An easy way to add a little democracy: open up your board meetings

A very easy way to add a little more democracy to your company is to open up your board meetings. All you have to do is allocate one or two additional seats at the meeting for any employees to volunteer to come along. Here's the email I send round once a month:

Hi all, as you (hopefully!) already know, we try to run things here at NM in as transparent and participative a way as possible. One of the ways we achieve this is through having two ‘open seats’ at the monthly company board meeting for ANYONE on the team to come along. It’s a real opportunity to see how the company is run, and more importantly, to get involved in discussions and decisions.

If you’d like to come along then please send me an email by 14:00 tomorrow. If more than two people are interested I’ll give priority to people who haven’t been to a board meeting before. Over the coming months there will be opportunities for everyone to take part.

The contributions from the employees in the open seats are so valuable to the process of running the business because basic assumptions are questioned, and you get instant feedback from the people who will be affected by decisions. And it's motivating for the employees too because they get to see the big picture about how the company is run. Here's a snippet of an email I had from an employee after a board meeting:

It's very motivating to see the 'big picture' in terms of the company and where it is going (and feel like a part of that, of course!)