to be effective-
“Just a quick question” is not an option when using a consent agenda. Either an item is removed and discussed or it stays put. This places the burden of facilitation on the board chair to be disciplined about stopping discussion and removing items from the consent agenda.”