10 Lessons from 3 Board Meetings
A behind-the-scenes look at how great businesses actually operate.
I just came out of three board meetings.
One was with a billion-dollar public company.
One with a media platform that quietly shapes how people think.
And one with an investment firm deploying capital into long-term, focused bets.
Different rooms. Different operators. But as I stepped back and looked at my notes, something clicked. Across all three, I started to see the same patterns.
In fact, I wrote down 101 total observations.
Small decisions. Big principles. Quiet cues that revealed how great companies think when nobody’s watching.
This memo gives you 10 of those.
The most actionable. The most repeatable. The ones I would focus on if I were building from scratch today.
And I wrote it like a reporter. If you were sitting in those rooms with me, this is what you would have seen. This is what the best operators are actually working on… right now.
1. Systems carry the weight
The best teams are not built around heroics.
They’re built around systems that keep working even when key people are out of the room. It’s really not about brilliance. It’s about repeatability. The right system beats a perfect day. There is insane magic in the boring stuff that never breaks.
2. Design with scale in mind
They don’t build for what’s needed today.
They build for what’s coming tomorrow.
Meaning, there is focus on today’s priority but also a deep sensitivity to tomorrow’s constraint. This is really what separates the good from the great. If a tool or process can’t handle 10 times the volume, it gets redesigned. Not later. Now. Because the cost of fixing it later is way more expensive than you can imagine.
3. Move through fast learning loops
They don’t wait for a big win.
They collect dozens of small signals.
They test, observe, adjust. Then they do it again. This isn’t speed for speed’s sake. It’s about reducing waste and compounding insight. There is deep humility in the philosophy of: I think this is right, but let’s test to make sure.
I subscribe to the crawl/walk/run growth progression. It sounds more like test/invest/scale.
4. Plan for what might go wrong
Think pre-mortem instead of post-mortem.
Before anything gets built, they ask the hard question.
If this fails, why?
That one question brings out hidden risks. And it brings out the truth. It helps you break what you have lovingly built so that you can build it better. It removes pride but installs ownership. And if there was any exercise that can bring a team together, it is the pre-mortem… because when it almost breaks when it’s live, and the failsafes kick-in from the pre-mortem learnings, everyone realizes the magic of building something special together.
Give your team the gift of the pre-mortem.
5. Use language like infrastructure
The limits of your language are the limits of your world.
In every room, there was an intentional effort to clarify language. Terms were defined. Labels were agreed upon. Not because it sounds good. Because execution depends on precision.
It’s totally okay to ask the question: “Wait, what does that mean?”
6. Define your stopping point before you start
Here is the formula:
If we don’t hit x metric by y date, we are going to shut it down.
While that sounds pessimistic, it’s actually the kindest thing that you can do for the team’s planning and resource allocation. In software engineering we call this “success criteria”. Just knowing what KPIs need to be hit allows the teams to hyper focus on delivering exactly what we need.
So: Before any project begins, the team agrees on what would cause them to walk away. If those conditions are met, they stop.
There’s no team drama anymore. And now everyone wants the same thing.
Pretty magical if you ask me.
7. Introduce automation with care
Here is a Sharran original for you:
Amateurs automate for efficiency.
Professionals automate for accuracy.
In today’s Ai and data world, accuracy is everything.
One company implemented automation in three quiet stages.
First, it watched.
Then it suggested.
Eventually, it took action.
There is nothing that people love and freak out about simultaneously than automation. Whatever your approach is, explain it to your teams.
Oh, and automate every darn thing that can be automated.
8. Treat churn as a design challenge
Nothing teaches you more than churn (i.e. a client leaving you).
It’s easy to instantly say:
They were not the perfect avatar
They were rude
They were not a culture match
They didn’t do the work
I didn’t want to work with them anyway
Sure, all those maybe true.
But they still left.
And we can learn from that, so that we can shore up our systems, our programs, and our offerings even by 1%.
At great companies:
When someone leaves, they don’t take it personally.
They take it seriously.
They ask where the experience fell short.
Then they fix it.
Not just to make a KPI better, but to rebuild trust.
Most companies are focused on growth and client acquisition but hardly does anyone ever ask me about delivery, retention (I hate this word), and delight of clients and customers.
If you know that your company, program or offering has a high-likelihood of making clients insanely happy, then you will out-market everyone because you know that it is unreasonable for them to fail.
That’s when your marketing starts to work.
Not by putting an emoji in your subject line or using a trending song on Instagram.
9. Limit how much is in motion
Here is another Sharran favorite (that I did not come up with):
To do great things we must do fewer things.
There was one rule that showed up in each of the board meetings:
Cap how much is being worked on at once.
Why?
Focus is finite.
There are only so many things you can do well… simultaneously.
While it seems restrictive, it’s actually ultra-freeing. It forces hard choices. It clears the fog quickly. And it leads to real progress much faster than you think.
Focus may just be more important than intelligence.
10. Make day one matter
How you start is how everything ends.
Meaning: onboarding is the holy grail of everything.
In all three companies, onboarding wasn’t a presentation. It was seen a massive contribution.
Especially with new employees.
New hires shipped something, no matter how small.
Not only because it was efficient. But also because it gave them a reason to belong.
Keeping My Promise.
Like I promised you, I’m going to share everything I can.
I’ve been fortunate to build two billion-dollar companies. But this next one feels different. I want you to come with me. Not as an outsider reading headlines, but as someone sitting next to me. Seeing what I see. Thinking through the same problems. Feeling the weight of the same decisions.
If you’ve ever wondered what really happens inside these boardrooms, I want to show you. Not the polished version. The real thing. The ideas that get challenged. The tension when something isn’t landing. The quiet synchronization when the team feels like they are on the same page of the decision that was made.
These rooms aren’t loud. They are definitely not chaotic. They’re filled with thoughtful operators who care about the outcome. They come to the boardroom to pressure-test their thinking. And then they show up the next day ready to build with insane focus and zero ego.
Because until you win, effort always goes unnoticed.
That’s the rhythm I kinda wanted to bring you into.
Because I believe the most powerful advantage is effort. Just the quiet discipline of showing up, doing the work, and being kind along the way.
If this helped you, I’ll write more like it.
I’ll leave you with these 7 words that guide me today:
Work Hard. Be Kind. Make More Money.
Sharran, this is a masterclass in operational excellence. Thank you for codifying these lessons.
Lesson #5, "Use language like infrastructure," is the one that truly resonates. It's a concept we build our entire strategic practice around.
We call it "verbal precision." In our experience, most strategic failures are not failures of execution; they are failures of language. A team that hasn't agreed on the precise meaning of "customer," "lead," or "ready" is building on sand.
Clarity isn't a soft skill; it's the load-bearing foundation of the entire business.
Your framing of it as "infrastructure" is the perfect way to articulate its importance. Superb post. Looking forward to studying more.
Thank you for taking the time to offer your learnings Sharran :) Greeting from Germany!