Board Meeting Reflections

“This is the best board meeting I’ve ever been too,” proclaimed one of our hardest-to-impress board members. That’s what we aim for!

“This is the best board meeting I’ve ever been too,” proclaimed one of our hardest-to-impress board members. That’s what we aim for!

Two weeks ago, most of DDD’s senior management team and all six of our board members spent a day-and-a-half together in New York, discussing our budget and initiatives for the next fiscal year (which, for us, begins July 1st). We’re lucky to have an extremely committed board that’s devoted enough to DDD to travel to twice yearly two-day board meetings, one of them in Asia. They bring expertise in international business, technology start-ups, grassroots nonprofits and financial and investment prowess. (You can see bios of each of our boardmembers here.)

In a way, the evolution of our board meetings is a microcosm of the changes DDD has undergone as an organization. Our meetings started as an informal gathering of people passionate enough to want to show up. As a young start-up, we struggled to figure out how to get the most from our board and from our time together. Since then, we’ve steadily improved: board presentations slimmed down and got to the point; the goals for each meeting got clearer and we sharpened our agendas.

In the last year, we’ve undergone a process of assessing how our board engages with DDD. The result of this evaluation cycle was the creation of several board committees to offer targeted input in different areas of the organization. These committees meet more frequently, so that the board’s exposure to DDD–and to the issues they’re individually interested in shaping–is more regular.

In addition, this assessment process helped us identify what kind of expertise and experience we need more of on the board. As we look to add new members, the dialogue at Social Edge on “How to Build a Board” is particularly timely. We’re excited by our most recent board development: the addition of Koji Osawa!