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What actually goes in a board pack

The sections a board expects, in the order they expect them, and the three papers that waste everyone's time.

Most board packs are assembled rather than written. Someone collects what each function sent, puts a contents page on the front, and circulates 94 pages on the Friday before a Tuesday meeting.

The board reads the first six pages and the paper about the thing they are already worried about. Everything else was produced for nobody.

The order a board expects

Boards are not reading for interest. They are discharging a duty, and they are looking — in this order — for whether the business is safe, whether it is performing, and what they are being asked to decide.

1. Agenda, with timings and a purpose for each item. Every item marked for decision, for discussion or for noting. An item with no marking becomes a discussion by default, and that is how a two-hour meeting gets to item four.
2. Minutes and matters arising. Short. What was decided, and what has happened since.
3. The chief executive's report. The single most-read paper. Where the business is, what has changed, what is worrying them.
4. Finance. Performance against plan, cash, forecast. The numbers, with commentary that says why rather than what.
5. Papers for decision. One per decision, each with a recommendation.
6. Papers for discussion. Strategy, markets, anything requiring the board's judgement rather than its approval.
7. Governance. Risk, compliance, health and safety, people. Usually by exception once a baseline is established.
8. Papers for noting, and appendices.

The most common structural mistake is putting the strategy discussion last, where it gets twelve minutes at the end of a meeting that has overrun. Boards exist for exactly that item. Put it before the decisions if you have to.

What every decision paper needs

A decision paper that does not make a recommendation is not a decision paper. It is a briefing that has offloaded the work.

The six things:

• The recommendation, in one sentence at the top, with the number in it.
• The decision being asked for — approve, note, delegate — stated explicitly, because "seeking the board's steer" is not a decision.
• The options that were considered, including doing nothing, and why they were rejected. A paper with one option is a paper that has hidden the analysis.
• The financials: cost, benefit, when each lands, and who owns the budget line they land in.
• The risks, and specifically what would have to be true for this to fail. Almost no template asks for this, and it is the single best defence against a paper written to get a yes rather than to get a decision.
• Who is accountable for delivering it, by name.

The three papers that waste everyone's time

The update with no ask. Six pages describing activity, ending with "the board is asked to note the contents of this paper". If it is genuinely for noting, it is two paragraphs in the appendix. If it is not, say what you want.

The paper that arrives on the day. A board cannot properly consider a paper it read in the car park. Papers that miss the deadline should be deferred as a matter of course, and the only way that becomes true is if it happens once to a senior person.

The benefits case nobody owns. "£200k of efficiency savings" with no name attached is a forecast, not a benefit. Name the executive whose budget falls when it lands, and the date it starts. If nobody's budget changes, nothing has been saved.

Length, and the honest summary

A pack is too long when the board cannot read it in the time they have. For most non-executive boards that is two to three hours, which is roughly forty pages of substance.

The single highest-value page in any pack is a short, honest summary at the front: what is going well, what is not, and what the executive is genuinely worried about. It is the hardest page to write, because writing it requires saying something that could be wrong. It is also the page that decides whether the board trusts the rest of the pack.

A board that believes the summary reads the pack differently — less adversarially, more usefully. A board that has been surprised once reads everything looking for what else is missing, and it never quite stops.

The [Board Pack Template](/products/board-pack-template.html) is the full structure — agenda, CEO report, decision paper, minutes — in Word and PowerPoint, with a complete worked example including a decision paper that argues its own case honestly. £49.