Anil Dash (at an absolute gem of a URL):

I realize that most people who've never been in the boardroom have a lot of questions (and often, anxieties) about what happens on a board, so I wanted to share a very subjective view of what I've seen and learned over the years.

I definitely have both (questions and anxieties).

He goes into great detail, based on his many years of serving on boards, both for his own companies and for other organizations. He describes the job of a board, what board meetings look like, how they’re organized and function, and the day-to-day experience of being a board member.

Too few people are willing to share their experience of actually being in the room. What is it really like to be, for example, a software developer, an engineering manager, or, I dunno, a flautist? Having an “insider view” can help demystify a role, making it seem less unobtainable (or, perhaps, less idyllic).

The section most relevant to me, then, was How do you get in the room?

The first thing to know is, your initial impressions and suspicions are correct: it’s not fair, and it’s not nearly inclusive.

No surprise there, and one of several reasons motivating me to join a board.

The for-profit organizations were overwhelmingly comprised of very wealthy white men, with a small smattering of Asian American men, though the non-profits were notably better in nearly every dimension of inclusion.

A reality we can see across many Fortune 500 companies.

More pervasive, though, is the old-boys’ network.

Oh dear. My goal: To bring the benefits of the old-boys’ network to more than just the old boys.

From talking to those who’ve served on more traditional boards, there’s an almost uniform, reflexive dismissal of the idea, where legacy board members will assert that any class of people who haven’t been in the board room before must certainly have been excluded on the basis of merit, as everyone in the room got there purely on their own skills and talents. It’s bullshit, but I’ve heard it so consistently, in almost the same stupid “we can’t lower the bar” phrasing, that it must be the common belief of the majority of people serving on boards today.

Disheartening, but unsurprising. Meritocracy is a pervasive (and wrong) belief of the already successful.

And I expect that a lot of people who agree with the desire to make things more inclusive probably also feel the pressure of being the “only one” in the room, so they don’t want to be seen as arguing for inclusion, lest they get treated as the token diversity hire on the board and have their other ideas dismissed.

As “the ‘only one’ in the room” for most of my career, he’s spot on about this tension.

I’m deeply thankful to Anil for these insights. They offered valuable clarity for what I should expect from being on a board. Joining a board of directors is one of my post-retirement goals. I see it as a way to contribute my experience and energy to an organization doing work I care about. Forming a board will be necessary as I get closer to launching a nonprofit organization.

I’ll be revisiting this article many times in the next months.

Update: There's now an extensive Q&A, sourced from his readers.