What Sponsors Want in a Board Presentation

Board presentations and meetings represent an opportunity for executives, partners and outside experts to drive strategy and growth. A successful board meeting should leave everyone with a path forward and a clear sense of alignment between company executives and partners of the firm. However, not every board meeting produces these results. 

On the executive side of the table, trying to encapsulate all that your company has experienced and accomplished since the last board meeting into a brief, digestible and useful presentation can be an enormous task. The added pressures of growing your company and impressing sponsors add stress to this process. These factors combined with reporting too much information or not the right information often result in confusion for your board. Making sense of exactly what sponsors want out of a board meeting will help you streamline your board preparation process.  

While each board has its own unique qualities, there are three primary objectives sponsors look to gain from a board meeting: value creation, alignment, and the establishment of a clear plan for the future. Focusing on meeting these three objectives will keep your presentations concise, your sponsors happy, and will create a clear path to success.

Misalignment of Expectations

Of everything that a board meeting should accomplish, value creation is the most essential. To create value, boards focus broadly on strategy and alignment. While other objectives are important, this is the one that sponsors and executives alike find the most critical for an effective board meeting. According to a 2019 survey of over 100 PE boards, 81% of respondents said value creation should be the main goal of board meetings. But only 30% of those respondents said t...