The board of directors oversees the company by making decisions or setting policy. In most organizations, the decisions are taken by a majority vote by the board. To facilitate an effective decision-making process, your board should have clearly defined the rules of meetings and guidelines everyone adheres to.
The meeting rules that most boards follow are based off Robert’s Rules of Order, an English parliamentary rule book written by American General Henry M. Robert in 1876 in order to prevent meetings from getting chaotic. Although Robert’s Rules of Order is not necessary for every board to follow it, formal guidelines could be used to create a framework which ensures the fairness of debates in meetings in hybrid or virtual settings where directors might otherwise be lost in a shuffle of computer-generated faces.
This includes ensuring that the agenda is concise and clear. In order to do this, well-written board documents must be prepared and distributed prior to the meeting to ensure directors are prepared to discuss. It is crucial to reduce the time spent on routine issues and reports, since they can drag on meetings.
Other meeting rules include limiting how many instances a speaker can discuss the motion (two dig this minutes) and ensuring that all speakers are relevant to the issue at hand. Motions that create tension or a heated discussion could be closed with the vote of two-thirds. To avoid unnecessary time, it is essential that everyone respects one another and does not undermine the motives of the other members or use derogatory words.