Governance · The board · Component
Annual board cycle
The year’s board meetings, each with the standing items it must cover, fixed before the year begins so that nothing is crowded out.
The deliverable
What it is
A board that sets its agenda meeting by meeting spends its time on what is urgent. The annual cycle allocates the recurring work — strategy, budget, risk review, accounts, remuneration, succession, self-evaluation — across the year in advance, so each item gets a meeting with room for it.
The cycle is the board’s own plan. Where it sits among the organisation’s other deadlines, reporting periods and peaks belongs to the Year Wheel in the Time Core, which shows the board dates as fixed points alongside everything else.
One level in
What it is made of
Each element is a constituent part of the component. Follow one to see the attributes it carries.
Meeting schedule
The dates of board and committee meetings for the year, and of the annual general meeting at which the owners take part.
3 attributes: Meeting date · Meeting type · Length
LearnStanding items
The recurring items each meeting must cover, from budget approval to board evaluation, placed once for the whole year.
3 attributes: Item · Meeting · Presented by
LearnBoard papers standard
What the board receives before each meeting, in what form, and how many days ahead it must arrive.
3 attributes: Circulated ahead · Required contents · Responsible
Learn
Succession and the board’s own evaluation are the items most often postponed. Placing them in a named meeting makes the postponement visible.
The other components in the board
Board charter
The board’s mandate in writing: its role, the matters reserved to it, its committees and how authority passes to management.
LearnBoard skills matrix
The capabilities the board needs over the next few years, set against those its members bring, used to choose the next appointment.
LearnBoard evaluation
A periodic review of how the board works — composition, information, discussion and decisions — with the actions that follow from it.
Learn