Advisory Board Rules
Your advisory board members are not a board of directors and they are not employees. Since the odds are you don’t have several thousands of dollars to pay each of you members each month, it is unreasonable and unrealistic to expect them to give several hours per month.
You have to show your advisory board members early on that you respect their time and won’t make unreasonable requests. The most frequent areas of abuse are as follows:
1. Meetings – meetings with a clear plan, and that are not designed to accomplish clear objectives should never happen. Don’t include people in meetings that don’t absolutely have to be part of the meeting. If your staff are in the meeting, be sure that they are clear that meetings will not be allowed to run on with irrelevant conversations.
One hour each quarter is about as much as you should reasonably expect from your advisory board. To get the full benefit, you may choose to meet each member of your board two times per quart for 30 minutes each time. If you have a three-person team, that’s six meetings every 3 months. Each meeting being very pointed.
2. Costs - business etiquette and common sense dictate that you shouldn’t place an undue financial burden on your advisors. If you’re meeting will be over lunch, come with a plan and leave with the bill.
3. Strictly Business – don’t try to get too chummy with the advisors. Business first. If the advisors want to invite you to personal events they will. Exception: Provide at least one thoughtful and inexpensive gift to each advisory board member at least once per year. THe gift should be thoughtful and consider the individual’s personality. It should be relatively inexpensive, because if you can afford to buy expensive gifts, you should probably be paying your advisory board better.
