Back Channels In The Boardroom

Harvard Business Review

“If you’ve ever served on a board, you know the feeling: The regular meeting has ended, you have lots you still need to talk about, but the next meeting isn’t for months. Maybe you’ve got questions about a complex technical issue there wasn’t time to dig into during the meeting. Maybe you need to discuss sensitive information that can’t be shared with the whole board. Maybe you just want a reality check on something. Whatever it is, you feel it can’t wait, so you do what members of a team always do in this situation: You start having conversations on the side.”