- The Method
- Posts
- ⚙️ Land Your 1st Board Role On Autopilot
Getting Your First Governance Role
Prewarning: If you want to get into governance because of the prestige of being “on a board”, please read my notes at the end of this how-to.
I’ve recently started in governance as a board observer.
Other people asked me how to land their first board role.
This week, I set up a campaign to help a friend to do just that (you can watch this in real-time here):
Sign up for a free trial of LinkedIn Sales Navigator if you don’t have it already (you’ll need a LinkedIn account if you haven’t used it before - here is a 60-page guide on how to set it up)
Select “Lead Filters”
Select the following filters to find people who are on boards in your town:
Current Job Title: Board Member
Connection: 2nd Degree Connection (If you don’t have a lot of connections on LinkedIn select 3rd Degree Connections)
Region: Where you are living right now
Posted on LinkedIn
See the screenshot below:
Click “Select All” > “Save to list” > Name your list and give it a description > Select “Create and save”
Go back to “Leads”
Select the list and grab the URL by selecting “command C”
Sign up for a 14-day free trial of We-Connect
Click “Campaigns”
Click “Add New”
Click “Search” and copy and paste the URL from LinkedIn Sales Navigator into the URL box and name the List (screenshot below)
Select “Continue”
Under “Step 1” select “Invite To Connect” and use the following script in the connection message box:
“Kia ora [FIRST_NAME],I'm hoping to land an observer role in governance and learn in this space. I thought I would shoot you a quick request for advice.
No stress if you don't see a fit!
Best”
Select “Save” & “Continue”
Leave the default options and select “Continue”
Select “Launch”
People will start to get automated outreach requests that look something like this:
Once people connect with you, it then comes to asking if you can be an observer on the boards that those people are on.
It's pretty simple, pretty quick.
Don’t pay the Institute of Directors $12,000.
Just do the above and talk to the directors who are already on boards.
P.S. Boards are a lot of work; a lot of people join them for the wrong reasons (ego, peacocking, money).
If you are a new founder or building a side hustle, you’ll learn far more from those experiences than from stepping into governance.
If you think you are competent in your vertical, can add value, and want to support that organisation, make your move then.
Why Busy People Lose
You waste years by not being able to waste hours.
Yeah, there are exceptions to this rule, but the irony is the busiest people I know get the least done.
I've seen this pattern so many times now that staff proudly telling me how busy they've been makes me shudder.
I've learned to convince myself that this at least means they're trying; the effort is there. But I know it's more than likely that not much has been done.
How can it be that the busiest people are the least productive? It doesn’t make sense. But I have a few theories.
One issue might be how busy people perceive time. This is the problem of what I’m calling personal time vs public time.
Personal time is the amount of time units you've personally invested into something, usually in the form of hours.
Where-as public time is the total time lapsed between your first intention to act and when it is delivered.
Busy people works in spurts.
Ten minutes here, twenty nine minutes there. Multi-tasking through rafters of tasks a day. But zoom out a little and you’ll see a lot of work was touched but not much shipped.
And when they do ship something, they’re stoked they got it done in only six hours. But they forget is those 6 hours, took 6 weeks.
See the difference.
In this case, their personal time is 6 hours, but their public time is 6 weeks.
Sure, there are jobs that take weeks and months, no matter how you slice them - like building a house. But no one cooks a chicken for Sunday's roast, 10 minutes a day.
Some jobs, most jobs actually, are more like cooking dinner, than building a house, they’re meant to be done, right there and then.
And that is the crux of the matter. The most effective people, who are often the least busy, do things from start to finish, one job at a time.
The minimise the gap between personal time and public time.
They resolve customer complaints in minutes not weeks. They ship new products in weeks not years. And ultimately they win.
And the busy people… well, they’re too busy being busy to even notice.
You waste years by not being able to waste hours.