1-page board reports: The Impossible C-suite Dream

“Impossible.”

The executive thought the chair of a major corporation was crazy.

He asked for board reports to be one page long with no more than 10 charts.

But it happened.

This chair is not alone.

Many C-suite leaders and boards are frustrated that poor-quality presentations lead to slow and poor-quality decision-making. 

Yet, it feels hard to solve.

Lots of different people are involved in preparing complex presentations on a wide variety of topics.

And all the authors are accomplished in their field and, most likely, university educated.

The idea of offering ‘writing training' seems wrong.

And yet, presentations are convoluted. They frustrate board directors, slow decision-making, and can hamper results.

So, in this case, the chair decided to equip his leadership team to achieve his “impossible” dream.

Got buy-in that board presentations were  worth tackling

Firstly, he persuaded the board that tackling this amorphous and entrenched problem was worth it.

He explained that they were not alone and that it could be solved.

Formal reviews in Australia and elsewhere backed up his concerns. Poor board presentations were affecting decision-making.

26% of Australian company directors say board presentations are a major challenge. Top law firm King & Wood Mallesons explained this and more in a report they wrote with the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Other formal reviews, such as the 2019 Prudential Inquiry, delivered similar findings.

The consistent message was that board presentations need to be shorter, more insightful, and easier to read.

Their C-suite and senior leaders were capable; they just needed to learn how to better convey their insights.

Built capability to lift presentation quality

You might think this involved a half-day workshop and then ‘job done.'

But the key here was not so much to learn to write better.

It was to learn to think more strategically while also learning to synthesise.

This takes time and practice.

We ran a series of workshops to help the team think more strategically about both what they needed to communicate and how to communicate it. This meant:

• Being hyper clear about how the presentation fits within the current strategic context
• Gathering and summarising any relevant data that would explain their point of view
• Summing up their perspective in a single sentence early in the report.
• Explaining that point of view and, if needed, countering potential alternatives.
• Practicing so that participants can confidently convert information into insight.

Helped the Board to brief better 

Counterintuitively, many of the problems with board reports begin at the top.

If authors receive a vague briefing, they most likely deliver a vague report. They are also more likely to stuff it full of random facts just in case they are useful.

The presentation will lack coherence because the author doesn't really know why they are writing it.

This brings a challenge, also.

It's tempting for board members or senior leaders to go too far in their briefing. They can be inclined to provide a highly proscriptive list of topics to cover.

This stops executives from thinking. They feel obliged to discuss the requested topics, rather than providing a coherent point of view. 

Agreed the ground rules for consistently delivering better presentations

These vary by board, but the basics are the same:

• Every author produces a one-pager that is used to negotiate the messaging. This will be reviewed by key stakeholders and likely the CEO as well as potentially the chair.
• The one-pager is signed off by the senior-level sponsor before the presentation is prepared.
• The final presentation must then conform to the agreed format and length, using the one-pager to guide the structure and order of the story.

The result—clearer board presentations and more time spent discussing the right issues!

This post was written in conjunction with the late Gerard Castles.

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