The Importance of Board Meeting Rules

The board of directors oversees the company through making decisions or establishing policy. In most companies the board is required to be able to vote on any decisions. To ensure that the board is able to make a sound decision process, your board should have clearly established guidelines and meeting rules that everyone adheres to.

The meeting rules that the majority of boards adhere to are based on Robert’s Rules of Order, an English rules book for parliamentary meetings written by American General Henry M. Robert in 1876 in order to prevent meetings from devolving into chaos. Although Robert’s Rules of Order is not necessary for every board to apply, formal guidelines can be used to create a framework which ensures the fairness of debates in meetings that are hybrid or virtual where directors might be lost among a maze of computer-generated faces.

This includes making sure the agenda is clear and concise. To do this, well-written boards documents are required to be prepared and distributed prior the meeting to ensure that directors are ready to discuss. It is crucial to reduce the time spent on boardmeetingpro.net/essential-board-meeting-procedures-and-rules/ routine issues and reports, since they can drag out an entire meeting.

Other meeting rules include restricting the number of minutes that a person can speak on any particular motion (two minutes) and making sure that all speakers are relevant to the issue that is being discussed. Motions that cause tension or a heated debate may be ended by the vote of two-thirds. To avoid wasting time it is crucial that everyone respects one another and doesn’t undermine other members’ motives or uses derogatory words.