How to Effectively Onboard New Board Members with Heidi Roizen

Intro: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. Each day, we welcome transformational executives to share their real world experiences and practical advice about scaling yourself, your team, and your business.

Matt Blumberg: Welcome to The Daily Bolster. I'm Matt Blumberg, Co- founder and CEO of Bolster. And with me today is Heidi Roizen. Heidi is a recovering entrepreneur, my favorite kind. She is a venture capitalist. She sits on a couple of private boards, a couple of public boards. And Heidi, we're happy to have you here today.

Heidi Roizen: I'm thrilled to be here, Matt. Thank you.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. All right. So one quick question for you before we get to our topic today. I know you worked at Apple a long time ago. What was it like when you were there? everyone knows Apple now as iPhone and TV. And it was, I think, a pretty different place.

Heidi Roizen: Well, at the time I joined, let's see, Gil Amelio had just started as CEO. And the same week I joined, the company reported a 700 million dollar loss, I think, for the quarter. So yeah, things have changed a bit since then.

Matt Blumberg: Did you work with Steve Jobs?

Heidi Roizen: Very long story, but yes. I had actually worked with Steve way before his return to Apple. So I only briefly overlapped with him when he came back to Apple the second time.

Matt Blumberg: A true loss for the world.

Heidi Roizen: Yes, indeed.

Matt Blumberg: All right. So we are here today to talk about boards. And the question for you is, of all the boards you've sat on as a VC, as an independent, what are the best ways, let's call it the three top ways for a CEO to help onboard a new director to help make that director highly functional and successful as quickly as possible?

Heidi Roizen: Well, I'm really glad you asked me this, because I think so much effort goes into picking directors. And then the vast majority of CEOs, I think they think the job is over when they've picked them.

Matt Blumberg: That's right.

Heidi Roizen: And really, that onboarding of the director is so important by the CEO. So the very first thing that I would say is the CEO needs to proactively build a relationship with that new director. If you are only talking to that director in the boardroom, if you are only meeting with them when you have a meeting or something to discuss, you're not building the relationship that you're going to need when the proverbial crap hits the fan.

Matt Blumberg: Right.

Heidi Roizen: So point one is build that relationship up front.

Matt Blumberg: Build the relationship.

Heidi Roizen: Put some time into it.

Matt Blumberg: Yeah. No, that's for sure. And look, hopefully, you've done some of that during the recruiting process, but you really do have to continue that.

Heidi Roizen: Absolutely.

Matt Blumberg: So that's great. All right. Number two.

Heidi Roizen: Number two, I really believe every CEO should be willing to expose their entire leadership team to a new director. And I personally think the best way to do that is schedule one or even two full days where the new director comes in and meets with every single person on the direct reporting leadership team. And the goal is really for that person to understand what does each person do, what keeps them up at night, and, again, to build that relationship, because on the flip side of that, as a director, I want to know that the leadership team is comfortable coming to me. Frankly, if something is problematic or if there is something that needs to be resolved, I want to have that level of comfort so small problems don't become big problems. And the best way to do that is start off with that recognized and accepted relationship building opportunity to come in and learn about each person and their job.

Matt Blumberg: That is also great. I think that there's a minimum to it, which is they must know the CFO, they must know the head of product and see the product, they must spend time with the head of revenue. But I think I'm with you. It's best practice, meet everybody, HR, legal...

Heidi Roizen: Absolutely.

Matt Blumberg: ...customer success. So, excellent. All right. And number three.

Heidi Roizen: And the third one, now, I am presuming that also when you bring onboard somebody, you're giving them all the material and-

Matt Blumberg: Right. Right.

Heidi Roizen: ...you're giving them everything they should be getting so that they can become up to speed. But I think every new board member needs a board buddy.

Matt Blumberg: Yes. Yeah.

Heidi Roizen: You need somebody who's been on that board that you can call and ask really dumb questions that you would be embarrassed to ask. You need a trusted friend who's been on the board for a while that no matter what you want to call them up and ask them about, they're going to keep it in the cone of silence and they're going to be there for you.

Matt Blumberg: I love it. I'm a big believer in the board buddy. How long do you insist that those run, or what's the best practice? When I pull a new board member in, I give them a board buddy. And my instruction is, " Hey, for at least two or three meetings, please meet before the meeting and after the meeting. Get the dumb questions out before."

Heidi Roizen: Right.

Matt Blumberg: "Loop back after and post process what happened." But I let it drop after two or three meetings.

Heidi Roizen: I don't think it needs to be prescribed in advance. I think that sometimes a board member might feel, particularly if they're an expertise in something and somebody else has expertise in something different, that they may need to always be asking some questions outside of the natural process of a board meeting or a board prep. And so I think some of these things run their natural course, where you onboard and you get up to speed, and then you don't really need the board buddy anymore. I think sometimes these natural board relationships form, where there will be some individuals on your board who feel more comfortable talking to one or two of the others. And again, I think this is very distinct from having factions or cabals or something on your board.

Matt Blumberg: Right.

Heidi Roizen: You do not want a situation where there are board members who are spending time talking to each other about your issues and not bringing the issues to the board. That is not what I'm talking about here.

Matt Blumberg: But this is a point...

Heidi Roizen: What I'm talking about here is a new board member having someone they can go to that will keep the questions, the Q& As, the discussions confidential so that they can learn what they need to learn to become a fully functioning board member, not so you can divide the board into subgroups.

Matt Blumberg: Heidi, thank you for being with us on The Daily Bolster. This is great advice for anyone who's adding independent directors.

Heidi Roizen: My pleasure.