Many board meetings are played out like films: power, ego, deception, blame, and lots of other negative vibes. The board room can indeed be a frightening place to be on a bad day.

Sometimes, of course, things go badly wrong, and in those cases, there has to be a bad day. Uncomfortable, but necessary to put things right.

Unfortunately, for some companies, every board room meeting is a bad day for everyone. Even if someone thinks they’ve won, actually everyone has lost by pushing others or being pushed into a wrong decision.

In such companies, not only is there no intention to reach an agreement, very often there is actual intent not to reach an agreement. When power and politics take over the board room, the result is either paralysis or bad decision making.

On the other side of the coin, boards which agree on everything too quickly could benefit from some positive and constructive discussion. There needs to be some tension, some debate. People around the board room table need to think they have considered the options and come to the right decision.

Getting the right balance is essential and often comes down to having and living the correct cultural values.

If your board meetings are more like a Hollywood epic, then maybe its time for a rethink.

Board rooms are the places to discuss, debate and make the right decisions on strategy. Negative thoughts, behaviours and actions prevent open, honest and insightful discussions.

Successful strategy starts in the meeting rooms and boardroom room. If there is unnecessary conflict at these early stages, the chances of a successful implementation are low.

‘Winning’ board room battles based on overpowering and ego is unlikely to result in a winning strategy. Negativity and big egos strangle strategy.

Strategy can be time-consuming and complicated. It requires research, analysis, thinking. It means working with other people, some of whom may have different views to our own. 

Meanwhile, the business needs to go on. So many things to do. So little time.

So we put off ‘doing strategy’ yet another day. Then something happens which draws us to it. 

Many years ago, I worked selling advertising. It required a thorough understanding of the customer’s business through questioning and discussion. I found that doing this in-depth ‘need find’ as we called it, was a strength. Within the hour which we had allocated, the customer had found that they had managed to switch off from the day to day operations. For the first time in a long time, they were able to think about strategy. It led to some long-lasting customer relationships and some very productive advertising campaigns.

In that situation, discussing strategy was a means to an end for both of us. I didn’t request the appointment on the promise of discussing strategy. What the customer wanted were sales leads that they could convert into business. To get the right quality of sales leads, I needed to design advertising that was aligned with and worked with the customer’s strategy.

A strategy is and always will be a means to an end. We don’t spend time thinking about strategy for fun but as a response to challenges that we face.

Strategy, therefore, should be at the very top of our priorities.

Unfortunately, we may have very negative feelings about strategy. 

• We may not have any strategies
• We may suspect that they are not working
• Perhaps there has been some resistance to them
• Maybe we were given a hard time justifying our performance and plan at an executive meeting
• Perhaps we neither understand ‘strategy’ or how to communicate strategy

As with anything in life that we fear, we must find a way of overcoming those negative feelings if we are to improve our situation.

To change our mindset to a more positive one, we need to work on our understanding of both strategy and communicating our strategy. 

Once we develop this understanding, we find that rather than avoiding thinking, talking, writing, and visualizing our strategy; instead, we seek out opportunities to do so.