How to Get Your Boss's Boss to Understand

Whether you’re facilitating a strategic planning session or chairing a formal board meeting, your job is not to be the smartest person in the room. Your job is to create the conditions where the group can do its best thinking and make defensible decisions.

From my experience as a senior leader and a board member, I know executives assume a simple rule: If you can’t explain it clearly, you don’t fully understand it.

There’s usually less pressure than we imagine, but it also means the real work happens long before the meeting begins.

Senior management and boards of directors don’t need all the technical details.