The charter

One or two pages. It should say:

• What the committee decides and what it only recommends
• How many members, how they are chosen and for how long
• Quorum and voting rules
• What is delegated to staff or an outsourced CIO, and the dollar limits
• How conflicts are disclosed

If no one can find your charter, that is the first fix.

The agenda

Each meeting should have a clear goal that members know beforehand. That gives people time to read, think and show up ready. A simple structure:

1. Decisions needed today, with memos attached
2. Performance and risk, in one dashboard page
3. Manager watch list
4. Policy items on the yearly calendar
5. Open questions for next time

Put decisions first. Reports can be read ahead.

The minutes

Assign a staff member to take notes, track follow-ups and set the next meeting. Minutes should record what was decided, who voted how if your practice calls for it, and what each person agreed to do.

Give one person the job

In the book I made this point about advisory boards. If you task one person with running the meetings, someone is accountable for whether they work. If the chair is too busy to prepare, the meetings get sloppy, members get frustrated and the whole thing starts to look like a waste of time.

I recommend over-preparing for every meeting. A meeting that ends with new ideas and clear decisions makes people want to come back.

Review the committee itself

Once a year, ask how the committee is doing. Are meetings useful? Is anyone not contributing? Replacing a member who doesn't engage is part of keeping the group fresh.