Bill Campbell helped me understand how he did it. Bill would always say that if there was any potentially surprising or controversial topic, the CEO should go to every board member, one-on-one, to walk them through it before the meeting. That allowed them to ask questions, offer different perspectives, and then the CEO had time to take those thoughts back to the team and revise their thinking, presentation, and plan.

After your product launch, and hopefully with revenue coming in, your board meetings will focus more on data and what’s happening externally—what’s the competition doing, what are customers asking for, how well are we attracting and retaining customers, what kinds of partnerships have you set up. And as always when you’re presenting numbers, it becomes much more important to craft a narrative. You have to tell a story. [See also: Chapter 3.2: Why Storytelling.] Your board isn’t in the business every day like you are—they can’t immediately understand the nuances or what the numbers actually mean unless you give them context.

Being able to help the board grasp exactly what’s going on is good for the CEO, too. The better you can explain something, the more you understand it. Teaching is the best test of your own knowledge. If you’re struggling to explain what you’re building and why, if you’re presenting a report without really understanding it, if the board is asking you questions that you can’t answer—then you have not internalized what’s actually going on at your company.

Even the best CEO cannot stand alone, untouchable, unchallengeable, accountable to no one. Everyone needs to report to someone, even if it’s a two-person board that you meet with for an hour every few months.

There always needs to be some kind of pressure-release valve. There always needs to be someone who can shake their head and give it to you straight.

And if you do it right, you should never be a victim of your board. As CEO, you help to shape it. Boards always change based on the CEO—the board under Steve Jobs was different from the board under Tim Cook. Boards complement a CEO’s strengths and no two CEOs are alike.

There are going to be surprises no matter how well you know a company. Learning about them early is challenging because employees, even at the highest levels, are reluctant to share troubling information. Learning what you need to know requires rigorous questioning while conveying in a compelling way that you absolutely want people to speak openly.

A CEO coming in from the outside needs to emphasize getting a good fix on the full range of business operations, the strengths and weaknesses of the leadership team, and the nature of the culture.

The merit of getting to know prospects to choose a good successor was evident in Charles’ case. He’d risen to the top of the heap of candidates through a long and rigorous process during which the board had gotten to know him well. They’d been presented with a wealth of information about his accomplishments and leadership talents, and they felt confident he was right for the job. But then he totally whiffed his interview with them by showing up in the manner of a direct report rather than speaking to the directors as a peer. He didn’t come across as the authoritative leader they could rely on to be forceful with them or to make the tough calls and bold moves that would take the firm where it needed to go. They were really taken aback, and they began to reconsider an external candidate.

But all that they had learned about Charles over the prior five years ultimately prevailed. Because of the experience they had with him, they agreed when we urged them to give him another chance to present. We gave him feedback and shared what the board had said about his prior performance before them. He took the feedback well and returned very much as the in-command CEO the board wanted to see. This ability to take feedback and adapt gave them even more confidence that he would continue to grow once in the role. Charles was appointed and has had a highly successful tenure.