78. Governance Education: Make sure your whole board benefits

Many boards spend lots of time and money on governance education, but don‘t do a great job at making sure the whole board benefits when a director attends a course or conference.  We can do better than that... SCRIPT: Is there anything more boring than a report back from one of your board members about a conference or course they just attended? I know I’m being overly cynical because some reports are amazing, but EVERY person who’s listening knows exactly what I’m talking about here. The fact is, a lot of courses and conferences are pretty bad, so trying to make an exciting report back to the board is like blood from a stone. But honestly if there was really nothing good about the experience it’s actually pretty useful for your board to know that, so that nobody attends the same event in the future. Better than trying to pretend you learned something. But even after a GREAT course it can be hard to figure out a way to share what you learned. I mean you just spent hours, days, or weeks learning and you only have 10 minutes to boil it all down. Here’s my take: it’s not really all that important for you to provide a summary or list of the things you learned or people you met. If you learned amazing things and met amazing people, the most valuable insight from that experience is that the rest of your board should probably attend that course or conference themselves. But if you attend a great course where you learned useful new things about governance it’s your responsibility, in my opinion, to come back to your board with specific ideas about how to APPLY what you learned. What are the two or three new things that you want your board to try, or what things do you want to change or stop doing? What experts or friends did you meet that you want to bring into the boardroom to facilitate a session? Make it PRACTICAL! Your board will thank you.