The chair sits inside the board

First among equals is easy to print under a portrait and hard to hold in a Tuesday meeting. If the chair collects the decision before the other directors have put a step down, the Latin is decoration. Amira Soltani’s sessions treat it as a seating plan. The person who opens is still one of the directors.

Disagreement has a distance. Two directors in conflict are person to person. A question about who is released to do the work is human to human. A step that leaves the firm and meets another firm is business to business. Naming the distance keeps a personal slight from being written up as a strategy, and keeps a contract from being treated as a quarrel.

The note that leaves the room names the allowed steps and the refused ones. A minute that says the board had a good discussion is not a note from this practice.

All notes