14. Diane Hessan on what makes an effective board member and an effective board

Diane Hessan is successful entrepreneur, CEO, author and has been highly recognized for the broad range of impactful work she has done.  And she has served on virtually every type of company board and seen the work of the board from many perspectives.  In the fascinating conversation, she shares her insight and opinion on the experience of running and serving on a board.

 

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Links

https://salientventures.co/

www.cspace.com

 

https://muckrack.com/diane-hessan

 

 

Quotes

First Board Experience

My first board experience was very hands on.  It was a real passion project because we all were completely dedicated to the mission.  I started by spending way too much time on operating issues and eventually sat back and became more strategic.

 

I thought it would be great for my family and my job and my learning, to broaden my horizons and to learn how to do some other things. I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was on a whole bunch of boards, and I just said to him, I feel like I want to do something bigger. I feel like I want to give back and not focus on myself so much and yeah, he said, what are you passionate about? I said, I'm passionate about kids. I'm passionate about antiviolence, I'm passionate about homelessness.

He was just like "Diane. I have a great organization for you and they really need marketing help" because that was why people wanted me on their boards at the time. It really was a great fit and I basically got it by talking to somebody who had already been there.

 

There were times when I would say something and I learned to say, “is this a board issue or is this not a board issue?” I mean, I was just very explicit about it. 

 

 

Changes in the Boardroom because of Covid

Every organization that I'm on the board of no matter whether they're for profit, nonprofit, et cetera, have had talks about the impact of COVID on how their employees are working, how they're building culture, how they're recruiting, retaining, onboarding, what the impact is on people working from home, when they should open up again, whether they should give their employees free stuff to be able to be more effective at home, how they handle the huge challenges of employees who are parents and how to make everyone feel fairly treated there.

 

(Companies are) Looking for shifts in customer behavior and customer requirements is also a really interesting topic.  Most of these companies have new go to market strategies, new strategic partnerships, interesting new acquisitions, and I think in general, new ways of actually reaching out into the marketplace and building strategy around that.

 

And for me it's meant much more time on my boards of just doing my homework and reaching out and try to see what other companies are doing and just generally getting educated so that I can be as helpful as possible.

 

What makes an effective board meeting?

I think the great board meetings are when the CEO says, “here's your deck or here's three pages about what's happening in the business. I have three issues that are keeping me awake at night, and I really want your help on them. Here they are. A, B and C.  Please come prepared to help.”  Spending a board meeting with four hours of PowerPoint is the worst most boring thing in the world.  And it really doesn't help.

 

 

Big Ideas/Thoughts

 

Learned about being a Board member from being a CEO

Number one, when your business is going well, you want your board to just ask questions and beat you up and challenge all of your assumptions.  You're energized.  You're doing well.  You want a board that gives you watch outs and says, well, what about this? And could we grow this faster?

 

When a business is not going well, you don't really, as a CEO, want to get beat up. So, when things weren't good, I really appreciated board members that were supportive, that helped me look on the bright side that shared with me information about how other companies were also struggling.  So, when things are good, you want to tough board when things are bad, you want a board that walks in your shoes and also knows how to be supportive.

 

I learned how sometimes asking questions is more valuable than giving advice to the CE